CDs, mp3s, & flac files

[lewashby]

I play most of my music from a digital media player called an 'iBasso DX50'. I chose this product because it plays .flac files which is what I have been slowly replacing most of my mp3 library with. Even though the .flac format is said to be much superior to the mp3 when I listen to it I still feel like it's missing something compared to a CD. I usually listen in my car using the AUX jack on my CD player. My question is could the AUX cord / jack be the bottleneck to my music quality and if so does anyone have a solution in mind that would allow me to keep playing my iBasso? Thanks.

One other thing. Even better than a .flac file is a .wav file because that's pretty much all a standard CD is playing anyway. One problem I've always had when I tried to rip music to .wav instead of .flac or .mp3 is that the .wav files don't always contain the meta data (artists, album, etc...), and sometimes the rips do contain the meta data. Can anyone explain this inconsistency and explain why a .wav files wouldn't get meta data ripped to it and what if anything can be done about it? Thanks.

 

[Jeff_C]

Flac files are CD quality files. It uses lossless compression. Think of flac file as similar to a computer zip file but optimised for compressing audio, rather than compressing general computer data. BTW I doubt you would notice any difference between high bit rate (320kbps) mp3 encoded with a decent modern encoder and flac or wav.

You should not be missing any quality using flac, but the aux input into your car CD player may not be electrically matched to the 3.5 mm headphone socket on your player, which is mainly for headphones is it not? That may be the cause of your disappointment. When connecting to the car stereo system try turning the volume right up fully on the player and then control the volume with the car player volume.

Wav is an older file type, that is why it is not good at handling metadata, that's just the way it is. It is uncompressed. IMO there is no benefit to using wav files rather than flac. Both give lossless CD quality on playback. As you have found out wav does not handle meta data well, and the other major downside is that the files are much larger than flac, so take up more storage space.

If you get ever round to playing your flac files from a computer into a decent hifi system via a usb DAC or optical connection to a digital connection on the amp, then you will hear that flac can be just as good as a CD.