At Home:
- FLACs via mpd with a topping headphone amp and Audeze LCD2C headphones
- Vinyl using an Audio Technica LP120, a Denon AV receiver and cheap wharfedale bookshelf speakers and a Klipsch subwoofer. That Setup isn’t really audiophile tbh, especially because the room sounds terrible.
- Streaming via Qobuz on both systems
On the go:
- Everything encoded as Opus 128 kbit/s to fit on my phone. Played over Lypertek Tevy true wireless IEMs. Not really audiophile but tbh when I’m not at home I care much more about convenience as long as the audio quality is good enough.
- also Qobuz, but at MP3 320 quality to save bandwidth
I wrote my own scripts to tag the music and encode it to FLAC and Opus and use syncthing to copy the files to my phone. So whenever I add an album to the library it will be available every where I want in the specified format without any manual copying involved. It’s a little janky but has worked surprisingly well for years.
FLACs from CDs, deemix-gui, qobuz-dl, and Soulseek. 102,000 songs. Play at home with Logitech Media Server. On the road I’ve transcoded it all to 128kbps Opus so i can fit it on a microsd card and I play it with PowerAmp. I mostly use Blessing2 Dusk earbuds with a Shanling MW200 bluetooth neckband, but sometimes also I use Focal Clear OG open-back over-ear cans with a qdelix 5k for bluetooth.
My ears.
No just joking, YouTube music mostly. It’s convenient, available everywhere, has a large catalogue, and good enough quality for me.
With all respect you’re not the definition of an audiophile at all. If anything you’re kind of the opposite
Not everyone can discern the difference between a 96KHz FLAC and 256kbps AAC. I can’t. But I still can (barely) tell the difference between 256kbps AAC, and 96kbps AAC.
But I can tell if a song was well-engineered or a mess.
I believe those who can’t discern the difference between bitrates (especially on high bitrates), but have the appreciation for good music, good mixing, and good mastering, can still be considered audiophile.
That’s not the comparison at hand, we’re talking YouTube audio compression vs any actual music track.
Especially when your browser or application requests a high quality bitrate, youtube compression is opus 128.
A person could make the argument that it’s not lossless so it’s not worth listening to, but opus is extremely high quality especially at that bitrate.
If you wanna try it for yourself, take a flac or whatever, upload it to yt, then use something like yt-dlp -x that defaults to the highest quality to redownload just the audio stream.
YouTube Music Premium offers AAC 256kbps as the highest quality.
Format ID 141: https://gist.github.com/AgentOak/34d47c65b1d28829bb17c24c04a0096f
Opus 128 is only for the audio of YouTube videos. Not YouTube Music.
and according to that same link it’s 160, not 128 (format id 251!). someone else pointed that out itt.
one of my downloads had an average bitrate of ~140 when queried with mediainfo, so i believe em.
I don’t have the premium account, what’s aac256 comparable to?
AAC 256 should be at least on par with MP3 320 CBR, might also be on par with ogg vorbis at the same bitrate
As I get older and the abuse I put my ears through starts showing up, I completely agree. After upgrading my music library to FLAC from VBR mp3s, I stopped having the, “Oh! There’s a subtle instrument going on in this part of the song!” moments.
It doesn’t stop me from trying to listen to the highest quality music formats that I can get my hands on, but I 100% know if I think there’s a difference to my mid-40s ears, it’s probably a placebo.
Yes. As a lifelong musician (live & recording), you’d think I’d be more fussy about audio quality…
But I’m just not. Just like the 4k vs 2k “debate”… It’s all about CONTENT.
Also a musician here. I cared a lot when I was younger, but I have so many other more important things to care about now. You only have so my capacity to care about stuff in your life, and the quality of my music doesn’t even come close to mattering these days.
FLACs through PlexAmp, either to nice headphones ($500 range) or two channel stereo into some decent speakers with a decent subwoofer. I’d like to upgrade to “full range” speakers one day and save the subwoofer for movies.
PlexAmp does FLAC when connected to Wi-Fi but I have it set to transcode if I’m using mobile data.
At home it gets played through Chromecast Audios (R.I.P) which keeps it all digital until it hits my receiver.
Spotify through Sonos at home and work. Spotify on Google earbuds when out and about.
I used to really love music discovery on Spotify. I now find it’s the same ald songs over and over. It finds what you like and reinforces that rather than gradually expand it.
I agree on the discovery being crap on Spotify. I started to listen to the podcast NPR new music Fridays, and get my discovery that way nowadays.
I used to really love music discovery on Spotify. I now find it’s the same ald songs over and over. It finds what you like and reinforces that rather than gradually expand it.
I’m in the same boat. For years now it’s felt like every daily mix and discovery playlist is 10 songs I recently just listened to on repeat and then 2 songs that aren’t even tangentially related and I’m left questioning why they were being shown to me.
FLACs/Qobuz via Roon. I spend the most time in my office so that’s where my favorite setup is. LS50 Metas + SVS SB-1000 Pro + Peachtree GaN stack.
I also love my HD660s with the Bottlehead Crack tube amp I built.
FLAC’s on NAS. Bluesound Node to stereo system, controlled with Roon. PlexAmp when remote.
Tidal is actually giving their lossless plan to their lower tier subscription, just got an email about it. Pretty nice.
On the go: Truthear Nova + DAC on my Sony Xperia 5 III phone or Shanling Q1 DAP
At home: Moondrop Variations + DAC via Moto M2 audio interface
Music from Bandcamp or Soulseek.
Amazon music streaming has flac with their HD quality, I really like my Vanatoo speakers with optical in
If I want the highest quality streaming, then Amazon Music.
Otherwise, things I’ve purchased in 96khz or 192khz from ProStudioMasters.com
I work in the audio post industry, so I’m generally listening on my work rig either through Genelec speakers or Beyer DT880 Pro headphones, fed by a UA Apollo audio interface.
CDs ripped to FLAC and streamed using Emby. I also use Amazon Music. At work I have a pair of ATH-M30x headphones I really like. At home ibhave some Sennheiser HD350, which are ok, but I don’t like them that much as they’re not that comfy. I prefer going through the hifi - Audiolab 6000A amp, Wharfedale Pacific Evo 40 floor standers and a Wiim mini. I also have a NAD C541i CD player. On my PC I go through a NAD C320 amp and Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 bookshelves.
Flacs on a server direct streamed to my source. Jellyfin is nice. for on the move I buy sony phones just cause they still have a headphone jack. I prefer to download what i want before i leave but also not a big deal. at home i use moodeaudio attached to my setup or kodi
I use the schitt magnius and modius as my DAC amp and the meze 99 classics as my headphones (though im looking on upgrading because my dacamp is overkill)
Spotube is my music player but by necessity im looking for bed if somone wants to recommend 👀
Tidal HiFi/medium tier ->Equalizer APO with just a tiny bit of tuning -> a xDuoo stack of USB DAC + hybrid tube amp -> Sennheiser HD560S
Definitely a little bit of overkill. But still overall fantastic budget, and do it all setup. Competitive shooters, movies, and music all sound fantastic.
My next goal is a multibit DAC + tube only amp -> something like a HD 6XX. Or maybe a good solid state -> planar magnetic headphones.
Ehhh, I’m ballin on a budget, so take that into account.
Generally, if I really want to sink into the music, I’m going with either my lgg7 and my beyerdynamic 770 80 ohm; or whatever device can connect with my usb DAC, a fiio q3.
I do have other options, but that’s my main listening because I simply don’t have the budget to do a proper system with how little I get a chance to listen to music away from headphones. My computer has a decent sound card, and some klipsch speakers that aren’t bad. There’s a home theater unit with cd/bluray hooked up, as well as the shieldTV, and the ability to connect via Bluetooth or cable to whatever device I prefer.
My car is decent, but not audiophile level. More bass focused than anything else.
I do have other headphones. Some tin t2s, some sonys, an old set of koss, that kind of thing.
File wise, its flac and opus.
I use poweramp and/or usb audio player pro. I prefer poweramp, but the other does bit perfect, which I do like on occasion, and it’s more DAC friendly.
I’m happy with the options I have, all considered. Most of it was picked up either on sale or used. I would save up while shopping, then get the best I could get when I was ready. But the key to me is that when I want to, I can listen to anything I have and hear the nuance of it. The sound is as clean as I can get it on my budget, and in all reality, my old ears can’t make use of anything fancier.
You spend almost fifty years living and listening to it loud, you aren’t going to get much bang for your buck out of the really high dollar, precise gear. Hell, I can barely tell a difference between lossless files and mp3 om any given listening method. It’s there, I can still hear a difference, but it’s barely there for me. The better gear helps, but not enough to keep upgrading for tiny changes.
