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 1 response by willrich47

@guitarsam some of it is probably system dependent too. 
I always thought that the AIFF’s and WAV files sounded better than FLAC on my prior DAC and streamer combo. 
I’ve upgraded since then. My new DAC seems more or less agnostic to the type of lossless file it’s being fed. I have difficulty telling the difference now. But I do think that FLAC files are a little more computationally intensive to unpack and turn into music.