Audiophiles

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powertower

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 13, 2007
Messages
391
Anyone willing to provide links to examples of high def audio vs 192KB mp3 amazon downloads. No specific song in general, just looking for a non copyright demonstration of why audiophiles are so anal about codecs/formats/lossless vs lossy....
 
hyperion0101 said:
You won't be able to hear the difference unless you have high quality audio equipment.
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X2

Don't bother unless you do. There is a difference but only if you have gear sensitive enough to resolve fine details.

Best way to describe it is the difference b/w live and recorded sound. Aka being there vs listening to the show on your ipod. That is the feeling I get when I listen to HD vs 192K.

Also, HD to me means recorded specifically to be HD. Not something like the latest over AMPED pop release converted to HD. That recording is a mess no matter what you do to it.
 
Audiophiles listen with their wallets, not their ears, that's why :). But sure I can help you out. Here's a rendition of the MIDI Chrome Shadows by Michael Walthius. It is a favourite song of mine, so I rendered it using a bunch of high end professional samples I have. His stuff is free for personal use, and I've no problem with people using my version of it. So you've got two things here:

A 24-bit uncompressed wave file. 75MB
A 192kbit MP3 file. 7MB

The wave file is full resolution. It is the final "master" file I generated after I did all the processing I wanted to it. It is actually above CD-quality as it is 24-bit so in theory you get more detail if you have a fully 24-bit system (meaning 24-bit soundcard, media player that outputs 24-bit audio, etc). Don't worry it'll play back fine on anything.

The MP3 file was made from that using LAME set to 192kbps CBR, joint stereo, quality mode.

If you want me to produce any other rates, just ask, though of course you can always do it yourself from the wave file.

You aren't likely to hear a lot of difference. While 192k MP3 isn't totally transparent, it is close.
 
Yeah theyve got tests like this all over the internet. 128K bit vs 320K bit and you can switch back and forth between them. There is no audible difference.

Thats the thing with audiophiles. They love to tweak and tune just like we do but unfortunately it doesnt take anything great and wonderful to give you a clean, transparent signal. Speakers however are a different story. Generally the more you spend on them the better theyll sound. Of course there are limits. A $100,000 set of Focal Grande Utopia's aint really gonna sound $100,000 good, but you get my drift.
 
Sycraft said:
Audiophiles listen with their wallets, not their ears, that's why :). But sure I can help you out. Here's a rendition of the MIDI Chrome Shadows by Michael Walthius. It is a favourite song of mine, so I rendered it using a bunch of high end professional samples I have. His stuff is free for personal use, and I've no problem with people using my version of it. So you've got two things here:

A 24-bit uncompressed wave file. 75MB
A 192kbit MP3 file. 7MB

The wave file is full resolution. It is the final "master" file I generated after I did all the processing I wanted to it. It is actually above CD-quality as it is 24-bit so in theory you get more detail if you have a fully 24-bit system (meaning 24-bit soundcard, media player that outputs 24-bit audio, etc). Don't worry it'll play back fine on anything.

The MP3 file was made from that using LAME set to 192kbps CBR, joint stereo, quality mode.

If you want me to produce any other rates, just ask, though of course you can always do it yourself from the wave file.

You aren't likely to hear a lot of difference. While 192k MP3 isn't totally transparent, it is close.
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Exactly what I'm looking for. I'll have to listend to them on my JBL speakes tomorrow. Thanks for the help. I just want to hear the difference.
 
powertower said:
Exactly what I'm looking for. I'll have to listend to them on my JBL speakes tomorrow. Thanks for the help. I just want to hear the difference.
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Not a problem. I understand the interest and you are taking the proper approach of "Can I hear it and do I give a shit?" not "OMG this totally must be bettar!" Also there are possibly situations where MP3 distortions might be more noticeable, as it has more problems with some sorts of signals, but in general this'll give you an idea.

Personally my feelings is that I store music in the highest format conveniently available. So when I rip CDs, I do so to FLAC. Reason is storage is cheap so why not? However I don't worry myself over it at all. I also buy MP3s from Amazon and I'm perfectly happy. In general high bitrate MP3s are extremely difficult to distinguish form uncompressed, if possible at all, even on good equipment.
 
My point is that the bit rate above 192 doesn't have nearly the impact that the actual recording and producing process does. I seriously doubt that 99% of the people listening would benefit at all from anything above 192.

Sycraft, what do you think about the different recording processes these days?

I hate the modern, MAX VOLUME recordings we get so often these days.
 
When it comes to post-processing of audio, it's all free so there's not much wallet voting happening (unless storage space counts) :p As mentioned above, it will depend on your equipment, the quality of the original production as well as the level of acoustic detail, your listening environment, your hearing quality (how much damage has been done to your ears and how acute/trained your hearing sense is), the type of music you listen to, and how much your mind pays attention to the minor details. With store-bought speakers in a standard house environment, it's likely you won't notice any difference.
 
spaceman said:
My point is that the bit rate above 192 doesn't have nearly the impact that the actual recording and producing process does. I seriously doubt that 99% of the people listening would benefit at all from anything above 192.

Sycraft, what do you think about the different recording processes these days?

I hate the modern, MAX VOLUME recordings we get so often these days.
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I hate all the over-limiting shit that happens. Dynamic range is a wonderful thing. Any time I mess with music, I leave the dynamics in. That's how it is supposed to be. That's also one of the reasons I like to buy DVD-A versions of stuff, on the rare case it is available. They usually don't squash the shit out of it like CDs. Also sometimes it is surround sound which is cool, surround music is a lot of fun :).

As an example of what we are talking about have a look at this picture. The top graph is my version of Chrome Shadows, the bottom is the song Straight to Video by Mindless Self Indulgence. You can see how in their track, everything is squashed to the max levels. Most parts have little to no dynamics. The average level is near 0dBFS. In chrome, it peaks all the way up, but the average level is much lower, -6dBFS or lower for most of the song.
 
MacLeod said:
Speakers however are a different story. Generally the more you spend on them the better theyll sound. Of course there are limits. A $100,000 set of Focal Grande Utopia's aint really gonna sound $100,000 good, but you get my drift.
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The room makes a huge difference too. Amazing how much a room screws up audio. Unfortunately not only is it a pain to do good acoustic correction in a room, it is fairly expensive too. I take the half-assed way out and have a receiver that can do room correction. Not as good a result as going all out on room treatment, but cheaper and I don't have to coat my bedroom walls in acoustic tiles :D.
 
Sycraft said:
Audiophiles listen with their wallets, not their ears, that's why :). But sure I can help you out. Here's a rendition of the MIDI Chrome Shadows by Michael Walthius. It is a favourite song of mine, so I rendered it using a bunch of high end professional samples I have. His stuff is free for personal use, and I've no problem with people using my version of it. So you've got two things here:

A 24-bit uncompressed wave file. 75MB
A 192kbit MP3 file. 7MB

The wave file is full resolution. It is the final "master" file I generated after I did all the processing I wanted to it. It is actually above CD-quality as it is 24-bit so in theory you get more detail if you have a fully 24-bit system (meaning 24-bit soundcard, media player that outputs 24-bit audio, etc). Don't worry it'll play back fine on anything.

The MP3 file was made from that using LAME set to 192kbps CBR, joint stereo, quality mode.

If you want me to produce any other rates, just ask, though of course you can always do it yourself from the wave file.

You aren't likely to hear a lot of difference. While 192k MP3 isn't totally transparent, it is close.
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Can't hear the difference through my headphones. Although at times the transients on the bell-like percussive sounds seemed better on the wav file.
 
MacLeod said:
Yeah theyve got tests like this all over the internet. 128K bit vs 320K bit and you can switch back and forth between them. There is no audible difference.
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Gonna have to disagree with this one. From what you are saying, either your hearing is not as sensitive, you don't have high quality audio equipment, or some combination of the two.

128 to 320 kbit is pretty easy to tell the difference for mp3, aac, and ogg files even with a modest set up, at least for me.

On some types of music, on my current set up, if you give me a flac file and a 320 kbit mp3, I can hear the compression artifacts from the 320 kbit file. Especially classical music. All of this on a set up that cost me under $300.

Quality of music is very variable. It's not just your output, but how well the sound was recorded. Ever have the opportunity to listen to the Sennheiser HD 800 on with a good amp? It's very easy to tell when music was recorded well and what was not.
 
Compression of dynamic range blows. CD's mastered in the '80's have gobbs of dynamic range, most audiophiles will tell you the hardware for DDD masterd stuff back then was garbage but it all comes down to what you personally value in music. I'll take the loss in the highest frequencies for the extra dynamics any day.

To do the comparison between low/high bitrate audio, I'd recommend listening through headphones, any cheap or expensive headphone will highlight the differences. Don't feel bad or inadequate if you can't hear a difference. some people just don't notice, while others do. I've met a few people that swear HD tv is no different than standard def.
 
I agree on the issue of range compression. I've been obtaining higher definition digital audio since it started becoming available on SACD and DVD-A a few years ago, and I say (and it makes sense) that higher than CD sample/bit rates do not automatically translate into excellent "audiophile" quality audio.

Just like CD, there are some finely detailed and faithful reproductions of some recordings available in "HD" formats, and a ton of over compressed, poorly mastered junk to go along with them.

I have many beautiful sounding CDs, I go out of my way to get them from the catalogs of places like MFSL, and I am pretty picky about what I enjoy listening to.

Listening to SACDs and DVD-As of some of the same material, I wouldn't call the difference anything spectacular. CD Audio is very capable, it's just that most of the stuff people listen to is poorly mastered, and being listened to on cheap and/or poorly tuned audio setups.

There is alot more to gain going from low bitrate compressed audio to lossless (FLAC or something like) than going to these "HD" formats. MP3 and other lossy formats were brought about when bandwidth and storage were a fraction of what they are today, I don't see why we're still stuck on using them.

300-400MB to store an album losslessly doesn't seem like much to me at all now, and while I can't speak for everyone, ANY lossy compression is audible to me at some point in the recording. I don't even bother with MP3 now unless I can't avoid it, but there are very few devices now in existence now that can't handle something more advanced like AAC or OGG. Even with these at high bitrates, while it generally seems transparent there's always some point where it craps out and (to my ears) fails miserably.

It'll usually be some very subtle nuance buried in the background of the music, which will just get muddled because the compression algorithm didn't think I'd notice it being replaced with something most people consider "close enough". For most people it apparently is, but for me it is not. This is music I've been listening to since I was a kid, on 8 Track, LP, CD, and my brain knows what is supposed to be there. It's absence is a distraction from the music I'm trying to enjoy. I do not like it.

As to 192kbit MP3 being "transparent", there are far too many variables here including individual peoples physical ability to hear things, as any audiologist will tell you this varies considerably among the population. I can tell you with absolute certainty that to me it is not. I will hear MP3 loss on the tape hiss at that bitrate, and not with crazy expensive gear, say $600 worth of sound card, amp and cans. The 192kbit sample provided above by Sycraft, despite not being what I would consider "complex" music, has serious artifacting in the bell and cymbals not present in the WAV. There is a big amount of loss there, I wouldn't enjoy listening to MP3 like that at all. I recoded the WAV to OGG at 224kbps and though there is a touch of what I'd call "crinkle" in the bells, it's not really objectionable to me like the MP3 was, then again, I don't really love that music anyway, but like I said above I really do love the music I listen to.
 
About bit-rates: At 256 kbps and above, I find it nearly impossible to distinguish w/o the best of the best equipment. Some specific high-frequency sounds may provide clues in an A/B/X test, I've realized. That said, I strive for and promote lossless because I have the space, and it's "technically better." I'm a bit of an audiophile snob.

A friend of mine had an interesting general thought about the lack of dynamic range in modern recordings. He thought that because music is trending more toward sampled and synthetic beats, exact repetition of longer sequences (which often form the core music of the song), and a catering toward low-fidelity playback (automotive, ipods, computer / laptop speakers, etc) - the big studios have stopped caring about nuance.

That nuance will be rendered as part of the garbled backdrop in most cars... so they have every sound competing against every other...it's often cacophonous and overwhelming and that unnaturally high average sound-level provides almost no realistic spatial cues - so we get such a poor sense of the physical musical STAGE, but apparently it's what people want. There is often a lack of extreme highs/lows - a telephone might be able to provide somewhat faithful a reproduction, heh.

He then went on some tirade about how he is tired of literally "fake sound," complaining about how music should be primarily composed of unique, real, physical sounds - not only that most of it should be instruments + voice (allowing for some modern synthesizing of course), but that when a refrain is replayed in a song, it should actually BE re-played as it would have been LIVE, and not just given as a looped sample. That makes each venture into that rhythm somewhat unique and distinguishable - more memorable.

I think he had been absorbing my complaints for the past few years...and finally started critically LISTENING to music, and deciding what it was that made music good, why he liked what he did, etc.

I wonder what would happen if the standard were changed to 24-bit, and we suddenly had all of that extra dynamic room. They'd probably do the same thing because 96db seems to be...enough

As a relevant aside, here's a clip of Henry Rollins talking about how he dislikes DJs and synthetic music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyRDDOpKaLM - I don't agree with him entirely because I believe SOME of that music is creative, but I see his point. I don't know shit about his work...just thought this was a decent clip.
 
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dustNbone said:
The 192kbit sample provided above by Sycraft, despite not being what I would consider "complex" music,
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Just remember what you think is complex and what is complex to compression are very different things. It doesn't work in a way intuitive to humans. Two interesting examples:

1) Lossless audio compression. It actually works BETTER on most music considered "more complex" like classical. Why? Because there are dynamics in the music and it can make use of that. The lower the signal level, the more it can compress since one of the methods for compression it uses it Golomb-Rice coding. The more of the signal that is below peak level, the better it can compress it.

2) JPEG encoding. Take a picture of something like a scene from nature, say a bunch of trees, and compress it with JPEG at a middling setting. It is amazing how much detail is preserved. It really does a pretty good job and you don't have to go all that high to make the artifacts unnoticeable. Now take a screenshot of some black text on a white background, JPEG compress it at the same rate. You'll see all kinds of noise and ringing around the text. Much simpler picture, but it looks worse. Reason is because of how JPEG works. It does not handle fast transitions (particularly chroma transitions) well. So line art is harder for it, despite being simpler.

Archmage said:
A friend of mine had an interesting general thought about the lack of dynamic range in modern recordings. He thought that because music is trending more toward sampled and synthetic beats, exact repetition of longer sequences (which often form the core music of the song), and a catering toward low-fidelity playback (automotive, ipods, computer / laptop speakers, etc) - the big studios have stopped caring about nuance.
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Has nothing to do with synthetic music, everything to do with being noticed. The problem is that given two things otherwise equal, we are inclined to prefer the louder one. That is just how we work. Unscrupulous stores have used that method to sell components they want to flog. They increase their volume by like 3dB and people will like them because they sound "better".

Now back in the day, didn't matter much. The physical limitations of analogue playback media meant that if you tried to limit the shit out of music, it would just distort and wouldn't work. It couldn't handle the brickwall kind of levels.

No problem with digital. It'll store whatever it is asked to perfectly.

Thus the loudness wars begin. Wanting to be more noticed on the radio and so on they keep squashing more and more dynamics out to try and sound louder. Stupid, but there you go and people seemed to like it overall. Then it becomes "the sound to have" and keeps on going and so on.

Synthetic music can perfectly well have plenty of dynamics though. For that matter the piece I posted is entirely synthetic. Though the samples are of real instruments, all sound generation was done on a computer, using those samples. No live recording of any kind.
 
1) I have pretty good studio monitor speakers with ribbon tweeters that go up to 30 KHz.

2) I have 1.16 TB of hard drive space.

There is absolutely no reason for me to ever touch a lossy codec again, I only convert the songs to MP3 for portable devices that can't handle FLAC.

And also I agree about today's dynamic range compression, it makes music tiring, uninteresting and hard to listen to (this has nothing to do with MP3 compression, it is a process done during the mastering of audio).

For example the remastered version of NIN's PHM, people were over it all like "OMG it's so much LOUDER", yeah, and the songs lost all their emotional power due to being compressed, just like The Slip. I'll listen to the 1989 version any day, I got 140W speakers, loudness isn't really a problem, stop listening on crappy USB speakers and Ibuds, buy a real stereo system and maybe you'll be able to appreciate dynamics in a song.

Look at this shit:
PHM (2010 Remaster)
PHM (Original 1989 Version)

Oh dear.
 
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DVD-A is no different than CD. Most of what I've seen is the same old clipped or compressed garbage you get on CD, in a higher resolution. It was such a waste of a good format. SACD has tended to be quiet and nice, but there is no sure-fire (bug-free) way to go to PCM unless you want to shell out thousands of dollars and find a certain PS3 to rip them. I want to buy music right from the artist, without being mastered for the masses by jerk-off producers who just make a phat beat, and in a format of my choosing.

Fake sounds tend to not be as dynamic, so we simply don't need dynamics anymore. Before, they would record to CD at a low volume for headroom. We don't need to do that anymore. We can record in floating point and just reduce overall album volume to simply not peak. Having a CD from the 80s never hit even -6 dBfs is just a waste of the format. But now we've gone to the extreme and just thrown away information. I don't know what's worse, clipping, or compressing.

There is no excuse to not have lossless anymore. Storage is cheap and plentiful. Why even bother to have something that can sound almost as good, but risk killer samples, when you can have something only a few times more in size? It's not insane to want a perfect representation of the final master, not just what some asshats think apply to everyone's brains and senses.
 
grimster said:
DVD-A is no different than CD. Most of what I've seen is the same old clipped or compressed garbage you get on CD, in a higher resolution. It was such a waste of a good format. SACD has tended to be quiet and nice, but there is no sure-fire (bug-free) way to go to PCM unless you want to shell out thousands of dollars and find a certain PS3 to rip them. I want to buy music right from the artist, without being mastered for the masses by jerk-off producers who just make a phat beat, and in a format of my choosing.

Fake sounds tend to not be as dynamic, so we simply don't need dynamics anymore. Before, they would record to CD at a low volume for headroom. We don't need to do that anymore. We can record in floating point and just reduce overall album volume to simply not peak. Having a CD from the 80s never hit even -6 dBfs is just a waste of the format. But now we've gone to the extreme and just thrown away information. I don't know what's worse, clipping, or compressing.

There is no excuse to not have lossless anymore. Storage is cheap and plentiful. Why even bother to have something that can sound almost as good, but risk killer samples, when you can have something only a few times more in size? It's not insane to want a perfect representation of the final master, not just what some asshats think apply to everyone's brains and senses.
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Where can I subscribe to your newsletter?
 
Sycraft said:
I hate all the over-limiting shit that happens. Dynamic range is a wonderful thing. Any time I mess with music, I leave the dynamics in. That's how it is supposed to be. That's also one of the reasons I like to buy DVD-A versions of stuff, on the rare case it is available. They usually don't squash the shit out of it like CDs. Also sometimes it is surround sound which is cool, surround music is a lot of fun :).

As an example of what we are talking about have a look at this picture. The top graph is my version of Chrome Shadows, the bottom is the song Straight to Video by Mindless Self Indulgence. You can see how in their track, everything is squashed to the max levels. Most parts have little to no dynamics. The average level is near 0dBFS. In chrome, it peaks all the way up, but the average level is much lower, -6dBFS or lower for most of the song.
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Damn that screenshot just solved a puzzle for me.

I could never understand why HD videos always had "HD" audio with them, and that audio was always really quiet. It now makes sense for it to be quiet and you just turn up the volume via your own equipment instead of having it come already loud as shit and squishing the highs/lows.


Is there a chance anyone here can explain the differences between a true 5.1 surround sound setup for your headset vs binaural audio processing? Is one better than the other or would it really not matter to a "regular" person?
 
I think the 5.1 headphones are stupid, as is audio processing to make it sound like surround. So are sound bars. Nothing can totally fool the ears. Distance and positional cues can never be recreated except to actually have speakers at those positions and distances you're trying to fake. The shape of everyone's head is different, so are their ears, and so are their shoulders. There are simply way too many variables to ever recreate surround from 2 channels. It can come close, but there is still no direction front or back, only distance from head. It can be quite exciting, and sound better in fidelity than speakers, but nothing beats a 5.1 speaker system for position (or higher, like 7.1, but I think those are pointless over 5.1). The 5.1 headsets are usually not made by any kind of real headphone makers. There is still nothing for height cues except in 9.1, 10.2, or 22.2.
 
blgdinger said:
Is there a chance anyone here can explain the differences between a true 5.1 surround sound setup for your headset vs binaural audio processing? Is one better than the other or would it really not matter to a "regular" person?
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For a "regular" person, they are mostly the same.

Good binaural processing is pretty good (the way the question is worded, it sounds like you want to know if it's good for knowing where sound comes from in a FPS: the answer is yes). Good binaural recordings (made with a head torso simulator) are scary good. The approach here is to create a recording that mimics the way humans hear spatial information (in particular) as much as is possible. Is it perfect? No. Does it make me jump when there is a noise behind me? Yes. This is my favorite recording demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FwDa7TWHHc

Discrete (5.1/7.1) surround sound approaches from the opposite direction (pun intended). Separate individual channels with distinct directions (we still only have two ears). They'll be some mixing of these channels to provide a little better location sourcing, but it's not in the same league (if you ask me). The biggest problem with "5.1" headsets (that actually have multiple drivers per ear) is that there are not headphone drivers of adequate quality in the size required nor enough space to put them in a proper orientation to create good imaging.

http://gilmore2.chem.northwestern.edu/tech/aureal1_tech.htm is an interesting article on some of the tech that went into A3D. I do really dislike this kind of processing for music. If I cranked up the midbass and added a mid range frequency hole, it'd sound just like Bose. :eek:
 
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dustNbone said:
Listening to SACDs and DVD-As of some of the same material, I wouldn't call the difference anything spectacular. CD Audio is very capable, it's just that most of the stuff people listen to is poorly mastered, and being listened to on cheap and/or poorly tuned audio setups.
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There's actually a study floating around (it's behind a paywall last I knew, though, professional journal) that showed when they downsampled hi-rez DVD-A down to CD quality, only one person in the entire study could hear a difference enough to be right more often than guessing (and if I remember only on one music source). And that was at ear-damaging decibels.

The only reason DVD-A and SACD often sound better is because they are apparently well-authored - not overly dynamically compressed like CDs tend to be now.

AVSforum discussion thread on the study: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=981557

Here's a link to the supplemental on the study: http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/explanation.htm

Can't find the study itself though right now.

As far as music I rip, I archive at 320kbps mp3. I don't angst over using lossless. Personally I can hear a difference between 128k up to about 192k mp3 (I think, I haven't double-blind tested myself on it) ...beyond that...pretty much the same to me. But I've got space, so max bitrate mp3 is the way I archive (I think I did 256kbps for a while, so some of mine might be 256).
 
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So would you say that true 5.1 headphones are more or less not that big a deal in comparison with binaural?

I was looking at this headset and was wondering if there would be a major difference between having these 30mm drivers with a 40mm sub compared with 50mm drivers from a standard stereo headset. Could having 50mm drivers in, say, the corsair 1500 give a more powerful sound?
http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/pc-gaming-headsets/ear-force-z6a.aspx
 
I have swan MKiii's and an X-fi platinum sound card and telling the difference between mp3 320 and FLAC audio is quite difficult and I can only do it on certain tracks and only if I try really hard.

Not sure if this is because of my low grade equipment or my ears but I have given up caring the only time I notice is if the MP3 is really bad like 64 or 128.

Also much of the music I play is for the wife and is Tpain really going to sound better or worse in FLAC.
 
You will not hear a difference 320k and up. 256k and up really unless you have a bit better equipment. Even then, the difference will be slight.

TPain? Don't know enough to speak of his recordings.
 
I succesfully blind tested 225 kbit vs FLAC using Foobar's ABX plugin, I have the results posted somewhere over at head-fi. I don't think I could do any more than that and I have OK gear. Maybe only on certain songs.
 
Very rarely was DVD-A authored any different than the newest CD masters before them. Original CDs of older music will outperform DVD-A. I don't even consider SACD because you need very specific hardware to even rip it to PCM.

What does autotune have to do with the quality of the music? Its use usually indicates that the singer can't sing, but T-Pain used it as an effect. T-Pain can actually sing. That is amazing for being live. Idiots like Ke$ha who use it, can not sing worth a shit.

Lossy compression is retarded unless you are putting it on a portable device. But still, how much music do you need on it at any single time? An iPod shuffle is the only one that doesn't support lossless. So we move up to the Nano. They come in 8 GB and 16 GB. 8 GB of 16/44.1 lossless music is A LOT of play time. Assuming you like new music which ends up being larger than stuff with actual dynamics, and new albums are usually long, 500 MB per album, so you could put 16 albums on there. 16 albums lasting an hour each, that should be enough to entertain you for a day. Don't yuppies like to be changing everything about they own constantly anyway? So no need there to even maintain a lossy library on top of a lossless one. Even so, iTunes can lossily encode stuff just for to put on a device, and not even take up any space on your computer, besides the temporary time it takes to encode and sync that music.
 
Exactly. I use a Sansa Clip+ and carry 5 or 6 microsds between 8GB and 32GB with me. A persons musical taste, hearing ability, and just how much of a picky arse they are will affect how much compression is acceptable, in addition to their gear of course. But with essentially limitless portable storage I don't need to decide where that line is for me anymore. I guess you don't get external storage with an iPod but that's just Apple for you, which sucks now that they have some kind of lossless support. Every other portable device has a goddamn MicroSD slot in it now, guess that would make charging an extra $200 for 24GB more flash in an iPhone a little tricky though :)
 
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stevedave said:
Crappy auto tune retard music....No amount of audio equipment would make it sound good.
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I would like the formula to creating 'crappy auto tune retard music' and becoming a millionaire.

(Not a rap listener) And not making fun of you.
 
There's far too much hyperbole on this subject from BOTH camps.

1. Yes, it's true that a lot of hardcore audiophile snobs exaggerate what's necessary for transparency. Almost no one can tell a redbook CD recording from an identical 24/96 recording on their home listening equipment. In fact, 320kbps MP3 is probably transparent for the vast majority of listeners and source material. However...

2. It's absurd to claim that 128kbps MP3/AAC is transparent, as at least one person already has. The truth is somewhere in between. Something in the range of LAME V2-V0 (~190kbps to ~245kbps VBR) is what I consider transparent using my external DAC with decent bookshelf speakers (or Grado cans). In my opinion, the high-bitrate MP3 and AAC files sold by iTunes, Amazon, and Google Music today are likely transparent for most purposes and listeners. However...

3. I still refuse to purchase lossy audio files unless I have absolutely no other choice, and I'd encourage others to do the same. Why? One reason is simply principle: I find it unacceptable to fork over $9.99 for an iTunes "album" when that album was available for the same price and in better digital quality in 1985. I will not accept seeing audio fidelity take a step backwards in the name of convenience, especially when data storage is as cheap as it is today (perhaps in filesharing's heyday, avoiding 300 MB-per-album FLAC downloads was more understandable). The other reason is very much practical: I should be able to transcode any album I *purchase* to any format I need without having to accept lossy-to-lossy quality loss. I have V0 MP3 copies of all my lossless CD rips that I put on my work PC, and 160kbps AAC files on my phone to conserve space. I'm not comfortable purchasing a 256 kbps file from Apple or Amazon and then degrading it again to fit it on my phone, and no one else should be, either. Unless, of course, the seller wants to offer it at a massive discount like $0.29 per song. But no way, no how, should we allow ourselves to be taken advantage of with demonstrable regression in audio quality and see little to no corresponding decrease in price. (And before anyone says it already happened with vinyl->CD, that's subjective, because of the analog vs. digital issue -- CD vs. iTunes is not even debatable).
 
I feel pretty similarly with regards to your last point. Not only do they sell us a lossy version of the audio, they charge the same price as the CD version which also happens to comes with a physical copy of the media and has been marked up by the overhead costs of B&M stores.
 
danman said:
I would like the formula to creating 'crappy auto tune retard music' and becoming a millionaire.

(Not a rap listener) And not making fun of you.
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O so would I. Talent in making music and talent in making money are 2 different skills. One is obviously more important than the other.
 
I agree with brettjrob noone should be wasting their time ripping their CDs to lossy compression of any sort. Drive space is cheap, and modern CPUs can transcode audio very quickly, when I transcode FLAC to OGG or AAC onto MicroSD, it's waiting on the file transfer to the flash not the encoding.

And MP3 is really junk IMO, if you insist on lossy at least AAC or OGG seem like much better choices. The artifacting that I do hear present in those is alot less distracting I find. At higher bitrates (224+) I can USUALLY get through a song in OGG without noticing that I'm not listening to lossless. This almost never happens with an MP3 even at 320.
 
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Let's do a 192kbps mp3 vs DSD comparison :D

grimster said:
It was such a waste of a good format. SACD has tended to be quiet and nice, but there is no sure-fire (bug-free) way to go to PCM unless you want to shell out thousands of dollars and find a certain PS3 to rip them.
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It's not THAT expensive for a PS3 that can rip SACDs (a 3.55fw CECHA01 60GB Fat PS3). I picked one up for around $350. Now that said, you do need to do a bit of coding and compiling to get everything up and running.
 
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I totally agree with brettjrob's post and it couldn't really be said any better. People who claim they can discern 24/192 audio over 16/48 are either have exceptionally good hearing, or are suffering from placebo effect. Conversely, people who claim 128kbps is as good as lossless have exceptionally poor hearing, or have never heard high bitrate and well mastered music on good playback hardware.

Having purchased a few pieces of high quality audio gear over the past several years, at some point it's not about your equipment, but instead the quality of the source recording, which for anything modern/popular, is utter garbage. And I too refuse to pay for lossy audio when I can buy a DRM-free, lossless physical copy the same at the store for virtually the same price. It's a matter of principle. Not that I actually buy modern music. It's not that I pirate it, I just don't own or listen to it because I don't find it to be very good, technically or artistically.
 
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