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.

This is probably ripper dependent, but sure, you can often configure compression to go between low/fast compression to high/slow compression. I’m not sure the dial is universal to all encoders but let’s say they are.

now flac is lossless compression so there should be no sound loss from the original source no matter what compression level you use

Right.

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

Sorry, my friend, I’ve never experienced this, nor have I heard a difference between WAV (no compression) and FLAC. If there is any, I suspect it is caused by the decompression algorithm and the DAC front end. Could happen, I suppose, but you have to be very gear specific to show this to me because I don’t have this issue.

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)

I have no idea what this means, and I can read even less of the rest of this paragraph. Any chance you could slow it down? Thanks,

Erik

sam here thanks for responding stereo depth perception is a term i came up with to explain what i'm hearing with flac compression level 4 compared to wave and all other flac compression levels which have stereo + mono depth perception making the audio sound 2 dimensional and flac 4 sounding  3 dimensional. i also hear this three dimensional sound on vintage vinyl.

 i have tested this with foobar2000 / jriver media center 23 / audacity 2.1.0 / weiss saracon 1.61.27 / sony soundforge pro 10 / free audio converter 6.5 / using a dell pc running windows 7. played back the audio using both windows pc and sandisc mp3 player and the results are the same. re-encoding audio to flac compression level 4 converts the audio to sound like vintage vinyl.

guitarsam...

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.

It sounds as though something is amiss with your digital if you are unable to get a 3-D soundstage from it.

... this is why digital audio does not sound like vintage vinyl along with brick wall compression.

What is "brick wall compression?"

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.