[ramicio]

Standards are standards.  If you don't follow them or update them without going through the proper channels then you are creating something that doesn't confrom anymore.  You can say to yourself that a pound is 17 ounces and do all your own math that way, then go to sell something that is supposed to be a strict pound and you will be wrong.  AAC is a much better compression scheme than MP3.  It's good enough that I can deal with 192 kbps AAC over 320 MP3.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Standards for things like MP3 encoding aren't defined that strictly.  There isn't a one and only one way to do things.  The standard is more in terms of here's what the inputs need to be, here's what the outputs need to be, do some smart  stuff in between so that the outputs meet the specs.  Otherwise how would Google be able to supply a better JavaScript engine than the standard JavaScript implementation?  There's leeway and room to improve on what the standard implementation is.
 
There's plenty of room for LAME to be able to do improvements.  And there's even room for LAME to implement some non-standards conforming stuff like a custom field to allow for gapless playback.

 

[Zangetsu]

hard to say. i second trying it

 

[Satellite_6]

Quote:

Standards are standards.  If you don't follow them or update them without going through the proper channels then you are creating something that doesn't confrom anymore.  You can say to yourself that a pound is 17 ounces and do all your own math that way, then go to sell something that is supposed to be a strict pound and you will be wrong.  AAC is a much better compression scheme than MP3.  It's good enough that I can deal with 192 kbps AAC over 320 MP3.

I'm sorry but you simply don't understand the nature of encoders. They are constantly changing and being improved. Your statement is irrelevant in this situation. 
 
AAC is not a a much better compression scheme than mp3. 
 
I don't think I've ever some across anyone who likes other mp3 encoders over LAME, it is essentially accepted as the standard for mp3 (among audiophiles at least) and other encoders like FHG will give you inferior results.
 

 

[fuzzy1969]

I think the newer fraunhofer encoder might be an improvement over the original as they were involved from the start developing the original mp3 encoders and a lot of new artist releasing their mixes are using it.

 

[yepimonfire]

this is true, AAC is significantly better then MP3, AAC sounds nearly transparent at all bitrates above 160kbps. ABX tests on AAC at 256kbps show random non-musical information removed, almost like white noise. AAC also no matter what bitrate you use retains crispness, especially in the high frequencies, MP3 ruins high frequencies at lower bitrates.

 

[ramicio]

An encoder is NOT a standard.  MP3 and audiophile should not even be regarded in the same sentence.  How can you even say AAC is not a much better compression scheme than MP3?  I also dislike how people measure what the codec throws away and then somehow can say that it's not musical information just by looking at its graphical representation.  It's the same kind of crap as people saying anything greater than 16/44.1 is just adding non-musical information...

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

An encoder is NOT a standard.  MP3 and audiophile should not even be regarded in the same sentence.  How can you even say AAC is not a much better compression scheme than MP3?  I also dislike how people measure what the codec throws away and then somehow can say that it's not musical information just by looking at its graphical representation.  It's the same kind of crap as people saying anything greater than 16/44.1 is just adding non-musical information...

The MP3 standrad just tells you the format of frames, headers and so on, the psychoacoustic algorithms for deciding what information to discard are a matter of implementation, from tests done LAME is better at making those decisions than earlier FHG encoders, certainly early FHG encodes could be very poor, though this may have improved, I have not used FHG since 2000.
 
I use MP3 daily in my office rig and at home and in mobile settings, but I consider myself a music lover and not an audiophile. I have about $5K worth of kit and do not consider MP3 a waekness. For the vast majority of cases and the vast majority of listeners a modern LAME encode at VBR 0 or 320 is perceptually transparent, but since you refuse to put your golden ears to the test no amount of rational discourse will ever persuade you on this.
 
The psychoacoustic algorithms decide what to discard using concepts such as masking which models what frequencies will not be missed as they would not normally be heard in the context of the given signal, by and large this modelling is pretty good. Also a lot of high frequency data is discarded as it is less audible and at much lower levels than data in the 0 - 5K range.
 
As for 16/44.1 vs high res, well there is no controlled listening test data to date that indicates that in normal listening that the difference between high res and red book encoding schemes is audible and there is a peer reviewed published paper that sugests that it is not normally audible. You may have more data in a high res encode but the information recreated on playback may not be effectively different, i.e the waveform reconstructed my not be functionally different or perceptually different.
 
 
 

 

 

[ramicio]

Go back to HydrogenAudio with this "subjective" ABX nonsense.  I've already said I could hear the difference, and yes I have heard LAME encodes.  Still artifacts.  Lossy codecs and psychoacoustics are for noisy environments, not quiet headphone listening.  Satellite radio is like 64 kbps AAC which is crap for personal listening, but it sounds fine in a car.  Things to fool senses are based on the brain, not the senses itself.  There was an article this week about the size of an area of the brain having an effect on how optical illusions fool people or don't.  The same thing applies to sound.  Our ears are dumbed down because we live in a noisy world and our brains ignore so much.  It's called selective hearing.  Someone can be nagging at you and you learn to ignore it like there was never even a sound at all.

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Go back to HydrogenAudio with this "subjective" ABX nonsense.  I've already said I could hear the difference, and yes I have heard LAME encodes.  Still artifacts.  Lossy codecs and psychoacoustics are for noisy environments, not quiet headphone listening.  Satellite radio is like 64 kbps AAC which is crap for personal listening, but it sounds fine in a car.

You maintain you can hear a difference but you provide no actual evidence for this. The subjective forums are full of folks stating I can hear a difference between 320 and lossless, yet when put to the test many people fail to be able to do so. Anyone can say they hear a difference, actually doing it is another matter. On most samples I cannot tell the differences, on a few (very few) I can.
 
When did you last try DBTing a VBR 0 or 320 rip vs a wav file ?
 
I could provide you with some samples at 320 or VBR 0 if you like ?
 
 

 

 

[ramicio]

I ABX'd between a 24/96 wav and a 16/44.1 wav in fb2k.  ABX tests don't tell you which is better or worse, just that there is a difference.  That's why it is a stupid tool.  I don't need to provide evidence...this isn't the court of law.

 

[Satellite_6]

You don't have to have evidence to have an opinion but so say statements that are widely considered to be untrue and tell people they are true without any evidence is not logical. Keep your evidence-less opinions to your self. 

 

[ramicio]

They're wildly considered to be untrue by people who take the bare minimum philosophy of life in general, which doesn't lead to progression.  They are already looking to replace the CD with Blu-ray here now.  Are we supposed to still stick with 16/44.1 then because a lot of people think it sounds good enough.  Everything is based on math and measuring stuff rather than listening.  And even then they base things off that you can't tell which one is better, just different.  It's nonsense.  Let technology progress.  With storage growing we are getting closer and closer to being able to store an analog wave in insane resolution digitally, so it will look analog even on the computer and not all squared off.

 

[Satellite_6]

There are blind tests that indicate which files are better: the way they work is one must successfully ABX two tracks and after the ABX one is allowed to chose the one they think sound the best. I forget what these tests are called.
 
Progress is great and all but at some point it is not worth continuing. . . i.e. blu-ray discs look absolutely amazing, do we need anything better than 1920x1080? Very doubtful. CD quality is also extremely high quality (as long it's not to messed up in the mastering process) and does not need to be replaced. It is certainly beyond good enough for me. 
 
The fact is the newer formats were supposed to be all that and replace mp3, but none of them has really proven to be any better, ergo mp3 is still everywhere and it hasn't been replaced. They are more modern and technically superior in some ways, but they just don't give better results because mp3 (assuming you are using LAME) does it's job more than adequately. 

 

[ramicio]

1080p looks good enough because everyone had SD since TVs came along.  It is still far from film or 4k+ digital cinema.  I was talking about Blu-ray going audio-only, or at least accompanied by music videos.  Tom Petty's album "Damn The Torpedoes" came out on Blu-ray.  I have no idea if it is audio-only or not.  Lossy is prominent because the majority of people using the internet still don't have fast broadband and people want instant music.  Anyone who thinks MP3 was invented to be an end-all format for music is mistaken.  Compression is made to reduce bandwidth for telecommunications.  I really would like to know how everyone is differentiating what is measured as musical information or non-musical information.  That sure sounds opinionated to me.