MP3 vs Uncompressed - Page 2

If you can truly ABX 320kbps MP3 against lossless, you are part of a very, very small minority of the population. What sort of results do you get in your ABX tests? If you can identify artifacts with greater than 95% confidence (i.e., less than 5% chance that you are guessing), the folks at Hydrogen Audio would probably welcome your participation in their listening tests.

I for one, cannot tell the difference. but I still listen to lossless for most of time (95%+), and even on my iPod. Call me hypocrite

I can't and I'm happy. I've saved a hell of a lot of space on my iRiver

I can, well I think I can. Either way, I'm archiving so for now and the future it's best to have an exact copy. There will come a time when it will be much easier to tell the difference and I'll laugh at you all who encoded in lossy formats.

It really depends on what you are listening to, rap uncompressed sounds really good next to mp3, the bass has alot more depth than compressed.

I look at it this way: I don't care wether I can tell the difference, encoding lossless ensures that I never have to worry about that part, and I can transcode it to other formats for portable use without further loss (and is see no reason for using 320 on portable equipment anyway - in a real world scenario I could probably barely tell the difference between 96 and lossless when using portable equipment)

And harddrive space is so cheap that the extra space used really doesn't matter.

That said I probably can't tell the difference between 320 and lossless on my current setup.

the placebo effect is indeed a strong one in the audiophile world

great thread, i appreciate headfiers admitting they cannot differentiate between high bitrate MP3 and lossless

let's hope this thread stays on topic without turning into an ABX competition (save those for HA's forums )

I think that discussing ABX is on topic in any thread that talks about MP3 versus uncompressed. In fact, once you acknowledge that "the placebo effect is indeed a strong one," you really can't talk about the differences between two formats without talking about ABX.

I think I can say a little bit about this.

The easiest way to tell the difference between lossy and lossless compression are (as mentioned before) the artifacts.

http://ff123.net/index.html

This is a site that will tell you all about it. The more obvious artifacts can be heard by most people though a logitech speakerset of about $5. Other artifacts can be heard when using a decent headphone. And other (even less obvious) artifacts can only be heard by an audiophile with a HE90 etc, etc.

It also depends on the music that you are listening to. Tracks with higher bitrates in FLAC (or whatever lossless files) will suffer greater losses than tracks that are allready at a lower bitrate.
Classical music and rock tends to have a higher bitrate than country or pop.

Note: I can not advice you to actually try and figure out what all these artifacts are. You will have to throw away half of you collection of 128kbps mp3s. Since now you can hear nasty warbling sounds. (don't even ask what a warbling sound is)
You should only train yourself in hearing the difference when you are planning on buying a new harddrive that can store all those FLACs.

As for me. I do not own a HE90 with proper amplification so I will not be able to tell the difference between some tracks. I do own that logitech speakerset which I mentioned before. (the one that costs $10) I can safely compress my mp3s using lame V2, 190 vbr. Most of the times I will not be able to tell the difference when using a proper headphone.
Only really expensive equipment will make 128kbps mp3s completely unbearable.

It's funny really. Spending money to buy good headphones and amplification. And then spending some more on a huge harddrive.




P.S. WOO. My first post after reading these forums for over 2 years. It became inevitable I guess.

I takes practice to be able to do it. A few years back I wasn't able to tell the difference between a 64kbps mp3 and FLAC. Now I can always pick the right one even in a blind test. (using a proper headphone)

On the website I linked to in my previous post there is a training for this if you are interrested.

http://ff123.net/training/training.html

That is one cool site - thanks for the link. I have to admit I'm currently on onboard sound and MX500 earbuds and I am having trouble hearing past the very obvious. Can't wait to try it out with my better gear when I get back to uni.

Funny thing is that unless you hear the good version first it is hard to spot that you are listening to the 128 file initially. It's a lot easier to tell between the two if you start with the good and work your way down than start with the bad and work your way up....perhaps 'audiophiles' have the wrong idea in searching for the great sound. Start with modest sound, never plug in good sources/music etc and then you won't be unhappy ever or go into debt
also never go anywhere where you might hear the music played properly.

I've been playing around with this very thing the last couple of days, as I'm currently loading my cd collection onto my external hard drive. I think some of the difference people can hear may lie in the quality of the encoding, decoding and the output software they are using.

Using mediamonkey with Flac vs Lame encoding at 320, I could definitely hear the difference. The mp3s just sounded flat and lacking in detail. I upgraded the mp3 decoder in MM to the MAD mp3 decoder and the output to ASIO. The difference is night/day! To my ears, the mp3s now sound BETTER than the flacs! Smoother, crisper, more spacious. My little slice of audio heaven, and I have no desire to mess any further, I just sit listening with a big silly grin on my face!

This is all just my experience, and I'm sure some will just discount it offhand, but it's my little world, and the sky can be any color I want it to be!

Ahhh.... Ignorance is bliss. But we are allready lost. The only thing left now is to get even better equipment and get better compression.

If you get a chance, listen to Pink Floyd's DSOTM 30th anniversary edition, the last song Eclipse. In the last 45 seconds of the song there is a section in the upper right hand corner of violins playing what some people say is the record company re-using their tape from a previous recording of either Blood Sweat and Tears, or a Beatles song, or others say it is done one purpose by Pink Floyd (head music). You need some good equipment to hear it (the better the equipment, the more pronounced it is).

Then take it and convert it to a 320 .mp3 then convert it back to .wav/.cda, put it on a CD and listen to it on the same equipment, and the violins disappear.

This recording also shows that CD Players, amps, headphones, interconnects, and power cords do make a difference.