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Other Lossy Codecs / Re: LossyFlac vs Opus 256
Last post by guruboolez -These feelings are common. It's not impossible to hear a difference but it's most likely a psychological effect. If you're a long time lurker you probably heard about ABX test. A blind test is the only way to be sure if what you hear is really what you feel and to remove all "placebo" effect.
Opus at 192 kbps should be transparent with almost everything and for almost all listeners:
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,120007.0.html
>My question is as both these options render a similar file size which would give the best transparent sounding files?
I'd first say that LossyFLAC's bitrate is significantly higher (~310 kbps) than Opus 256.
-extraportable is the lowest LossyFLAC preset. Quality seems really high but I don't think it's supposed to be fully transparent.
My bet is that Opus 256 kbps is smaller than lossyFLAC and probably a bit closer to full transparency.
>So far with ABX tests it seems both are identical to my ears so which one would be closer to the original flac?
I don't even sure the question makes sense. Take a FLAC file, increase the gain by .5dB: difference is audible but the modified FLAC is objectively and mathematically very close to the original. A transform codec will change much more things but it'll sound identical to the reference.
What would you keep (quality wise): a lossless copy lowered by .5 dB or a 192 kbps MP3 encoding that sound identical to the reference?
>Any other suggestion welcomed also, I've heard but never used xHE-AAC or WavPack are these good alternatives?
xHE-AAC is a competitor to OPUS (=modern transform codec). It's very good but at 256 kbps there's no real benefit. WavPack is closer to LossyFLAC.
A possible way to go would be to encode your library in WavPack Hybrid. Then you'll get two files for each track: a lossy one and a correction one. The combination of both file has almost the same size than a pure lossless encoding. With a good explorer software you'll be able to copy and paste your folders to your portable device and it'll only copy the lossy part of your encodings. It's a very clever solution if you want high bitrate files on your portable devices and keep lossless on your main hard drives. And you don't have to handle to separate libraries. You really should try it