FLAC is the new MP3
Just so that you know, I have been a fan of MP3 since the mid 90's. It was so much better than the .wav format. Playing it is like carrying a complete file package. But there was another format which sort of predates the MP3 and that is the .wav file. For me, the former is for portable songs while the latter is for a PC environment. Long ago, in the early 90's, when my Classmates were harping about their Tower which has a Soundlaster16 or something installed. The PC Fanboys were defending the quality of the sound against an Amiga user (moi) because what I heard was raspy highs and well, signs of low sampling.
However, by the turn of the Century, everyone was into the .wav format, from Websites to Windows. It was fun at one time but I quickly realised that the sound of a woman screaming at 3AM in the morning due to a Windows error is not a good idea. I cannot remember when I started to use MP3 for my Music but it was there. At that time, I was contend with the 192kbps sampling rate as most USB storage devices has not even heard of gigabytes. There were bunch of other formats too, like OGG, AIFF, WMA, FLAC and so on. But as time goes by the most prominent ones were MP3, WAV, and FLAC. Although beaten, the survivors left quietly but they will eventually return.
The MP3 being my de facto music format at that time was quite significant as there were portable players and other hardware starting to enter the market. And so, I invested into a CD burner and eventually a DVD burner to cater for my Car's Audio Players which has yet to have a USB port. But after a few decades, I have started to notice some cracks. Small little ones which I initially brushed off as just the occasional errors. Thinking it was the sampling rate issue, I bumped up to 320kbps which also more than double the file size. And then the cracks got bigger...
But MP3 is dead.
April 23, 2017 was the date where the last patent expired. In other words, The Fraunhofer Institute in unable to grant new MP3 Licenses to whoever wants it. Not only that, the according to them, the format has aged. The other alternatives would be AAC, Ogg and FLAC. Still being oblivious, I migrated from ripping CDs to downloading YouTube Music. Yeah, the CD scene more or less quietly disappeared and somehow, it was obscene to pay for a CD when you can get it from the Internet.
Oh, how wrong I was. Somehow, even with the 320kbps, the downloaded-then-converted music sounded muffled or well, something was missing. Furthermore, I do notice there is a main difference when I played the same song on two different formats; USB Thumbdrive and via Bluetooth. The former sounded crisp and clear which led me to believe my 14-year old Audio unit was the culprit. However the same cannot be said when I plugged in my Bluetooth earphones. Then I realised, it was the source. The MP3 file converted from a CD has a much better audio quality. This revelation started to make me doubt the YouTube titles such as MP3, HQ quality and so on.
The FLAC Format
The tipping point came when I was playing Dire Strait's The Tunnel of Love. There is a part, at end of the verse, "Your own risk", where the word, 'isk" was very pronounced. Comparing that section between a CD rip and a YouTube source, the difference is night and day. I cannot blame the lossy format for this but more on myself on where I get the sources.
And so, I decided to try the FLAC format since the capacity of the storage media these days are in the gigabyte to terabyte range. Listening back to the same Dire Straits song, I realised that it is much clearer and even bearable on Bluetooth. All of a sudden, even my PC speakers sounded great.
CD Drives are not Dead
What is dead were their prices. I just got one around May/June 2026 for about USD10.00 or so. And so, I got to thinking, what if I ripped some of my CDs again, this time in FLAC format? And so, after a few confusing tries with EAC (Exact Audio Copy), I got what I needed, only this time, it takes about an hour.
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| Although I have read the Album covers, I did not realise Noel Quinlan (Middle Kingdom) produced the two albums. His "The Shepherdess Song" in Middle Kingdom II sounded like a wounded and crying erhu while Katusha's The Shepherd Girl highlighted her beautiful voice. |
