Can you really hear the difference between low versus high FLAC compression level?

Edit:

Comment removed because I misread the question. lol. :/

Real answer: No. Never. Not even if you're a Jedi.

The compression level has no effect on quality since it is a LOSSLESS compression.
It's not called lossless for no reason.

Jason should never have brought up lossy encoding formats. It's irrelevant when it comes "hearing" lossless compression.

The audio is the same and will sound the same as the CD.
The low or high compression is just a matter of preference. It makes zero difference in sound quality.
You can compress a WAV file to FLAC with highest compression than decompress it and use analysis tools to find out they're the same.
Do this again with FLAC with the lowest compression and you will find out they're the same.

I.E., they were not altered so: No, you won't hear a difference.

Go ahead and make outrageous claims that with the sophisticated Ghostbusters technology to detect acoustic vibration alterations in the temporal ecto-sound-plasm-flasm paradigm-shmime.

High versus low flac is a question of time required to encode and decode

For a powerful computer, this differs very little: 300 x real time versus 150 x real time.

It only makes a difference if you are encoding terabytes of stuff in a batch; then you save yourself an hour or so

sound quality is not affected

like Spark said above, test it: get the bit-by-bit comparison tool for Foobar, and you'll see they decode to identical wave

it's a matter of RAM only
the more RAM You have the "saver" compression process goes = the faster it can go
but the same rule applies to everything we do: ripping disk, resizing image, de/compress files, etc

with any normal computer you would rather saving extra 3-5mb for flac 8 than just having flac 2-3

It's nothing to do with RAM; it's about processing speed.

In any case, OP asked if there was a difference between different levels of FLAC encoding and the answer, as already stated, is NO. Higher levels take marginally longer to encode and produce progressively smaller files. Sound quality is constant; ie, lossless.

For best speed AND lowest filesize one may use

TAK (http://thbeck.de/Tak/Tak.html)

It s several MB smaller than FLAC 8 (on normal tak) but encodes and decodes !!!! faster than even the newest flac 1.3.0 (found at hydrogen audio forums) :) :)

Yeah, TAK compresses slightly (we're talking 2-3mb per album) better the FLAC and does so slightly faster...

If TAK were open-source, and enjoyed the same level of ubiquitous hardware and software support as FLAC, it would be a serious competitor... As it stands, its flexibility and usefulness is somewhat limited...

Tango....sparky...why no talky to goddess? :(

newest flac 1.3.0 (found at hydrogen audio forums)

There are about 6 different builds to FLAC 1.3.0. And I bet you can get more going too. It's a matter of what you use to build the programs.

Then, you can even try out Hardware Assisted encoding/decoding with FLAC with: FLACCL (former FlaCuda) (http://www.cuetools.net/wiki/FLACCL).
Then it's simply a matter of your CUDA graphics card specs.

It's purely a matter of what can do math the quickest.

Personally, I'm fine with FLAC 8. It's the most compatible. Heck, even my wee little player can read FLAC.

like tango said, it'd be much nicer if it went open-source.
Then who knows the possibilities with it. Improvements, CUDA math, maybe even some hardware support. Definitely there would be more software support.

I know some software developers who won't even consider integrating TAK support since it's not open-source. That's final.

---------- Post added at 05:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:34 PM ----------


Tango....sparky...why no talky to goddess? :(

Let's talk about Hannibal!
I have to check your thread for any season 2 updates.
I'm getting everyone I know hooked on that show.

I replied to your PM, and you just vanished. :(

As for Tango....**sigh**

No season 2 music I am aware of.

---------- Post added at 06:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:00 PM ----------

Sorry, yes there seem to be season 2 cues mixed in now. No slates, just titles, like Human Beehive and Hanging Judge...:) I will pm you the stuff.

I replied to your PM, and you just vanished. :(

As for Tango....**sigh**

No season 2 music I am aware of.

---------- Post added at 06:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:00 PM ----------

Sorry, yes there seem to be season 2 cues mixed in now. No slates, just titles, like Human Beehive and Hanging Judge...:) I will pm you the stuff.

I was going to but I was running on zero sleep for a few days. Finalyl clocked in 12 hours. :awsm:

I really Neeeeeded you two..alas....do you want the files as downloaded or do you want me to trim em?

Actually, every time you 'hear' something it's different, even if it's the same file. Also the question implies that there is a difference. The question should have been stated more succinctly "Is there a difference between low and high level FLAC compression?" To which the answer would have been "Yes, but only in terms of file length, not the stored data.

That reminds me of a discussion on the HydrogenAudio forums: "Can you train your ears to hear higher frequencies?"

It went onto a serious Jedi discussion about meditations and exercises so you can pick up more than 19KHz sample rates.
Like for those really fancy 96KHz.

It's a real fun read.

Made me want to write some fanfiction on it.

This guy implanted 'headphones' into his er..., head. Man implants magnetic headphones, becomes music cyborg | ExtremeTech (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/160080-man-implants-magnetic-headphones-becomes-music-cyborg)

The question is then, given a special mic to pick up 96KHz, would his brain be able to make sense of that data, or will it say "Bah, I don't need all that, it's all the same".

or maybe would every dog whistle and other "inhuman" sounds interfere with his life.

Must be terrible.

Ignorance is bliss~