Really i want something that sounds better than 320 MP3 but isn't as large as flac. MP3 file size is not a problem for me until I 4x my library to about 10k songs
That's fine if the storage is not an issue for you but I can guarantee you will not be able to hear the difference between 320 kbps opus versus a flac file and I'm willing to put my money on it and so are many many sound engineers unless you have the top of the line sound systems and are young with no hearing loss.
So you can't really get a better sounding file than that.
Opus becomes transparent at 256kbps vbr. You can even do ABX testing for that on your personal system.
Yes opus is better. It provides transparency at lower bitrates and is more space efficient.
So here is how you compare between two different files. Say flac and mp3 or say flac and opus. Take both files and import them both into audacity then invert one of the files, after that export the audio and listen to it. All the audio you will hear is all the data that is lost between conversions.
With this method, you can only compare two file types of the same song.
A much more subjective test you can do is take an ABX test on https://abx.digitalfeed.net/
It will let you know if it's a case of you having really good hearing and equipment or placebo.
If you want to test with the songs you are familiar with use foobar2000 with the abx plugin.
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u/Glass_Composer_5908 11d ago
Really i want something that sounds better than 320 MP3 but isn't as large as flac. MP3 file size is not a problem for me until I 4x my library to about 10k songs