Does anyone have good site recommendations for lossless files such as flac’s specifically for music.

  • Vinny_93@lemmy.worldEnglish
    511·
    11 months ago

    SoulSeekQT is a free p2p file sharing service specifically for music and you can specify file types or bitrate in filters.

  • Misanthrope@lemmy.mlEnglish
    202·
    11 months ago

    Check out private torrent trackers. Look for Orpheous and Redacted, OPH/RED.

    • kattenluik@feddit.nlEnglish
      44·
      11 months ago

      RED isn’t worth it compared to the other one since everything will trickle down to OPH anyways, RED has a very mean test and will hate you for searching anything at all.

  • Andiama@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    11 months ago

    Mostly for me, Qobuz rips (through SlavArt) are the best. But if for some reason you can’t get what you want on Qobuz, I typically look it up on Soulseek and 99% of the time I found what I’m looking for

    • Scrath@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      I used to like slavart. I found out about them while they still allowed album downloads on their website. Later I moved to their divolt website (like a selfhosted discord) where they allowed downloads via bots.

      At some point they decided not to bother with divolt and told everyone to start using their discord bot. Anyone who had concerns about privacy or about using their main discord account for piracy was pretty much told that they were an idiot and should go fuck themselves.

      At that point I transitioned to ripping directly from quobus as explained in this guide. If I can’t find what I want on quobuz I go to deezer.

    • retro@infosec.pubEnglish
      131·
      11 months ago

      This is really good. If you VPN to Nigeria it only costs $2.70 a month.

    • quirzle@kbin.social
      4·
      11 months ago

      Seconding this, as it’s my go-to for anything that’s not for sale on Bandcamp and has treated me well.

        • mihnt@lemmy.worldEnglish
          171·
          11 months ago

          Best way I’ve seen it explained.

          FLAC = PNG

          MP3 = JPEG

        • e_mc2@feddit.nlEnglish
          12·
          11 months ago

          FLAC files are typically larger than MP3, because with MP3 roughly 90% of the original file is discarded on encoding, hence lossy compression. At decoding the codec tries to restore this 90% out of the original remaining 10%. This sounds worse than it actually is, but you understand why MP3 is considered inferior by audio purists.

          On the other hand FLAC uses a different compression technique that reduces the original file by 30-50% but without any data deletion, hence lossless. So, original file let’s say 100MB as .wav, compresses to 30-50 MB IN FLAC and 6-10 MB in MP3.

          I gladly sacrifice the additional storage to get noticeably better quality audio.

          • msage@programming.devEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            I get all my music in FLAC, spend extra when I need to buy them.

            But ‘noticeably better audio quality’ needs its own explanation.

            If you have under $200 headphones, 320b MP3 will most likely suffice. There are many aspects like type of music, volume, sound chip, amplifiers, and of course actual quality of the MP3 (some recode 256 or 128 into 320 to make it look better).

            But unless you have quality headphones and enjoy your music without distractions, MP3s will serve just as well.

            Of course, once you get to listen to music in uncompressed quality alone with good hardware - you can’t go back. And it’s an expensive hobby.

            • e_mc2@feddit.nlEnglish
              11·
              11 months ago

              I don’t entirely agree with you. Comparing the same song in MP3 or FLAC on the factory-fitted audio system in my car (2023 Skoda Octavia Combi) already makes a huge difference. Of course the difference is smaller when using 256 or 320 kbps MP3, but even then FLAC just adds that extra bit of depth and “openness” to the music

            • catbaba@lemmus.orgEnglish
              11·
              11 months ago

              Jazz music only sounds good with FLAC, IMO. With MP3, even high bitrate 320kbps, the hihats and other dynamics have a washed out sound. You don’t even need good speakers to notice it

        • Chahk@beehaw.orgEnglish
          42·
          11 months ago

          MP3s are quite compressed, meaning a lot of data is thrown away in an effort to have smaller files. The quality of audio is sacrificed quite a bit though.

          Lossless formats retain as much data as possible as to not impact the sound quality, but at the expense of larger files. The OP says “smaller” because that’s in comparison to the raw uncompressed sound data stream. But they are larger than MP3s because MP3 is a lossy format.

          File size used to matter a lot in the past when digital music players first came out. My first player had 128 MB storage, for example. At 3-5 MB per song that would fill up quickly. Nowadays larger storage of portable devices is more ubiquitous, with even the cheapest phones sportiing 32-64 GB, and more. So people prefer audio quality and don’t care as much if each song takes up more space.