Can you hear the difference between LAME V0 and Lossless? - Page 5

Well...I can't hear the difference on my setup...

Akathriel, Ampl1tude, aphex944, Asmo, Barry, Benco, BigSurSpoon, blinx, erwanito, eVITAERC, GameBlaster, goodsound, Karlosak, Maleficio, mrdelayer, pheonix991, practitioner, PsychoZX, Redo, TestSpecimen, TURBO, Vuti, Whitebread, and xand1x -- please post your ABX results.

Another question for those of you who have completed the ABX test and successfully determined the difference between a lossless file and -V0 --vbr-new LAME 3.97 files: What songs were the most telling?

I noticed mention of Norah Jones - Don't Know Why. I have this album so this is a good start for me to try to hear any differences. More than anything, I'm just curious to know what people are noticing. This is primarily so that I can test this out on different equipment at the NYC Meet next week, and see which equipment reveals more differences, as well as what makes these differences more or less tolerable. Basically, I'm after some worst-case scenarios with the best possible encoding.

So, any others that show off LAME's limits?

Read my previous post

Your previous post missed the point. It doesn't matter if ABX is conclusive or not. The premise is, it is a basic courtesy to read the damn thread, and if you vote "yes", follow the simple instruction, whether you agree or not.

I disagree. I think that this poll has some value in countering the perception that everyone here at Head-Fi can easily tell the difference between MP3 and lossless.

This thread was inspired by a post in another "mp3 v. uncompressed" thread where someone made a comment to the effect that "it seems like 90% of the people here can tell the difference; why can't I?" My response to that poster was that the actual percentage of people who tell the difference is far less than 90%, and that in fact -V0 should be transparent to most people.

There are a couple of ways that we could interpret the results of this thread. If we evaluate the results based on the requirement that those claiming to be able to hear a difference between -V0 and lossless substantiate their claim with ABX test results, then there have been only two valid yes responses. If we take all of the responses at face value, ignoring the requirement that those who answer yes post ABX results, 70% of the respondents indicate that they cannot tell a difference. Either way, the results indicate that -V0 is transparent to the substantial majority of respondents.

It's disappointing that more people didn't follow the instructions and submit ABX results, but I think that the results are nevertheless valuable to counter the misperception that everyone should be able to hear a "night and day" difference between MP3 and lossless. Could we put together a more rigorous test? Certainly. Does that mean that this poll was a "failure"? I don't think so.

I too agree that this thread was a success. Although you asked for ABX, people have given their opinions away - but still, the percentage of people who can hear the difference between high quality MP3s and lossless are a lot less than being the majority.

Given the type of top notch equipment being used here, which can be thought of as an extreme situation, I think we can conclude that the majority of people, using the majority of equipment out there, will find -V0 transparent. So there's nothing wrong with people who can't hear a difference. Thanks for the thread, it's been very interesting!

If I really am paying attention I can tell the difference between any quality of MP3 and lossless (I ABX'd it long ago) on music that I know well. The attack and decay on instruments just aren't quite right and soundstage suffers. But I'm talking really, really paying attention. There aren't any huge, glaring issues with V0 or even V2, and on a casual listen I'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between either and lossless. Given that my computer music collection is mostly for portable use anyway, anymore I am ripping in LAME V2 since it is more than adequate for portable use and offers the optimal combination of size/quality (not coincidentally, exactly what V2 was designed for!).

Since I can't post ABX results right now, and am not going to bother with doing an ABX test just for this thread, I won't vote in the poll.

i don't think i can, but it's totally irrespective; the main reason to have a lossless copy is for longevity, not just that you can hear a big difference; do you really want to lose audio quality? when you go from aac to mp3 to ogg, to whatever comes next, you keep losing quality. but if you have a FLAC copy, you'll always have a perfect original, no matter what format you use in the years to come for lossy audio portably


in the search for audio perfection, depending on lossy copies is a sin

I don't think that anyone disputes the merits of lossless for archiving. The discussion of whether there is an audible difference between lossless and lossy usually arises (at least here on Head-Fi) in the context of what format to use on a portable device.

I'm surprised you did so well with that recording