cashnotcredit said:

This times a million. If a song has 2822 kbps and is in 24-bit wav, yet only has 4dB of dynamic range and is hard clipping on the master, it's going to sound like garbage. Plain and simple.

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+1. It really depends on the content as to how much you can deflate the 0s out and make it sound alright. Also, at least in the US, OTA does not use mp3, it uses AC-3, which is quite different (and I'll challenge anyone to legitimately pick a good AC-3 stream from an MLP stream; codec fanboyism is silly and the second I see DTS mentioned I stop reading because it usually degrades into foamy hype). SPEAKING OF, this is the criminal marketing thing, and I think DTS (not Datasat) should get a nice big knock on the head, based on how insane the hype claims surrounding their "magic" are.

Yes a really simple song that is just plinky plonky cymbals or something it is difficult to tell between high and low bitrate but and complicated music or music with high dynamic range it is blatantly obvious... Infact I would say about 75% of songs it is BLATANTLY obvious when it is at 128kb... Eg. it sounds thin, compressed, sibilant, harsh, low dynamic range etc etc. You dont even need high end headphones to tell this... A pair of £100 headphones will easily show up how ***** 128kb MP3 is it just depends on the sound signature of the headphones...

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nicholars said:

Yes a really simple song that is just plinky plonky cymbals or something it is difficult to tell between high and low bitrate but and complicated music or music with high dynamic range it is blatantly obvious... Infact I would say about 75% of songs it is BLATANTLY obvious when it is at 128kb... Eg. it sounds thin, compressed, sibilant, harsh, low dynamic range etc etc. You dont even need high end headphones to tell this... A pair of £100 headphones will easily show up how ***** 128kb MP3 is it just depends on the sound signature of the headphones...

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not really, since all instrument sounds have subtle nuance and extensions and low rez compressed files tend to create dithering and artifacts especially in those subtle areas.. if you always use low end equipment and or low bit rate files there will be parts of you music that you may never ever hear and will just think is not there..

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iluvmusic said:

not really, since all instrument sounds have subtle nuance and extensions and low rez compressed files tend to create dithering and artifacts especially in those subtle areas.. if you always use low end equipment and or low bit rate files there will be parts of you music that you may never ever hear and will just think is not there..

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Yes precisely even a simple cymbals cannot be reproduced on 128kb properly... I was trying to give an example of those songs which are used in the online bitrate test where you have to guess.

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streetdragon said:

partly the reason i feel that people find high end cans unappealing to them is the fact that most non audiophiles stock up with 128 kbps songs from itunes or some youtube rips (my friends do so) so when they take my headphones to test on their system they are unimpressed, when i hered my own pair through their system i was unimpressed too, beats just covers up the compression artifacts with their special magical feature of 'returning lost quality of mp3 compression'

im sorry that was just a joke, beats just covers and masks the artifacts by loading it with so much bass the people also think more bass impact means more energy means better sound quality,
on the other hand most high end cans are very picky about the music file quality being pumped through it, and will actually make beats sound better than $1000 flagships just because beats covers up the flaws while the flagship models just show you the flaws in the compression in utter most detail

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Someone listened to my 681's (they're pretty revealing I guess) on their old flip phone and said they sounded great. But he wasn't a beats user (though he had heard beats)

On a similar vein, X-Fi enhancements tend to be a little magical in description, bordering on the Beats' claim of restoration of lost bitrate. It's essentially just EQ.

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parall3l said:

lol "studio quality", that junk is for little kids living in their parent's basements. That stuff can't even touch the X-Fi Experience.

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 Is this what you're referring to?

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saoshyant said:

 Is this what you're referring to?

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That's precisely what I'm referring to. I know there's many members in here who will sing to its glory all day long, but in the end the marketing for it (as your example proves) is complete distortion.

Hehe, I still use one tho.  Just felt too lazy to crack open the case to put a soundcard in, so just went with a USB version.

Another example of extremely misleading marketing... They get away with it by using subjective terms which cannot be measured... In that example it would be : "experience"

ssrock64 said:

On a similar vein, X-Fi enhancements tend to be a little magical in description, bordering on the Beats' claim of restoration of lost bitrate. It's essentially just EQ.

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It's not quite an EQ, it's a proprietary DSP-based exciter/expander. IXBT has more:
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi-part2.html

It has a dynamic component that an EQ lacks. You can't quite replicate it with just a graphic or para EQ - you can get pretty close, but not 1:1. Just like the BBE Engine; you can get close, but not 100%. Watch Creative back-peddle their marketing claims in their reply to IXBT too! "We never claimed it produces DVD-Audio mastering quality!" :rolleyes:

I think where it's "magical claims" is that they didn't just come out and say "dynamic EQ" or "intelligent dynamic EQ" - they put out that "studio quality with X-Fi" trash. I think it's a neat toy, and encourage people to try it (or other exciter/expander effects, like BBE, Pioneer, etc) but have no delusions that it's doing whatever that marketing graphic says.

Another fun one to knock on is high bitrate digital content in general - anyone else read the Xiph post on it? I also used to have this really nice AC-3 vs DTS vs MLP resource, but lost the link; basically there's a lot of magical claims about what silly high bitrate/lossless/etc data gets you, that isn't validated by actual studies or in real world practice.

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obobskivich said:

It's not quite an EQ, it's a proprietary DSP-based exciter/expander. IXBT has more:
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi-part2.html
It has a dynamic component that an EQ lacks. You can't quite replicate it with just a graphic or para EQ - you can get pretty close, but not 1:1. Just like the BBE Engine; you can get close, but not 100%. Watch Creative back-peddle their marketing claims in their reply to IXBT too! "We never claimed it produces DVD-Audio mastering quality!"

I think where it's "magical claims" is that they didn't just come out and say "dynamic EQ" or "intelligent dynamic EQ" - they put out that "studio quality with X-Fi" trash. I think it's a neat toy, and encourage people to try it (or other exciter/expander effects, like BBE, Pioneer, etc) but have no delusions that it's doing whatever that marketing graphic says.
Another fun one to knock on is high bitrate digital content in general - anyone else read the Xiph post on it? I also used to have this really nice AC-3 vs DTS vs MLP resource, but lost the link; basically there's a lot of magical claims about what silly high bitrate/lossless/etc data gets you, that isn't validated by actual studies or in real world practice.

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That reminds me of the whole controversy over SACD, with AES concluding from a test study of audio engineers that it was indistinguishable from red-book CD format.

ssrock64 said:

That reminds me of the whole controversy over SACD, with AES concluding from a test study of audio engineers that it was indistinguishable from red-book CD format.

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Yeah, same with a lot of other formats, but that doesn't stop people from drawing battle lines.

Speaking of which, does the SACD promotional literature claim it's an audible difference?

ssrock64 said:

Speaking of which, does the SACD promotional literature claim it's an audible difference?

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Yeah, they claim it handles higher frequencies better because of DSD's sampling. I don't think Sony very aggressively pushes SACD anymore, having said that.