has anybody else noticed this about flac audio?


o.k are you ready for some truth friends ? flac has compression levels from 0 to 8 with the official flac default level being 5. now flac is lossless compression so there should be no sound loss from the original source no matter what compression level you use however if you encode the same song using every different flac compression level even though they will all be lossless there absolutely is a difference in the overall sound including tone and sound stage from level to level and doing your own test will only prove me right. now here’s where it gets strange? vintage vinyl has stereo + stereo depth perception (3d sound stage).digital audio has stereo + mono depth perception (2d sound stage) and this includes all new remastered vinyl cut from the digital master. this is why digital audio does not sound like vintage vinyl along with brick wall compression.i find it odd that the only flac compression level not recommended as a default no matter what software you use is flac compression level 4 ? it just so happens that re-encoding digital audio to flac with compression level 4 converts digital mono depth perception back into digital stereo depth perception (3d sound stage) just like vintage vinyl! and i don’t think this is by mistake friends ? do your own test and get ready to have your mind blown. here is an audio sample: level 5 http://pc.cd/pCcrtalK level 4 http://pc.cd/iVWrtalK
guitarsam
All:
I noticed differences in FLAC. It depends on the system really. I have two high-end systems, where one system is light years more sensitive to any changes in the source, than the other. Like they say, "Your mileage may vary." 

Here is a question for everyone though. In the 21st century, where storage and bandwidth are dirt cheap, why for the love of Mozart, Frank Zappa, and The Who does anyone use ANY form of compression? 

That's like saying . . . here's some fresh squeezed juice, but wait you can't have yet. I must remove the water, freeze it, thaw it, and add the water back, only then can you have it. Not to worry, because it will taste exactly the same as fresh squeezed. Ya think? Weird, but that analogy is what FLAC does. 

There is absolutely no good technical reason to use any compression at all.

Eliminating all compression surprisingly eliminates any compression related issues. Amazing that. :)
The orange juice metaphor is massively flawed. Decompressing a losslessly compressing file leaves you with EXACTLY the same data as before the compression process.

There is absolutely no good technical reason to not use lossless compression. why waste bandwidth and storage needlessly?

The only compression issues with using FLAC versus WAV are what people want to hear.
I remember reading the "New Methods for Quantifying Sonic Performance" series in the Absolute Sound when it came out.

e.g.
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/viewpoint/0716/Why_Do_WAV_And_FLAC_Files_Sound_Different.htm

After going through all of the articles I re-ripped all of my 100s of CDs again using dbpoweramp to wav.

I did some tests at the time and thought I heard a difference, but I have no idea if I would hear what I thought I heard if I did it again.

When I do buy HD dowloads I pick wav if the option exists.   I have a large NAS so storage size isn't an issue for me.
also when i made a 1 gb virtual hard drive from my pc's ram memory and import audio into the virtual ram drive and play the audio from the ram the sound quality is improved 100% like listening to the studio master tape can somebody explain this?
This is the same thing when you play a file stored in SSD that isn't noisy as in HDD. Try to change to SSD and you'll be impressed even on a noisy computer.
@guitarsam some of it is probably system dependent too. 
I always thought that the AIFF’s and WAV files sounded better than FLAC on my prior DAC and streamer combo. 
I’ve upgraded since then. My new DAC seems more or less agnostic to the type of lossless file it’s being fed. I have difficulty telling the difference now. But I do think that FLAC files are a little more computationally intensive to unpack and turn into music.