FLAC vs MP3, DSD vs Vinyl: Choosing an Audio Format

Format arguments are usually fought with spectra and bitrates. The more useful question is simpler: what survives the journey from the recording to your ears, and what do you lose on the way?

Start with lossless and lossy files. FLAC is lossless: decoded, it is bit-for-bit identical to the original PCM data, only smaller on disk. MP3 is lossy. It uses a model of human hearing to discard information judged to be masked by louder sounds. At high bitrates the result can be hard to tell from the original, but artefacts tend to appear on cymbals, applause, reverberation tails and sharp transients, as a slight smearing or swishing. With storage now cheap, a home library has little reason to be anything but lossless.

Resolution is a separate matter. CD-standard 16-bit, 44.1 kHz audio covers the range of human hearing on paper. Higher resolutions give engineers more room during recording and mixing, and some listeners hear a benefit at home. Be careful with comparisons, though: a high-resolution release is often a different master from the CD, and the master usually matters more than the numbers.

DSD takes a different approach. Instead of multi-bit samples, it uses a one-bit stream at a very high rate, 2.8224 MHz for standard DSD64, and pushes its quantisation noise above the audible band. Many listeners like its smooth, unforced sound. Many DSD releases, however, were recorded or edited in PCM and converted afterwards, so the label alone says little about how the recording was made.

Vinyl is the outlier. The signal is analogue from groove to loudspeaker, and records are often cut from masters with less dynamic compression than their digital equivalents. The format has real limits: surface noise, wear, higher distortion towards the end of a side, and less separation between channels than digital. Much of what people love about vinyl is the mastering, the playback chain and the ritual, and those are good reasons in themselves.

In practice, use a lossless format as the backbone of your library, and look for the most carefully mastered version of the music you care about, whatever the format. Enjoy vinyl for what it is. When you compare formats, match the levels and use the same master where possible. Listen for decays, spatial depth and how relaxed loud passages remain, not for differences you have been told to expect.

Which Demograf Audio piece fits

• Prometheus: native DSD up to DSD1024 over I2S (HDMI) and DSD512 over USB, PCM up to 32-bit / 768 kHz.
• Hyperion: DSD256 over USB (Amanero), with a solid-state or tube output stage.
• Ulanor: a fanless audio computer that plays up to DSD1024 as the source for a DAC.
• Reference Tube DAC: plays PCM only, with no DSD, for listeners who prefer NOS multibit conversion.