has anybody else noticed this about flac audio?


o.k are you ready for some truth friends ? flac has compression levels from 0 to 8 with the official flac default level being 5. now flac is lossless compression so there should be no sound loss from the original source no matter what compression level you use however if you encode the same song using every different flac compression level even though they will all be lossless there absolutely is a difference in the overall sound including tone and sound stage from level to level and doing your own test will only prove me right. now here’s where it gets strange? vintage vinyl has stereo + stereo depth perception (3d sound stage).digital audio has stereo + mono depth perception (2d sound stage) and this includes all new remastered vinyl cut from the digital master. this is why digital audio does not sound like vintage vinyl along with brick wall compression.i find it odd that the only flac compression level not recommended as a default no matter what software you use is flac compression level 4 ? it just so happens that re-encoding digital audio to flac with compression level 4 converts digital mono depth perception back into digital stereo depth perception (3d sound stage) just like vintage vinyl! and i don’t think this is by mistake friends ? do your own test and get ready to have your mind blown. here is an audio sample: level 5 http://pc.cd/pCcrtalK level 4 http://pc.cd/iVWrtalK
guitarsam

Showing 3 responses by heaudio123

I can’t say this in a nice way, but this statement is made up. There is no basis for making it and absolutely no way to justify it. I have to assume it comes from a lack of understanding of digitized and reconstructed analog signals, and a belief in the perfection of vinyl (which it most certainly is not).

vintage vinyl has stereo + stereo depth perception (3d sound stage).digital audio has stereo + mono depth perception (2d sound stage) and this includes all new remastered vinyl cut from the digital master. this is why digital audio does not sound like vintage vinyl along with brick wall compression.


Unless someone has screwed up the code, which is possible, but unlikely, or you are using software that does loudness levelling or something like that, then there should be no difference in the files, and it is relatively easy to see if they are bit-perfect. I have not delved deep into the algorithms for playback, but it is my understanding that compression level can impact the amount of processing required to decompress, and if you are playing on a noisy computer, the added processor load and added memory usage, especially if you have other things running, could result in "noisier" playback, but that is unlikely to happen on any dedicated hardware, or a computer not overly burdened.
also when i made a 1 gb virtual hard drive from my pc's ram memory and import audio into the virtual ram drive and play the audio from the ram the sound quality is improved 100% like listening to the studio master tape can somebody explain this?

That sounds like you have a slow over-taxed computer, that is also possibly noisy. Given you said you are running Window7, I am going to guess it is rather old?  Something that old may need a lot more processor % horsepower (comparatively) to decode FLAC, and with rotating media, it would be pulling somewhat at random from the drive to fill the buffer, with whatever other hard-drive thrashing it is doing.

It is not compressed.

Qobuz is better than anything on a CD when truly hi-res, but if you have a really good CD quality stream, you are not going to notice anyway. Either way, Qoboz, Tidal CD quality (not MQA), etc. are all not compressed.

Given this statement, you are pretty much saying that even when you don't hear a difference, there is a difference, so how will you know either way?
people who have streamers I have heard do not have systems that show these flaws.