DIY digital music system

[rvsixer]

I found "Fighting the MP3 does not deliver professional quality audio myth" most interesting reading (as well as the rest of the material):

http://jthz.com/mp3/

Also interesting, and I think a most rational flac vs mp3 vs ogg comparison (especially the real world technical and subjective testing links at the bottom):

http://www.uberstandard.org/encoding.html

I also found many other mp3 (properly encoded) vs lossless blind tests/results. I have been using flac for the home stereo, and -V2 lowpass mp3 for the iPhone. That said, these mp3's sound pretty fine on the home stereo imho, not fitting any generalization that all mp3's don't sound good. Now the low-res -V9 encoded commercial downloaded stuff ... :E .

[littlesaint]

My formats tend to fall in line with what I'm listening to. If it's something I'm really into or a classic, I'll go for Blu-ray, SACDs, or CDs ripped to lossless. Still trying to find the best way to rip stereo SACD or BD. If it's something I like, but will mostly be heard on my iPhone, I'll just purchase at the iTunes Store. Personally, I don't find the iTunes Plus format that bad, but my playback equipment isn't that revealing...yet. YMMV.

[Hdale85]

Well it's all going to depend on your setup. I have a rather high end DAC (and Jon has a crazy high end DAC) with very revealing speakers as well as the other electronics in my setup (currently a DIY amp). In my setup it's quite easy to hear a difference.

Now this doesn't hold true for all albums. There are some lesser quality mastered CD's out there that no matter what kind of file format you throw at it it's always going to sound horrible.

[bill_s]

Well it's all going to depend on your setup. I have a rather high end DAC (and Jon has a crazy high end DAC) with very revealing speakers as well as the other electronics in my setup (currently a DIY amp). In my setup it's quite easy to hear a difference.

Now this doesn't hold true for all albums. There are some lesser quality mastered CD's out there that no matter what kind of file format you throw at it it's always going to sound horrible.

Same here. I believe I can definitely hear a a big difference with MP3 depending on the top of music. Well recorded music of various genres just flat out sounds better to me either using WAV or FLAC files. But then, some music sounds perfectly acceptable to me as an MP3 mainly because that is the only format I have that music in! Yesterday I was listening to "Chest Fever" by The Band. Sounded pretty good from my MP3 downloaded from Amazon. But now I am going to go out and buy the CD just in case I am missing something! For what's it worth here is my main system, not terribly expensive but ok: DIY music server with onboard SPDIF/COAX out, Pop Pulse 1796 DAC, B&K Pre, B&K Amp, DIY tower speaker: ScanSpeak MTM with RS265 bass in each cabinet.

[JonMarsh]

You may find it interesting to do a comparison among formats- even for pop; for example, I have KT Tunstall's most recent album on CD as well as the iTunes+ version (with videos, extra cuts) on AAC+, and for an experiment I created MP3's at standard resolution from the CD. The AAC MP4 (320k) might not be audibly different for many listeners on average systems, and is fine for portable applications (iPod, laptop) but the MP3 just sounds coarser and grainier. Not surprising, as MP4 has about double the encoding efficiency re quality.

[mazurek]

On the other side of the spectrum, I recently had an experience where I found out just how much better internet radio and internet tv is with a proper stereo. Some make the argument that a playback system is unimportant if you are listening to poor quality streaming sources. Well, that is completely wrong in my opinion. When I went from my stereo as an internet playback system to using just the speakers in the television, the intelligibility was severely reduced and I had difficulty understanding talk show hosts. One interesting thing with the internet advertisements is that in my opinion, bad sound quality is much more distracting and unprofessional than overcompressed video. Of course, lets make everything high quality if we can.