Well I will clarify once again that my point is the compression does not sound the same as the original - not that it necessarily sounds bad. And that is where I take extreme exception to Bigshot's comments. If he had said "to my ears, there is no difference between the highest bitrate compression and the original", I would have let things go, but he gets away with these things time and time and time and time again! He never ever offers his opinions - he just offers everything as a hard fact
For my own part, I happily admit to using Ogg 505 ABR for all my audio compression and I am very happy with th results - it still sounds extremely good to me. What I do clearly know however is that to my ears, even the best compression sounds
different and in all cases that equates to
worse as well. But for OGG 505, the difference is small enough to only annoy me on direct switching A/B comparisons - not if I just get up the next morning and listen to the OGG instead of the WAV file.
And just in case I am hanged and banned
let me say just this to all impressionable people. I cannot sleep tonight without saying this, because I feel that comments made on this website by certain members are delivered in such a manner as to potentially hamper the long term musical enjoyment of other members. So...
1. Do not take
anyone's view of audio sound quality, including mine, as factual. It is only their opinion, even if they appear to state it ad infinitum as a hard fact. The problem I have is when opinions are continually stated as patent facts to individuals who may not have enough experience to make a judgement call for themselves.
2. Trust your own ears -
not those of others. But do not trust your own ears until you have given them the best opportunity and sufficient time to develop and maximise their forensic, musical hearing capabilities. Sometimes this process takes years and for many it continues to develop throughout life (upgrade-itis being the most notable symptom).
3. If you are new to audio, let those hearing capabilities develop over a period of at least 12 months before deciding for yourself what sounds good / better / best.
4. Don't transcribe that vinyl collection to CD unless you really don't think that for the rest of your days you will ever be able to hear the difference between doing that and transcribing it to 24-96, 24-192 or DSD. It would be terrible if you did that because someone kept telling you in a factual manner till the cows come home that CD copies sound no different. Especially if you don't have matured listening capabilities to make a judgement call for yourself (as opposed to doing that just because someone told you so).
After all, years down the track if you did discover you could hear the improvement, what a huge waste of your life that would have been transcribing 500 LPs to CD.
And if you can never tell the difference, that's fine and good for you too - you will save a lot of money on equipment and a lot of money on disc and archiving space.
5. Same principle with the topic under consideration as regards compression. Don't transcribe your music collection to even the maximum bitrate compression unless you are certain you will never hanker for more quality. If you spend 5 years developing your musical ear and can't tell the differences then fine - you will make some great savings. But if you go to all that time and effort then down the track you hear a lossless source (having gotten so used to compression you treat it as the norm), you might sincerely regret all that time you spent. Especially nowadays with storage space getting cheaper and cheaper.
It's comments about compreesion being inaudible that I feel are extremely damaging to the potential for good sound quality in the industry. If we accept that compression and originals sound the same, then there is no motivation any more for ultra high fidelity and music vendors will have no motivation to offer anything more than those MP3 downloads that have had the gritty guts of the music ripped out of their binary souls...
That's fine for those who can't hear the difference, but it's a grave consequence to those who can hear the difference.
