this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
1 points (100.0% liked)
Headphones
20 readers
2 users here now
A community for discussion around all topics related to headphones and personal audio.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Interpreting your "highest possible" as "highest quality".
If I have to choose between a lossy format and a lossless format e.g. $5 for the MP3 and $10 for the FLAC, I choose the lossless version simply to future proof my collection and to avoid even the tiniest possible artifacts inherent to lossy compression (Fraunhofer & Co never claimed MP3 to be 100% transparant all of the time).
If I have to choose between CD quality (16/44.1) ar $10 or Hires (24/96) at $20, I choose CD quality simple because I don't hear the difference.
If I have a download in 24/176 or 24/192, I always inspect the content using a spectrum analyzer. Often there are all kind of artifacts like high amount of quantization noise, some gear injecting a spike at 88 kHz, etc. I downsample them to 88 resp. 96 to get rid of the garbage https://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/AudioTools/Spectrum.htm
This is the answer I agree with.
Lossless vs. lossy, always lossless.
Uncompressed lossless vs. compressed lossless, always compressed lossless.
The uncompressed lossless takes up an unnecessarily large amount of space for no audible difference.
MQA FLAC
No.