128kb/s mp3s - good enough for portable

[Xpander]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gorman Happy not to be alone in my being annoyed by this sort of position... the OP clearly mentioned ABXing only to be ignored by the majority of following posts. It's incredible how people are resistant to the simple concept of scientific method. It's like something is taken from them, I don't know. Furthermore, pretty much all posts seem to imply that it's either 192 or 128, with nothing in between. That's not the case and the purpose of ABXing is just to find at which point you find the music undistinguishable from the original. You might well find an intermediate point between 128 and 192. That's the most likely outcome IMHO... Edit: and by all means, use LAME with the --vbr-new option. That's key to get the maximum quality.

Annoyed by what? The OP suggested using a combination of ABX and personal testing to determine one's personal needs. What is this “golden ears” nonsense that you people are going on about? Is 192 kb/s considered an “extreme” bit rate now? He even stated how 192 kb/s can be discerned through listening, but rather chose 128kb/s for his own portable use as a matter of personal preference. Anyone who has paid attention will note that most people in this thread posted opinions supporting the OP's results.

I like how people will get annoyed at someone who doesn’t care to spend however long a period of time to run ABX tests to save what, an album or two worth of disk space and a few minutes of battery life at the end of the day when one can just encode at a slightly higher bit rate? Did anyone in this thread even suggest that we should all encode at some ungodly high bit rate, or anything contrary to the OP’s suggested outcome save for maybe one person? God forbid we don’t all reduce our musical enjoyment down to numbers and graphs. Excuse me while I go back to the archaic practice of using my ears to determine what sounds good.

 

[PeeeMeS]

I can't ABX Lame 192 vs Lossless

Heck, don't want to try... but I'm guessing 90% of the songs I can't ABX Lame 160~ vs Lossless




128 good enough? if encoded/ripped correctly, yeah it's good enough for on-the-run listening for sure

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xpander Annoyed by what? The OP suggested using a combination of ABX and personal testing to determine one's personal needs. What is this “golden ears” nonsense that you people are going on about? Is 192 kb/s considered an “extreme” bit rate now? He even stated how 192 kb/s can be discerned through listening, but rather chose 128kb/s for his own portable use as a matter of personal preference. Anyone who has paid attention will note that most people in this thread posted opinions supporting the OP's results. I like how people will get annoyed at someone who doesn’t care to spend however long a period of time to run ABX tests to save what, an album or two worth of disk space and a few minutes of battery life at the end of the day when one can just encode at a slightly higher bit rate? Did anyone in this thread even suggest that we should all encode at some ungodly high bit rate, or anything contrary to the OP’s suggested outcome save for maybe one person? God forbid we don’t all reduce our musical enjoyment down to numbers and graphs. Excuse me while I go back to the archaic practice of using my ears to determine what sounds good.

Actually 192~ Lame is the golden standard on the Hydrogen audio forums. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think a single person has passed an ABX test with approved rips under 192~ Lame(whatever setting they're using over there at hydrogen)

So yeah, the 192 thing is kinda important and does divide a lot of people.

 

[<GNEFF> killbot]

I use 64kbs aac for portable video soundtrack, 128 aac files for audiobooks and 160 aac for music. The first one is accepteble with some distortion but useble with headphones. Audiobooks at 128 is transparant for me 95% of the time and so is music at 160.

 

[Xpander]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeeeMeS Actually 192~ Lame is the golden standard on the Hydrogen audio forums. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think a single person has passed an ABX test with approved rips under 192~ Lame(whatever setting they're using over there at hydrogen) So yeah, the 192 thing is kinda important and does divide a lot of people.

Hey, and that's perfectly fine. I don't doubt that encoders have come a long way; people all have their preferences, after all. If I were to fail an ABX test, so be it; it would neither be expected or surprising. However, is it common practice to snipe at people because they're not encoding their music at the absolute, de-facto, most efficient rates backed up by scientific testing? You'll excuse me if I'm not impressed by the cheap hubris-laden righteous indignation.

God forbid people have all this equipment and music to appreciate music as opposed to passing a test, you know?

 

[PeeeMeS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xpander However, is it common practice to snipe at people because they're not encoding their music at the absolute, de-facto, most efficient rates backed up by scientific testing? You'll excuse me if I'm not impressed by the cheap hubris-laden righteous indignation.

Well, I see a lot of sniping by head-fi members regarding regular folk who use ipods/bose/stock buds.
Maybe they need a taste of their own medicine once in a while?

 

[Xpander]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeeeMeS Well, I see a lot of sniping by head-fi members regarding regular folk who use ipods/bose/stock buds. Maybe they need a taste of their own medicine once in a while?

Oh no, that's perfectly justified.

 

[pennylane]

I think a properly ripped 128kbps mp3 is good enough for portable. I rip everything at --alt preset standard so I just use that for portable because I'm too lazy to rip/convert it.

 

[gorman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xpander Annoyed by what?

By what you wrote at the end Quote:

Excuse me while I go back to the archaic practice of using my ears to determine what sounds good.

Right. Instead people tend to ABX tracks with their noses, I know.

This forum has a high standard of posts, as such, I try to give the best advice possible when I write here, both in my general posting and in my reviews.

Saying "go higher than needed" is not, IMHO, good advice. Saying "here is how you should go about to discover how high you need" is. Otherwise they could just post in whatever forum they tend to visit, be it about politics, whatever... everybody there will have an opinion on what sounds good. An informed opinion? That I'm not sure.

Furthermore, you defend the OP. I totally agree with the OP, he did ABX, he did take an informed decision. Nothing wrong with that.

Edit: I wish to add that if somebody doesn't care at all about compression, ABXing, bla, bla, bla... then he would not even be posting in a thread like this. I do respect people that say they don't care and just listen to the music, that's the main (only?) purpose of our hobby. But once you start discussing bitrates, compression rates, quality settings, ABX... well, then I feel that the right information should be given.

Peace.

 

[Xpander]

Right. Instead people tend to ABX tracks with their noses, I know.

[/QUOTE=gorman]

That was a bit of vaguery on my part, I'll admit. At the end of the day, ABX becomes more and more about statistics the more you do it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gorman This forum has a high standard of posts, as such, I try to give the best advice possible when I write here, both in my general posting and in my reviews. Saying "go higher than needed" is not, IMHO, good advice. Saying "here is how you should go about to discover how high you need" is. Otherwise they could just post in whatever forum they tend to visit, be it about politics, whatever... everybody there will have an opinion on what sounds good. An informed opinion? That I'm not sure. Furthermore, you defend the OP. I totally agree with the OP, he did ABX, he did take an informed decision. Nothing wrong with that. Edit: I wish to add that if somebody doesn't care at all about compression, ABXing, bla, bla, bla... then he would not even be posting in a thread like this. I do respect people that say they don't care and just listen to the music, that's the main (only?) purpose of our hobby. But once you start discussing bitrates, compression rates, quality settings, ABX... well, then I feel that the right information should be given. Peace.

And that’s fine. I also like to keep the advice relatively salient. However, that doesn’t mean people can’t provide their opinions. Hardly anyone, if anyone at all, has advocated their POV as if it’s some kind of written law and dismiss others’ input. When every varying factor from mastering quality to the gear quality can drastically alter the sound, some of us don’t have the time to ABX every type of music we listen to with a shifting component base. “Settling” for encoding in different rates and doing a non-blind test, go by whatever the ears tell us is often a more time-efficient solution.

I’d say that mostly everyone here cares about compression rates, bit rates, and such; this is an audiophile site, after all. That doesn’t mean anyone who isn’t able to dedicate as much time to it and certain processes as some other can is violating some sacred code.

Anyways, back to audio. Cheers

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xpander I’d say that mostly everyone here cares about compression rates, bit rates, and such; this is an audiophile site, after all. That doesn’t mean anyone who isn’t able to dedicate as much time to it and certain processes as some other can is violating some sacred code.

Xpander, I don't want to take issue with much of what you say, because I think that we agree on the most salient point: that people should use their ears to make a decision. I just want to point out, however, that there is not a large investment of time required to take an ABX test. And for that reason, I think that it is perfectly justifiable to criticize those who say, "you need to use a minimum of X kbps" without having done the test to establish that they can, in fact, hear a difference between X kbps and a lower bitrate, using a modern encoder.

 

[mnhnhyouh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xpander What is this “golden ears” nonsense that you people are going on about? Is 192 kb/s considered an “extreme” bit rate now? He even stated how 192 kb/s can be discerned through listening, but rather chose 128kb/s for his own portable use as a matter of personal preference. Anyone who has paid attention will note that most people in this thread posted opinions supporting the OP's results. I like how people will get annoyed at someone who doesn’t care to spend however long a period of time to run ABX tests to save what, an album or two worth of disk space and a few minutes of battery life at the end of the day when one can just encode at a slightly higher bit rate? Did anyone in this thread even suggest that we should all encode at some ungodly high bit rate, or anything contrary to the OP’s suggested outcome save for maybe one person? God forbid we don’t all reduce our musical enjoyment down to numbers and graphs. Excuse me while I go back to the archaic practice of using my ears to determine what sounds good.

So here are some of the opinions not backed up by ABX, as far as I can tell...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Asr IMO, 128 kb/s is too low for any kind of listening. 160 kb/s should be the absolute minimum anyone should deal with, there's a significant jump in SQ between the two.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaBreaHead Last night, I was listening to 192 kbps files (hardly audiophile, I realize) on a Rio Carbon and Shure E3C's with short Comply tips -- and I couldn't stop smiling. And that's a combo just at the low end of the Head-Fi scale ...

Love the "hardly audiophile" bit. Can you ABX between 192k VBR from the latest LAME encoder and CD?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xpander I've always found that when ripping music, 192/Q6 Vorbis provides a very happy medium. I've noticed the drop in quality in 128kbps mp3s even when in the relatively loud listening environment that I'm often in.

Bet "noticed" doesnt mean ABX.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eagle_Driver I beg to differ somewhat. I've found that 128kbps for MP3's made most music I listen to virtually unlistenable. I definitely notice the garbling in the treble on most such files -- even on the run.

With the latest LAME encoding?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eagle_Driver And in my particular case, I definitely notice a big drop-off in sound quality between 192kbps and 128kbps. (The drop-off in SQ between 320kbps and 192kbps is much less noticeable than between 192kbps and 128kbps.)

One with "golden ears" claims to be able to notice (much less though) between 320 and 192.....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woosh i notice a difference on my Ipod unamped via my K81DJs from 128 to 192, but only if i listen very carefully. the difference between 192 and above is 99% of the time indistinguishable in my case.

95.55445239 % of statistics are made up on the spot.

a

 

[Asr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mnhnhyouh So here are some of the opinions not backed up by ABX, as far as I can tell...

The sound quality difference between 128 and 160 should be noticeable to untrained ears. I used to compose with MIDI (MIDI!) and when I saved it off to a WAV for conversion to MP3, there were stark differences between a 128 and 160 file. Let me say again - it was MIDI. If I could tell a difference using the low-fi samples of a MIDI wavetable, then 128 is too low. If you're listening to ripped music at 128 that's just an insult to the music, regardless of source or headphones.

 

[JWolf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1979 I agree completely. When I tested my music using Ogg at Q6 verses LAME at 192 CBR or even VBR I always found Ogg to be better to my ears.

That is because ogg vorbis at the same or similar enough bitrate to mp3 is noticably better in every respect. I am suprised Apple did not go for ogg vorbis in the iPod since it would give a better sound out of the box over aac/mp3.

 

[mnhnhyouh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Asr The sound quality difference between 128 and 160 should be noticeable to untrained ears. I used to compose with MIDI (MIDI!) and when I saved it off to a WAV for conversion to MP3, there were stark differences between a 128 and 160 file. Let me say again - it was MIDI. If I could tell a difference using the low-fi samples of a MIDI wavetable, then 128 is too low. If you're listening to ripped music at 128 that's just an insult to the music, regardless of source or headphones.

How old was the mp3 encoder?

h

 

[JWolf]

When I'm listening to my music in no specific order (random) sometimes when I hear a track that sound awful (to my ears), I look and see what format/bitrate it is. And some of the time I notice it's 128k. So I go out and look for a better quality copy. And I also notice other bitrates that have artifacts due to mp3. I don't know if it's poor settings, poor encoder, transcoded, etc. But they are there. And when it's bad, it's noticable.

With earbuds, 8k mono mp3 is fine. It's all crap with earbuds. But with good headphones, 128k is not good enough. Hell, even 192k CBR isn't good enough in some cases. There are two choices and that would be depended on the music and how it sounds. Using -v0 or 320k CBR (if you plan on using mp3). If it sounds bad at 320k mp3, then go ogg vorbis (-q 9 or -q 10) and it will sound better. Of course lossless is an option too. But the best idea is if you rip in mp3, listen before you put away the CD or toss the uncompressed tracks to see if you need to up the bitrate or change the format. Even lame at the best settings cannot totally eliminate artifacts. And if you hear them, then the encode is crap and needs to have the bitrate upped. The reason -v0 is good is that it allows LAME to up the bitrate when needed so you have less of a chance of hearing artifacts whereas 192k CBR means you are stuck at 192k even if the music demands a higher bitrate to prevent some of the noticable artifacts.


Jon