mp3 vs. CD vs. FLAC (uncompressed)

[Nubster]

It's huge with home audio and headphones so I was wondering in car audio how much audible difference there is, if any, between music formats? I'm sure the difference scales with system quality but in general, does it matter? Would mp3 be fine for all but the highest end systems or would there still be something to gain even in a budget build by listening to music from CD or uncompressed formats?

[Dangrebel]

I can tell a big deference in my stereo. It's by NO means a sq system. I use wav. Files most of the time.

[Soccerballzs]

Not a fan of compressed here at all. Use wave file takes a lot of space but the 1TB in glovebox holds a lot of CD's.(2000) Not a fan of Ipod compressed either. I can tell a difference. I prefer CD over any still though. A lot of the new CD sound is terrible because of over producing and editing.

[Nubster]

That's cool. I try to get as much as my downloaded stuff in FLAC or other uncompressed or at least higher rated mp3. I listen to music at home with headphones so I can really tell a difference. I just wasn't sure about car audio. I was also wondering about using a portable hard drive vs. thumbdrives. I'd much rather shell out $80 for a 1tb HD that can hold all my stuff plus movies and room that I'll probably never use up rather than a bunch of thumb drives. I read somewhere that the issue is the larger the drive the slower it loads.

[Soccerballzs]

My hardrive is the size of a wallet maybe or smaller. 1TB. Toshiba

[Pro7]

Almost all of my music is in 320kbps mp3 but I can definitely tell a difference with flac and CD. It is much clearer but I just don't have the space on my phone for all flac plus it's hard to find. Between flac and CD I can't tell a difference tho but I also don't have super nice comps

[bmxscion]

I'm running Hybrid Audio Imagine's and a set of L3's active, MS-8 processed, in my car and I can really tell a difference between something that is 320kbps, streaming Pandora, or whatever....I have a thumb drive with some music on it and I try to keep everything on there 320kbps. I usually just play Pandora when driving but if someone wants a demo I won't generally use Pandora. I don't think I have ever played a CD except for the DD-1 and CC-1 CD's when tuning in my car!!!!

[White Lightning]

When I'm in the Sound Quality mode ... I use nothing but CDs ...

But when I'm in Demo / normal play mode ... I normally use Windows Media Loseless downloaded to a big flashdrive ...

[Bump4life]

I can tell the difference between 320 mp3, Cd WAv, and flac both the 16 bit and higher. Only problem is he space. But is noticeable

[Baydestrian]

I would think using an SSD would be the way to go HDD wise, with bass and all wouldn't that really increase the change of the head skipping on the moving disc?

I can't really tell a difference unless its 128kbps and lower on my headphones. First time I noticed that was when I bought my M50 headphones last year and started playing 2Pac's "Changes" from the actual audio CD then I played the mp3 I had burned like 10 years ago that was 128kbps. The opening sound of the piano was so much duller and flatter on the 128kbps.

Now I mainly just deal with rap in 320kbps, way easier than finding FLAC and since everything is so computerized (almost never real instruments) I don't see a point. For things like Rock and what not I go with FLAC. On that note, when I buy CD's (mainly rap) I'll use iTunes and import them as ALAC and I also convert my FLAC files to ALAC if I put them on my iPOD. My Clip Zip can handle FLAC though which is nice.

On that note, I've never had a nice enough system in my car to actually tell between 320kbps & higher. Right now I got a stock 2003 Audi system