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What kind of sound differences do you hear in your system between FLAC and streaming?

urfaust

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Im subscribed to Youtube music (you get clips there which is nice for the living room tv also) and Qobuz that has very high quality streaming (24/192), i ve tried to A/B them, i get it almost all the time, the difference is mainly the highs to me but im not sure what kind of encoding is used on Youtube, feels very low bitrate, and i also sort of feel they have some kind of bass "enhancements" which wouldn't surprise me they add some some bass boost filters. There s also a difference between the clips played on Youtube music and regular Youtube (did AB that also as i noticed a difference)
 

Blumlein 88

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Correctly encoded lossy files are generally transparent at 128kbps since 2004/2005:

2004: http://listening-tests.freetzi.com/html/Multiformat_128kbps_public_listening_test_results.htm
2005: http://listening-tests.freetzi.com/mf-128-1/results.htm
2008: http://listening-tests.freetzi.com/mp3-128-1/results.htm

If you hear a difference, you either have golden ears, hearing damage that doesn't agree with the encoder, or somebody made a mistake. I spend money on audio equipment, but I probably couldn't ABX a 128kbps file from FLAC to save my life....

That said. When encoding is ******, it's generally metallic, mushy sounding hihats that give it away for me. While most encoders cut off content above 16khz, this is usually not noticeable with real music. I tried to ABX this when I could still hear up to 18.5khz and was unable to.

For files only: http://losslessaudiochecker.com/#downloads

In MP3, it is done because the last scalefactor band's quality can only be adjusted by changing the global scale factor. This will waste a lot of space. See: https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=LAME_Y_switch

I don't think you can support your statement regarding 128 kbps even now with the latest codecs. Your links don't support it either. In fact it is showing the various ways to encode lossy music can be discerned at 95% confidence levels between various encoding methods.

320 or even 256 kbps depending upon particulars gets close or may be transparent for many situations. 128 kbps.....simply no it isn't transparent. Even those making these codecs don't claim such things at 128 kbps.
 

q3cpma

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Opus might reach it a 128k, but I doubt you could even with the best Vorbis or AAC encoder. You might need 160k for those; if you stay in the musical realm and ignore artifical killer samples, of course.
 

GrimSurfer

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I wonder, with services that are dependent on ISPs, if variable bitrate versions are being used by music service providers. Not being a subscriber to these services, I don't have strong views either way...
 
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