Confession

[Haywood]

For years, I've maintained a lossless audio library and used a Squeezebox as my primary music source. Unfortunately, lossless codecs are poorly supported by just about everything, so I made a second copy of my library in 256k .m4a (AAC) format. I use that library on my phones and tablet, Roku boxes and in my car. After extensive listening, I have to confess that I would be very hard pressed to differentiate between 256k MPEG 4 Audio Layer and Lossless. I am not sure I could pick the right one in a double-blind test with most material. It is not that I don't care about quality. I just can't tell the difference at all under most circumstances. I suspect that this is because m4v is vastly more sophisticated than mp3 in addition to the high bit rate.

Am I the only one who is starting to wonder if it is even worth the hassle to maintain a separate lossless library?

 

[PaulyT]

I guess I'd always be wondering to myself, "am I really listening to what's on the CD or is that little bit of static from the lossy transcoding"? :-/ Well, in my case I don't have many other devices that I use on a regular basis, only a sansa clip that supports .flac.

Is .m4a more universally supported than .flac? What's the size comparison for a typical CD? .flac compresses usually to about 1/3 or so of the number of bytes.

 

[Flint]

My understanding was that the Slim Server... eh... Logitech Media Server... would take a lossless file, convert it to some lossy format it was more comfortable with and send it to the Squeezebox. If that is the case, then I would expect you could hear any difference because you are always listening to lossy encoders no matter what.

This is why I have never used a Squeezebox as a source component in my primary high end system. For me they are an amazing tool for making my huge music collection available anywhere in the house with ease. Since I only do serious undistracted critical listening in my HT, I don't need perfect payback anywhere else. In my main rig I still use the original CD for listening.

 

[PaulyT]

No, the native format of the squeezebox is flac. It does not compress data on the fly, as far as I know.

 

[PaulyT]

According to this site:

:text-link:

... the SB1 used mp3/pcm as native, but SB2/3 use flac. I have no idea how to tell which of these my "classic" SBs belong to, though... but I think any of the ones with wireless capability are at least SB2? Let's see... I guess anything that looks like this:

... is an SB3 (my two classics are this type); the really old ones look like this:

So, I'm reasonably confident that all my SB receivers are getting lossless data.

 

[PaulyT]

Wikipedia agrees:

:text-link:

The Squeezebox2 supports numerous audio formats including MP3, Windows Media Audio, Musepack, Monkey's Audio, Apple Lossless, FLAC, Shorten, WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, and unencrypted AAC. Of these, MP3, Windows Media, FLAC, WAV, AIFF and Ogg Vorbis are natively supported by the player firmware; the remainder are automatically transcoded by the Logitech Media Server host software into one of the player-supported formats.

 

[Haywood]

My understanding was that the Slim Server... eh... Logitech Media Server... would take a lossless file, convert it to some lossy format it was more comfortable with and send it to the Squeezebox. If that is the case, then I would expect you could hear any difference because you are always listening to lossy encoders no matter what.

This is why I have never used a Squeezebox as a source component in my primary high end system. For me they are an amazing tool for making my huge music collection available anywhere in the house with ease. Since I only do serious undistracted critical listening in my HT, I don't need perfect payback anywhere else. In my main rig I still use the original CD for listening.

Logitech Media Server (aka Squeezebox Server) transcodes WMAL to FLAC on the fly. It is perfect CD-quality sound if you start with a lossless source. That's why I've used it as my primary source for many years.

 

[Haywood]

I can hear an audible difference between lossless and 128k mp3 on my system. I have no doubt about that. I am just not convinced that I can differentiate between lossless and 256k m4a.

 

[heeman]

My understanding was that the Slim Server... eh... Logitech Media Server... would take a lossless file, convert it to some lossy format it was more comfortable with and send it to the Squeezebox. If that is the case, then I would expect you could hear any difference because you are always listening to lossy encoders no matter what.

This is why I have never used a Squeezebox as a source component in my primary high end system. For me they are an amazing tool for making my huge music collection available anywhere in the house with ease. Since I only do serious undistracted critical listening in my HT, I don't need perfect payback anywhere else. In my main rig I still use the original CD for listening.

Logitech Media Server (aka Squeezebox Server) transcodes WMAL to FLAC on the fly. It is perfect CD-quality sound if you start with a lossless source. That's why I've used it as my primary source for many years.

Humm......That is what Flint told me back in 2008 when I bought my SB............ :eusa-whistle:

 

[Flint]

Well... see there, I don't even know how my stuff works anymore! AUGH!!!!

Anyone want to buy some ice? I'm thinking of retiring to some island to live on the beach selling ice to people. Everyone always wants little ice when they are on the beach, right?

 

[Razz]

Beer!
Beer Flint, beer!
Everyone wants beer when they are sitting on a beach.
Geez!

 

[Kazaam]

I'm not planning to give up on lossless for my main system. Though it does give me pause that maybe I'll end up having to do so eventually because all the latest cool ultra-thin laptops tend to have only 500gb drives; hope that changes as ideally I'd want 1TB. (I use a laptop for my music storage when streaming to an Apple Airport Express.)

As far as lossy... I'm quite certain I'd be really inaccurate in a blind listening test between lossless and lossy (if at 256kbps or higher).

But I'm more inclined to use MP3. I know AAC is more advanced and should be better for music. But for whatever reason whenever I compare MP3 vs AAC on my HTC phone, I slightly prefer MP3. I've found AAC lacks the excitement of the full lossless file on the same phone, but MP3 retains the excitement and punch. Who knows... maybe the volume levels on my phone for AAC are just a tad softer than they are for MP3.

 

[Doghart]

I have my entire library ripped to MP3 320kbps.

I listen to music while driving, working, playing video games, working out.... I rarely listen to music to listen to music.

I can hear a difference, but I choose to make it a non issue. That's why I have discs.

D

 

[Botch]

I listen to music while driving, working, playing video games, working out.... I rarely listen to music to listen to music.

This is interesting; I'm exactly the opposite!
I bought some Bach to play in college while I studied, and couldn't do it. The counterpoints always pulled me away from the calculus, and I had to study at the library.
I do occasionally have music playing while I drive, but keep it off most of the time, and never have it on while working, working out, etc. When its on, its all I have going on. :music-listening:

 

[heeman]

Listening to music is a very BIG part of my commute to/from work each day.

It is typically on in our home when we are doing chores and cooking. I try to do critical listening a couple of times per week.

Our complete CD collection is ripped to our PC with WMA Lossless and played back through our SqueezeBox. Now that my CD's are accessible again, I will sometimes pop the CD in, instead of using the SB.

 

[Kazaam]

Poppin' in a CD, eh? Nah... I can't remember the last time I did that other than to rip it. Shoot... a year ago I bought a DVD-Audio of some guy that covered a bunch of Jaco Pastorius songs, but I've never even played it because I'm too damn lazy to put the disc in the tray.

But I'll still play physical media for movies. Though I'd have no problem always streaming flicks from Vudu if their rental prices were cheaper. As it is I only do that once in a while, which is hardly ever since I don't watch many movies. Last movie I watched was probably August or September.

 

[yromj]

Now that I have my NeoTV up and running I'm able to enjoy FLAC in my system easily. Combine that w/ the fact that I work at home some now and it makes me all :banana-dance: .

John

 

[Haywood]

The problem I've run into with FLAC, WMAL and Apple Lossless is that most streaming clients don't support them, nor do most car stereo systems and portable audio devices. That makes life a huge pain in the ass, which is what lead me to create a parallel music library in iTunes with 256k m4a files. The issue is that I now have to maintain two libraries, which means either ripping everything twice or ripping and then converting. It also means having to clean up tagging issues in two separate systems and using over 200GB of disc space to support it all. I'm also finding that I rarely just sit down to listen to music. I usually have music on while doing things around the house, driving, working out or engaging in other activities and I still have ready access to my 700+ CD collection. Every streaming device I have is pointed at the iTunes library, except the two Squeezeboxes and one of those is the Squeezebox Boom in the bathroom. That means that the only place where I can even use my lossless audio files where I might actually have reason to care is in the main system in the living room.

There are occasional tracks where I can pick up on compression artifacts if I am listening on my main system in a quiet house and am really looking for them, but these are the rare exception rather than the norm. I would say that 90+ percent of the time, I couldn't tell the difference with a gun to my head.

It is against that backdrop that I am seriously thinking about dumping my lossless library altogether and just using CDs on the rare occasions when I want to do "serious" listening.

 

[Kazaam]

Sounds like you'd be just fine if you dropped down to maintaining just the lossy library.

That said... I know some media software will transcode your lossless on the fly to lossy for when you copy it to your portable. I personally don't like that option since it takes too long to transfer songs, which is why I, like you, also maintain parallel libraries of lossless and lossy. Perhaps you've already looked at such features. But thought I'd mention just in case. Then you could maintain just one library, but it'd be lossless.

 

[Haywood]

Sounds like you'd be just fine if you dropped down to maintaining just the lossy library.

That said... I know some media software will transcode your lossless on the fly to lossy for when you copy it to your portable. I personally don't like that option since it takes too long to transfer songs, which is why I, like you, also maintain parallel libraries of lossless and lossy. Perhaps you've already looked at such features. But thought I'd mention just in case. Then you could maintain just one library, but it'd be lossless.

What is what I used to do for loading my portable devices. Unfortunately, it does not work for streaming audio to my Roku boxes or streaming audio to most portable devices outside of my home. The key advantage to streaming is the ability to access my entire music library from anywhere as opposed to burning a ton of storage on my portable devices and having to sync them back to my PC when I want to swap out music. The key advantage to the Roku boxes is that they are very inexpensive and provide nicely integrated internet radio, local music streaming, local video streaming and internet video streaming to every room in the house when paired with Plex Media Server. Plex is also the mechanism I use to stream music and video to my portable devices. Unfortunately, while Plex does transcode video, it does not transcode audio and most of these devices are not lossless compatible.