this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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I've bought pretty expensive equipment, tube amplifier, many fancy headphones, optical DACs. A library full of FLAC files. I even purchased a $500 portable DAP. I've never been able to reliably tell a difference between FLAC and 320k MP3 files. At this point, it really doesn't concern me anymore either, but I at least like to see my fancy tube amp light up.
I will say, though, $300 seems to be the sweet-spot for headphones for me.
I just keep FLAC around so I can transcode them to new lossy formats as they improve. And so I can transcode aggressively for my mobile when I'm streaming from home, and don't need full transparency.
Yeah there's a clear difference between a pair of $25 or $50 headphones and a pair that cost a few hundred. When I first got my Sony WH1000-XM3s I let my coworker try them and he said "Wow, I didn't know music could sound this good!". When I upgraded to the XM4s a few years later I let my brother try them and he was similarly impressed.
Beyond a few hundred and the thousand dollar range you hit diminishing returns.
~~diminishing returns~~ snake oil
Blackmail -- Evon. That's the one song where I ever heard a difference, though that was ogg, dunno what bitrate I used back then but it was sufficient for everything else. Listening on youtube yep that's mushy. The noisy goodness that kicks in at 0:30, it's crisp as fuck on CD.
...just not the kind of thing those codecs are optimised for I'd say. Also it still sounds fine, just a bit disappointing if you ever heard the uncompressed thing. Which is also why you should never try electrostatic headphones.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Blackmail -- Evon
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