Android Player for HD Tracks
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Depends on what features you want. If you just want a player that can play it, there's quite a few that can do FLAC I believe (most of the built in ones from the major companies I believe, at least Samsung and LG could as far as I know). I've seen some claim that different players sound better and different reasons for it (which Android's audio stack has some issues and I got the impression they're not ever likely to be fixed; doubt you'd care about a lot of them), but there is a disparity in other things, like EQs, folder handling, playlist creation, and even just appearance.
Just realized, you're asking I think 2 different things. That is, what players support FLAC, and what players support higher resolution (24/48+). That gets a bit more complicated, as it involves not just the player but what audio chips the individual device supports. You also have the option of using external DACs.
Just realized, you're asking I think 2 different things. That is, what players support FLAC, and what players support higher resolution (24/48+). That gets a bit more complicated, as it involves not just the player but what audio chips the individual device supports. You also have the option of using external DACs.
- Mar 3, 2000
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Well, that may be due to my ignorance. The HD tracks I am looking at are in FLAC. Is there a better medium?
I have tons of ripped CDs that sound like crap. I want to start downloading high resolution/HD tracks.
I'll play them on my home theater and my Galaxy S9+ with both wired ear buds and wireless headphones. I haven't purchased any new wireless headphones as of yet, I am still open. The older pairs I have don't sound great. That's part of the reason I still have a 2 year old link in my sig.
UsandThem
Elite Member
- May 4, 2000
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What bitrate did you rip the MP3 music files in? I've ripped all of mine into 320 Kbps, and I think they sound pretty good compared to listening to the CD.
Also, I've never tried one since I use my S9 phone to listen to my music on the go, but Sony has some players that support FLAC (and some of them are crazy expensive):
https://www.amazon.com/Sony-NW-A45-...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=A83B71JYV9HS6343SS6W
Also, wireless headphones are great for the convenience when you don't want to be wired, but the best quality is always using an audio cable. For example, my wireless Sony headphones sound pretty good in wireless mode, but if I'm sitting at my desk I will always plug them in for the best audio.
Second this. Ad-free, cost-free, clean, no song database required, no delay for a media scan at startup, works great with SD cards.
FLAC doesn't tell you the whole thing. FLAC supports a variety of resolutions/sampling rates (CD is 16bit 44.1KHz; HD Tracks I believe pushes for 24bit/96KHz or better, FLAC can probably do 8-64bit and just about any sampling rate) that your phone might not (some DACs only would do 16/44.1, but I think even if the DAC doesn't support it it often can still be played, it'd just be downsampled). Your S9 I'm sure can do 24 bit/192 though so nothing to worry about there (other than perhaps the player that you use might have issues, but I seem to recall the Samsung player on the Note 3 I had handling 24/96 stuff fine).
Hmm, hard to say what's the cause of that. Could be due to poor ripping or encoding or something. But then, there's the issue of mixes/mastering (which lossless format and higher resolution won't magically fix, although it might help some with). I don't know how much bespoke mixes/masters they have on HDTracks (especially if its popular music that you already owned the CD of, although I seem to recall bands that were putting music on there actually were putting different mastered ones than what went on the CDs; often it was tied to SACD or a Blu-Ray or something, so the work was already done for the higher quality master in a commercial release).
Let us know how you got the CDs ripped, as it might be just that you could re-rip them in FLAC (which is time consuming and so you might prefer spending money for say a 24/96 version off HDTracks).
I just realized, the music industry has gotten really muddled. They're pushing crazy formats (think they're pushing 32bit/384 or even 768KHz stuff now where they used to be 24/192; and DSD, and now they're trying to push MQA). And then streaming. And the music industry wonders why people stopped wanting to give them money? Vinyl is coming back and CDs are still the most common commercial physical media release.
I can't tell a difference in quality between Poweramp, the built-in LG player, and Foobar on my LG V10 (and yes, have the HD DAC working on all of them). I only use Foobar because even poweramp wasn't recognizing some file format (OPUS) that I had a certain band's music in. And this is on high end headphones (two different pairs of Jerry Harvey IEMs). At least at stock (no EQ/no processing, etc).
I like Foobar but poweramp is solid and its not expensive (think I paid like $2 for mine on a promotion) and looks more pleasing out of the box. I haven't been listening to music a ton on my phone so I didn't look into customizing foobar (I assume its possible to do like on the PC version?).
sdifox
No Lifer
- Sep 30, 2005
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- Mar 3, 2000
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Over the years, I have a hodge podge of MP3s. Most of them were ripped with Windows Media Player and are at 320kbps. Some as low as 196. Levels are all different and it sounds crappy like that.
Most of my CDs were stolen from a storage unit years ago so I can't re-rip anything. Many of the MP3s have been on various computer hard drives at one time or another, I am not sure if that degrades them like a jpg.
I stream music from my phone to my motorcycle helmet and my car radio.
Since I have such a hodge podge, going forward, I want high quality audio and the means to play them back. I believe my older receiver (Denon 3313) has a decent DAC.
Most of my CDs were stolen from a storage unit years ago so I can't re-rip anything. Many of the MP3s have been on various computer hard drives at one time or another, I am not sure if that degrades them like a jpg.
I stream music from my phone to my motorcycle helmet and my car radio.
Since I have such a hodge podge, going forward, I want high quality audio and the means to play them back. I believe my older receiver (Denon 3313) has a decent DAC.
sdifox
No Lifer
- Sep 30, 2005
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So, did you try foobar2000? FLAC sounds great piped from my phone to the car through bt.
It does have replaygain that tries to eqalise the playback volume.
Last edited:
HutchinsonJC
Senior member
- Apr 15, 2007
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Unless there's something specifically broken or unsupported about a music player, any music player should be able to more or less play the music in the same quality as the next player.
You don't have to worry there. It's digital. Saving from one hard drive to another doesn't degrade an mp3 or a jpg. Reprocessing either an mp3 or a jpg through another attempt of compression and then saving them like that, will, however, degrade the quality.
Man oh man, I'd put money on the idea that most people (read as anyone who doesn't do blind a/b tests for a living and the very rare random person outside of that scope, or some 98% or more of the population) wouldn't be able to tell a difference between 320kbs MP3 (stereo) and the CD (stereo).
And most people, read as probably 60% or more of the population, wouldn't be able to tell an appreciable difference in a blind a/b test between a properly done 160kbs vbr LAME MP3 and the CD. For well over half of those that did say they could hear a difference, you could, an hour later, put on the 160kbs vbr mp3 and play it for them cruising down the road, and then ask them afterward "now was that the CD or the MP3?" and they wouldn't be able to tell you. Only in a proper A/B test environment could they even discern a difference.
My entire music collection (some 8k tracks), has always been encoded with LAME (mp3) on the back end, ExactAudioCopy front end, and then after that all tracks are run through mp3gain to equalize volume.
With LAME I'm targeting a specific audio quality that I found tends to average close'ish to 160kbs VBR. It is not 160kbs VBR, to state clearly. It is a quality setting that tends to hover around 160kbs average for most tracks. The bitrate given to silence is borderline nothing and the bitrate given to much more complicated parts of a song... well, it has no problems allocating 320kbs there. I have plenty of songs that averaged closer to 140kbs and plenty of songs that averaged closer to 170 kbs. I've seen a handful of tracks that pushed up nearly to 190kbs VBR using this quality setting.
Personally, I've never seen a point in allocating a full 320kbs to every frame within an mp3 when so many frames in a song absolutely 100% do not require 320kbs. Intro and Trailing seconds of silence, as an obvious example.
I'm not an audiophile, but I do appreciate a good sound and I do have a pretty nice setup in my truck (nothing is stock). No one has ever complained of my music sounding overly compressed (because it's not), and quite the other direction, I'm always getting compliments of how nice my setup sounds.
You don't have to worry there. It's digital. Saving from one hard drive to another doesn't degrade an mp3 or a jpg. Reprocessing either an mp3 or a jpg through another attempt of compression and then saving them like that, will, however, degrade the quality.
Man oh man, I'd put money on the idea that most people (read as anyone who doesn't do blind a/b tests for a living and the very rare random person outside of that scope, or some 98% or more of the population) wouldn't be able to tell a difference between 320kbs MP3 (stereo) and the CD (stereo).
And most people, read as probably 60% or more of the population, wouldn't be able to tell an appreciable difference in a blind a/b test between a properly done 160kbs vbr LAME MP3 and the CD. For well over half of those that did say they could hear a difference, you could, an hour later, put on the 160kbs vbr mp3 and play it for them cruising down the road, and then ask them afterward "now was that the CD or the MP3?" and they wouldn't be able to tell you. Only in a proper A/B test environment could they even discern a difference.
My entire music collection (some 8k tracks), has always been encoded with LAME (mp3) on the back end, ExactAudioCopy front end, and then after that all tracks are run through mp3gain to equalize volume.
With LAME I'm targeting a specific audio quality that I found tends to average close'ish to 160kbs VBR. It is not 160kbs VBR, to state clearly. It is a quality setting that tends to hover around 160kbs average for most tracks. The bitrate given to silence is borderline nothing and the bitrate given to much more complicated parts of a song... well, it has no problems allocating 320kbs there. I have plenty of songs that averaged closer to 140kbs and plenty of songs that averaged closer to 170 kbs. I've seen a handful of tracks that pushed up nearly to 190kbs VBR using this quality setting.
Personally, I've never seen a point in allocating a full 320kbs to every frame within an mp3 when so many frames in a song absolutely 100% do not require 320kbs. Intro and Trailing seconds of silence, as an obvious example.
I'm not an audiophile, but I do appreciate a good sound and I do have a pretty nice setup in my truck (nothing is stock). No one has ever complained of my music sounding overly compressed (because it's not), and quite the other direction, I'm always getting compliments of how nice my setup sounds.
I find 192 kbps LAME MP3 is fine for my portable music listening, and I agree that it's indistinguishable from the CD more often than not.
For home audio listening with good speakers I stick with lossless FLAC for when the "than not" does happen.
Storing as FLAC also means I can transcode to other formats (like the 192 kbps) whenever I want, without causing lossy-to-lossy sound degradation.
For home audio listening with good speakers I stick with lossless FLAC for when the "than not" does happen.
Storing as FLAC also means I can transcode to other formats (like the 192 kbps) whenever I want, without causing lossy-to-lossy sound degradation.
HutchinsonJC
Senior member
- Apr 15, 2007
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I respect everyone's music storage methods (format/bit rates) because everyone is going to have a preference that suits them. I do think that many folks allow audiophiles to heavily influence their decisions, though!
I chose not to be someone influenced by another's choices and I sat down with a few songs some several years ago and listened and listened. I could hear subtle differences in 128kbs constant bit rate LAME pretty readily when compared to the CD. Like readily enough that I could literally hear the MP3 or the CD at any given hour of the day and I could straight up tell you which one was the CD and which one was the 128kbs constant bit rate MP3. Just certain artifacts that I learned the terms of from reading audiophiles online all those years ago... and I could pick it out.
128kbs VBR cleaned things up a good bit, but I could still hear things in different parts of the songs I was comparing.
I knew I wanted to use something VBR and not constant bit rate, because why throw bits at something that you can't hear a difference in, anyway? And the average bit rate across the song or track not necessarily needing to be the same for each and every track, I was learning that I didn't necessarily need a specific average bit rate target to do my whole music collection. What I wanted was a quality target. LAME had all these functions at the ready.
After lots of research and understanding, I chose for myself the quality setting or preset that I did (-V4) and I noticed how a song's average bit rate could vary anywhere from 112 kbs to 190 kbs with a huge majority of songs being encoded in a range between 155 and 165. Something like a comedy clip might encode at less than 80kbs... and it still sounds pretty much perfect. I couldn't blind a/b test myself to hearing a difference between the -V2 and -V4 switches, so I stuck with -V4 and never looked back. Not like my hearing is ever going to get better in time
My preference was heavily rooted in not wanting to ever have to re transcode anything I've already done before again, and heavily rooted in not wanting to do things just because everyone else suggested to do it that way. I needed it to be "good enough" for me. MP3 is pretty much universally playable, so personally, I can discount the whole archiving paragraph in the below because I'm not worried about ever having to retranscode.
On HydrogenAudio:
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=LAME
Maximum quality and archiving
Maximum quality is achieved when, regardless of listening conditions, you are unable to detect a difference between the MP3 and the original. As demonstrated by blind ABX tests, LAME-encoded MP3s typically achieve this level of transparency when encoded with the default settings, at bitrates well below maximum. Encoding with higher-bitrate settings will have no effect on the perceived quality.
For archiving, only lossless formats like WavPack, FLAC, etc. are ideal; they will preserve the audio with no changes, sample-for-sample, regardless of encoder settings. In contrast, lossy formats like MP3 are designed to save space by changing the audio in subtle, often imperceptible ways, even at the encoder's maximum settings
-V4 (~165 kbps), -V5 (~130 kbps) or -V6 (~115 kbps) are recommended.
-V6 produces an "acceptable" quality, while -V4 should be close to perceptual transparency.
I chose not to be someone influenced by another's choices and I sat down with a few songs some several years ago and listened and listened. I could hear subtle differences in 128kbs constant bit rate LAME pretty readily when compared to the CD. Like readily enough that I could literally hear the MP3 or the CD at any given hour of the day and I could straight up tell you which one was the CD and which one was the 128kbs constant bit rate MP3. Just certain artifacts that I learned the terms of from reading audiophiles online all those years ago... and I could pick it out.
128kbs VBR cleaned things up a good bit, but I could still hear things in different parts of the songs I was comparing.
I knew I wanted to use something VBR and not constant bit rate, because why throw bits at something that you can't hear a difference in, anyway? And the average bit rate across the song or track not necessarily needing to be the same for each and every track, I was learning that I didn't necessarily need a specific average bit rate target to do my whole music collection. What I wanted was a quality target. LAME had all these functions at the ready.
After lots of research and understanding, I chose for myself the quality setting or preset that I did (-V4) and I noticed how a song's average bit rate could vary anywhere from 112 kbs to 190 kbs with a huge majority of songs being encoded in a range between 155 and 165. Something like a comedy clip might encode at less than 80kbs... and it still sounds pretty much perfect. I couldn't blind a/b test myself to hearing a difference between the -V2 and -V4 switches, so I stuck with -V4 and never looked back. Not like my hearing is ever going to get better in time
My preference was heavily rooted in not wanting to ever have to re transcode anything I've already done before again, and heavily rooted in not wanting to do things just because everyone else suggested to do it that way. I needed it to be "good enough" for me. MP3 is pretty much universally playable, so personally, I can discount the whole archiving paragraph in the below because I'm not worried about ever having to retranscode.
On HydrogenAudio:
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=LAME
Maximum quality and archiving
Maximum quality is achieved when, regardless of listening conditions, you are unable to detect a difference between the MP3 and the original. As demonstrated by blind ABX tests, LAME-encoded MP3s typically achieve this level of transparency when encoded with the default settings, at bitrates well below maximum. Encoding with higher-bitrate settings will have no effect on the perceived quality.
For archiving, only lossless formats like WavPack, FLAC, etc. are ideal; they will preserve the audio with no changes, sample-for-sample, regardless of encoder settings. In contrast, lossy formats like MP3 are designed to save space by changing the audio in subtle, often imperceptible ways, even at the encoder's maximum settings
-V4 (~165 kbps), -V5 (~130 kbps) or -V6 (~115 kbps) are recommended.
-V6 produces an "acceptable" quality, while -V4 should be close to perceptual transparency.
I'm not in the Golden Ears crowd myself, and do not own any $300 "balanced gluten-free stranding" audio cables or $500 "power line phase inducers" or whatever
But I do have somewhere north of 20,000 songs ripped from my CDs and I didn't want to A/B them all to be 100% certain I'd never hear an artifact that wasn't on the CD. FLAC just offers peace of mind for me for around 3X the storage space.
But I do have somewhere north of 20,000 songs ripped from my CDs and I didn't want to A/B them all to be 100% certain I'd never hear an artifact that wasn't on the CD. FLAC just offers peace of mind for me for around 3X the storage space.
lxskllr
No Lifer
- Nov 30, 2004
- 59,094
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q8 vorbis is about half the size of flac, and I'd be very surprised if anyone could tell the difference even after a transcode to another format. Life is lossy. I don't capture infrared with my photos, and I don't need ultrahigh frequencies in my music.
One of the dumbest things I've seen was a grungy live bootleg I downloaded once. All kinds of sounds in there that weren't proper music, but it was encoded flac! Huge file sizes, but still sounded like trash. An 80kbs opus would have sounded just as good.
HutchinsonJC
Senior member
- Apr 15, 2007
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Most people lose the ability to hear anything over 18khz by the time their 25, I'd say. Many people can't even hear over 17khz by the time they're 25.
That said, most anything that's approaching 17khz to 20khz in music (on a CD), is probably not particularly musical or fun or interesting to listen to, anyway. It's probably really soft (low dB) vibrations from percussion (the stand holding up the cymbal or the feet holding up the snare drum) that wasn't necessarily even intended to be there. These are frequencies that if you were to listen to them in isolation and at any decent volume, it may as well be nails on a chalk board - high pitch screeching noise. Sounds that would give a table of young people a literal headache even at extremely low volumes.
That's probably why -V4 LAME uses a low pass of 17249 Hz – 17782 Hz. I've never done a bit of research on vorbis, but I'd assume it's taking these things into consideration, too with what Ixskllr is saying. Basically, the folks behind LAME and the human hearing research they'd done, they are saying that the -V4 flag is pretty close to perceptual transparency, and yet this flag doesn't capture anything higher than ~17,800 Hz.
If most people on the face of the Earth can't hear it, do we, as just a consumer of the audio, need to include it in how we store it?
I've never had any problems with LAME -V4 introducing *obvious* artifacts. I've heard on other MP3 encoders back in the day some really strange burps of sound. Sounds like where you'd think someone did a microsecond of scratch table work or something. It was bad haha.
There's huge swaths of the population that were disheartened by bad MP3 encoders and went looking for something else. Of those that went looking for alternatives and found LAME (mp3), they never messed with another MP3 encoder again in their life... just as there are many who settled on vorbis or flac or etc.
But if you understand the research (both in terms of the human ear and in terms of compression), even modestly, you'd understand how/why they can compress and save storage space and why lossless isn't necessarily for everyone.
And on that note, lossy isn't for everyone either: Someone working out of a studio, either professionally or even that type of work from home, should probably stick to lossless.
For the record, I did find great humor in your gluten-free comment, though haha.
That said, most anything that's approaching 17khz to 20khz in music (on a CD), is probably not particularly musical or fun or interesting to listen to, anyway. It's probably really soft (low dB) vibrations from percussion (the stand holding up the cymbal or the feet holding up the snare drum) that wasn't necessarily even intended to be there. These are frequencies that if you were to listen to them in isolation and at any decent volume, it may as well be nails on a chalk board - high pitch screeching noise. Sounds that would give a table of young people a literal headache even at extremely low volumes.
That's probably why -V4 LAME uses a low pass of 17249 Hz – 17782 Hz. I've never done a bit of research on vorbis, but I'd assume it's taking these things into consideration, too with what Ixskllr is saying. Basically, the folks behind LAME and the human hearing research they'd done, they are saying that the -V4 flag is pretty close to perceptual transparency, and yet this flag doesn't capture anything higher than ~17,800 Hz.
If most people on the face of the Earth can't hear it, do we, as just a consumer of the audio, need to include it in how we store it?
I've never had any problems with LAME -V4 introducing *obvious* artifacts. I've heard on other MP3 encoders back in the day some really strange burps of sound. Sounds like where you'd think someone did a microsecond of scratch table work or something. It was bad haha.
There's huge swaths of the population that were disheartened by bad MP3 encoders and went looking for something else. Of those that went looking for alternatives and found LAME (mp3), they never messed with another MP3 encoder again in their life... just as there are many who settled on vorbis or flac or etc.
But if you understand the research (both in terms of the human ear and in terms of compression), even modestly, you'd understand how/why they can compress and save storage space and why lossless isn't necessarily for everyone.
And on that note, lossy isn't for everyone either: Someone working out of a studio, either professionally or even that type of work from home, should probably stick to lossless.
For the record, I did find great humor in your gluten-free comment, though haha.
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