I really wonder if you can do this in a double blind, ABX test.

Note that parent is a DJ and while DJing the files are bot just reproduced but usually there is some digital processing involved. This makes it easier to hear the difference.

Maybe but I don't do critical listening on club systems unless I'm checking my own mixdowns. Unless the DJ is redlining (which they shouldn't be if they're competent) the audio should come out of the mixer relatively unmolested. My critical listening rig is a broadcast amp with two passive studio monitors.

Should also note I can't hear the different between well-encoded 320kbit and FLAC. But lower bitrates (256kbit and lower) on mp3 are audible.

I showed a friend once how bitrate and sampling frequency start to really matter when doing stuff like slowing down a lot. But I guess it's not typical in DJing.

I generally record everything in 44khz, but I will record at 192khz if I know I will be doing any time stretching. The high sampling frequency matters for that.

That type of processing is super common in DJing, but the understanding of how it interacts with lossy files is not.

I can spot and recognize the audio on ABX if I focus with basically a 100% rate on the infamous ABX test website with a HD600 headphone, so basically a crap one. Now if you ask me which one would be the best sounding or lossless (for the "highest" quality one, obviously for other it's relatively easy to spot in a clean environment), I believe I would have a harder time.

then you should check out SongTradr's other recent acquisition, 7digital.com... not only do they have flac, but many have 16 and 24bit available.

There's no difference in the data that will be delivered to you DAC using flac or whatever the non-compressed version was.

flac is a lossless format. If it started as 24 bit wav, nothing is lost when you get the flac version of that. it's just smaller.

if you digitized at 24 bit, then 16 bit is technically compressed. with flac, the waveforms aren't compressed, but the amplitude is, so audio buffs claim they can hear more separation. I can't hear it, but I also can't taste the difference between coffee bean origins, but I know people who can.

FLAC supports bit depths between 4 and 32 bits per sample (the reference decoders only support up to 24 bits per sampl). Other than that, it does not change the bit depth of the data.

I'm pretty sure the 16-vs-24 thing has been proven already. 24-bit only really makes sense if you're fucking with the material. Same with 44.1khz vs higher sample rates.

You could hear the difference with a 24 to 16 conversion only because it usually involves dithering, which means there is some injected noise. If they choose not to do that, 16-bit dynamic range is enough to store someone whispering in your ear next to a running jet engine.

According charts in google, a jet engine at 100 yards distance is 105dB louder than a whisper. 16 bits can do 96dB without dither.

More importantly, the problem isn't trying to hear 96dB of range all at once. The baseline is fixed in place, so when you have a quiet section all those high bits are 0 and you need the low bits to have enough detail by themselves. And a whisper is pretty far from the quietest thing you might have in a track.

If you can hear the dithering noise, then I'm pretty sure there are sounds you're hearing that would be wrong or missing without the dither.

It's not a binary decision, there are different dithering algorithms with different noise frequencies.

FLAC is a lossless encoding. You can reverse it and get a bit-for-bit identical WAV file.

Unfortunately, that is a big if and is frequently an issue on Bandcamp where stuff you get in flac has been passed through some lossy format. 7digital often sells flac for more money so hopefully that makes them more likely to verify that they are actually lossless (I haven't found an issue from them but only have a few albums there since the negative of them is the distributer model that is heavily geographically restricted).

They have the same problem as nearly every other digital music store that isn't beatport.... and that is that they aren't beatport (or rather, they don't have beatport's catalog)

that's interesting, sounds like they're on a bit of a buying spree too?

7Digital is one of those money-losing companies that keeps being passed from owner to owner.

7digital also removes content occasionally, so be sure to download and archive what you've bought.

Afaik 7digital is the main backing service of a lot of streaming sites like qobuz and Deezer.

7digital is chock full of spam. Spotify, for all their faults, has some people who care about quality on those sort of things (the old Echo Nest people). 7digital and their white-label frontends don't, they're skeleton crew operations.

I hope they understand, they can't run Bandcamp like that. Bandcamp has had problems like this in the past, with people spamming the services with other people's music and pretending to be them. It happened to an old classmate of mine who's a reasonably well known Jazz musician. Someone pretended to be her on Bandcamp for years.

If this roll-up company plans to run Bandcamp like 7digital, there will be a ton more of stuff like that.

7digital doesn't accept music directly from artists, it's up to their distributor to ensure the music is valid... and there are several distributors that are known to be very very lax in that regard.

The 7digital acquisition is still pretty fresh, so your experience with them was the state of things prior to the acquisition. Also moving forward, remember that this was already the state of things on Bandcamp, lest people forget and think that the impersonations started after this acquisition.

Songtradr's core business has been B2B sync licensing. One of the reasons "Trust" is such a big deal on the website is that very large brands can't risk having a debacle where it looks like they've stolen music. So we do a lot of vetting of information before music is made available to our B2B partners.

Rest assured that if things slide in a direction, it'll be towards more vetting, not less.

It's a shame (and puzzling really) that Apple only offers lossless on the streaming side and not on the purchase side. I don't need a physical CD, just the bits on it.