[rickcr42]

Quote:

Ultimately, the CD will soon follow the way of the record. But I'm betting on computer-based music files that exceede the quality of CDs to be released soon.

that is my nightmare !

so many trying to convince others that lossy compression files sound as good or identical to Cds means they would be entirely content with the format as the transport system for retail music

The companies could save a bundle figuring "what the hell ,the consumer won't even notice !" but those of us striving for the best will be caught out again unless we fork over long green to obtain a thing we already had but had it taken away because some are easy to please.

Vinyl records should never have been abandoned by the major record labels but they could not charge $12.99 for an inferior product , the CD ,without upping the LP cost in the process to a price that would have eliminated it as a viable choice to a large percentage of the buying public

causing it to go away by default anyway

The per copy cost/retail price ratio of the CD is MILES away from the same ratio for the LP record

IMAGINE how cheap a lossy compression "copy" would cost the label !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Be careful what you ask for

you just may get it

 

[eyeteeth]

Quote:

Originally posted by rickcr42 Be careful what you ask for you just may get it

Really? OK, in that case I want to purchase/download true hi-rez (not fake hi-rez SACD or DVD-A) that is unmistakebly superior to vinyl.

 

[aerius]

There's a nice part in the article, let me quote it for you.

Quote:

A maximum score of 51 points was therefore possible and the random statistical mean (caused by unequal weight) was at 14.1 points. Any contestant who had a score greater than 14.1 would therefore have heard actual differences in quality.

Now go look at the table they have at the end of the article. All but one person scored higher than 14.1. Think about that.

 

[Earwax]

Quote:

Originally posted by aerius There's a nice part in the article, let me quote it for you. Now go look at the table they have at the end of the article. All but one person scored higher than 14.1. Think about that.

But the points were a combined score for 128k and 256k samples, no one should be surprised that they found a difference between CD and 128k.

Personally, I think the study is too flawed in scoring technique and too old in encoding technology to have any relevance today. But if you want to pull quotes out of it, how about this one:

Quote:

Our biggest surprise, however, came when we added up all the points achieved by all of the samples at each quality level: 128 kbps, 256 kbps, and CD-ROM. The samples at 256 kbps and the original CD samples achieved precisely the same score of 501 points. The 128 kbps samples clearly scored lower, with a total of 439 points. For those interested in statistics, these values of 501 and 439 differ significantly in statistical terms, with a probability of error of one percent (in scientific investigations, statistical deviations are considered significant when the probability is 5% or less). And between the 256 kbps and CD samples, which got exactly the same score, there was, of course, no statistical difference. ]

 

[taylor]

Quote:

Originally posted by rickcr42 that is my nightmare ! so many trying to convince others that lossy compression files sound as good or identical to Cds means they would be entirely content with the format as the transport system for retail music The companies could save a bundle figuring "what the hell ,the consumer won't even notice !" but those of us striving for the best will be caught out again unless we fork over long green to obtain a thing we already had but had it taken away because some are easy to please. Vinyl records should never have been abandoned by the major record labels but they could not charge $12.99 for an inferior product , the CD ,without upping the LP cost in the process to a price that would have eliminated it as a viable choice to a large percentage of the buying public causing it to go away by default anyway The per copy cost/retail price ratio of the CD is MILES away from the same ratio for the LP record IMAGINE how cheap a lossy compression "copy" would cost the label !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Be careful what you ask for you just may get it

I agree with you on the fact that having record companies spewing out lossy stuff is bad, but...

WAV is lossy. It's sampled at 16-bit 44.1KHz.

I want to see the real high-res stuff that the recording studio uses come out. I'm sure they have a format that is at least as good as SACD. Some 24-bit 192KHz downloadable music wouldn't go amiss with me.

Besides, reading off the hard drive then going through a digital output is probably a better transport than the spinning CD.

A compariosn I would like to see:
Take two identical, high end setups (methinks Omega IIs with KGSS and a very good DAC) then take a PC with a soundcard and a CD transport. Any osund card will do, a slong as it has a optical digital output and drivers to make it bit-perfect. Then, put the WAV files from a CD on the hard drive. Play the WAV off the PC and play the CD off the transport. My guess is that the PC would be better.

 

[the terabyte]

Quote:

Originally posted by iamdone It should be lossless because transcoding suffers further sound loss. So if some new compression comes out in the future that creates even smaller files with the same quality or even better (or smaller lossless files) you don't have to go back to the original cds. You can just encode from your current lossless files at a much quicker rate.

why do you care about advances in the quality if you cannot tell the difference?

perhaps you have a point in the possibility of a lower bitrate codec coming out, but storage media is advancing at a rate much faster than that of audio formats, thus i would postulate that in the "future" the amount of music will not be severely limited by the format. even now with ogg, aac, and mpc, to get a certain level of transparentness the bit rate is still comparable to mp3 (although these compression schemes sound much better at lower bit rates).

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

Now go look at the table they have at the end of the article. All but one person scored higher than 14.1. Think about that.

nothing here for me to think about at all

i don't care what others think or hear ,just what i personally hear

if these jokers want to listen to mp3s i will not stand in the way but at the same time i don't want people that are willing to settle for what i consider a lesser medium determining what i can in the future purchase as a "new release"

"WAV is lossy. It's sampled at 16-bit 44.1KHz."

we are in total agrreement here

"I want to see the real high-res stuff that the recording studio uses come out. I'm sure they have a format that is at least as good as SACD. Some 24-bit 192KHz downloadable music wouldn't go amiss with me."

This is where we part company

It is my opinion ,and as such just an opinion,that ANY digital format is just an approximation of the actual event

We do not hear in a digital manner but as lossy compression has shown we can be "fooled" into thinking we are getting the real thing

This is easy as long as there is nothing better to compare it to

that would be like describing the color purple to a blind person

but once you have heard the best analog has to offer you will be sold .or maybe not

again it comes down to choices

My fear is the majority ,the same crew that thinks an all-in-one-box system or a computer as sound system is the end all- be all in high fidelity sound , will decide what choices i have

Me ?

I would rather see a new analog hi-res format

I want every single pop-click-AC noise ,whatever that was in the original performance because that will mean ALL the MUSIC will also be there in full glory !

Not the digital approximation hi-res or not

 

[Calanctus]

rickcr42, I share your nightmare. The sheer irony of it all--now that we have better technology for digital reproduction, we may not be able to take advantage of it as consumers--does not console me at all.

 

[taylor]

I do agree with you on the aspect that analouge is better (I have had a few debates on a computer forum about how analouge is better) BUT digital is still very good and far more convenient. Records are pretty much reserved for that "relaxing with dimmed lights" kind of listening. And records are very bulky and not portable.

In the last few years of vinyl before it lost mainstream, there was the just emerging technology of optical sensors instead of the needle. What about taking a record, and using new miniturazation technology, shrink it down to 3" diameter. Add 3" records and optical reading (no cartridge/tone arm/phono stage to bother with) and BAM! Analouge is back!

 

[rickcr42]

reverse progress

there is a classic oxymoron

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally posted by taylor I do agree with you on the aspect that analogue is better.

If by analogue you mean good tape recordings, you may be right. But i highly doubt it in the case of vinyl records. I really like the sound of vinyl, and its charm is even to some extent preserved when digitalized -- or reversed: based on a digital recording --, but I think it can't be accurate in the sense of true to the master(tape) -- given the very complicated recording process implying electromechanical sound transduction. Its fascination comes from subtle distortions and colorations adding warmth and liveliness. I'm sure most (if not all) people who rate vinyl as better than CD and even the high-rez formats don't know how the master tape of their records sounds. My take is: vinyl on a good turntable system sounds more beautiful (and musical) than the original recording. My judgement is not least based on digitally recorded vinyl records of which I also own the CD version. I guess many of the reference vinyl records are recorded digitally...

Quote:

What about taking a record, and using new miniturazation technology, shrink it down to 3" diameter. Add 3" records and optical reading (no cartridge/tone arm/phono stage to bother with) and BAM! Analogue is back!

An interesting idea, and not too unrealistic IMO. But I fear the resolution you get from an optical analog scanning, the more so when miniaturized, by far doesn't reach the accuracy of digital sampling at 24 bit/192 kHz (or even 96 kHz). I think it's a common misconception that digital sampling can't recreate an analog curve accurately -- which has its origin in the redbook standard with its too meager sampling rate. There's no reason to assume that a sampling frequency of 192 kHz and 24 bit resolution shouldn't guarantee a virtually perfect reproduction of the original analog signal after a smoothing low-pass filtering -- audible effects from the associated electronics aside. And it will be superior in amplitude and phase response to the proposed optical analog recording system.


Back to the topic. I'm not too surprised by the results of the c't test. I don't think I would have had better results myself -- given the unfamiliar acoustics and setup. Until now I'm too lazy to burn a dedicated CD to do a serious comparison between MP3 and Wave/CD on my own speaker setup -- because I see no reason to use data compression with it. I imagine I would hear a difference even with the highest bitrates. Anyway, the area where MP3 makes sense is portable players, normally used with headphones.

I've discovered quite some time ago that with headphones my ears are far less sensitive to digital artifacts and flaws than with speakers. It has turned out that 256 kb/s is a borderline where I mostly can't distinguish MP3 from the original Wave file (with very rare exceptions). And without any comparison I even can live with lower bitrates such as 192 kHz or VBR with 160 average, although there may be some slight artifacts with critical instruments from time to time.

I'd even call myself an MP3 fan. Isn't it great to have (almost) your whole music collection with you and to be able to enjoy it in (virtually) CD quality wherever you are!?

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Quote:

Originally posted by sleepkyng Can you cite some sort of source about the whole 10 to 20 kilobits per second thing? it's not that i don't believe what your saying is true, but i'd like to review that information for my own personal knowledge i dont' think the auditory system is as simple as a data bandwidth from teh cochlea to the brain. i mean, yes in essence you can reduce it to that, but there's alot of complicated process going on there, right? i guess that's what you're saying about the decoding part, so to clairfy, are you saying that soundwaves are perceived at 20kbps? i'm confused here. this is not a retort or rebuttal, just a naive dude wantin to know more

Here's my lame attempt at finding the article where I first read about this and the replies others have made

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.p...c=20314&st=0&&

 

[sleepkyng]

Ah, that makes much more sense!

or at least, the theory does

thanks Joe!

 

[pbirkett]

Quote:

Originally posted by taylor WAV is lossy. It's sampled at 16-bit 44.1KHz.

Explain how. It is an identical copy of the original disc which means it is not lossy. Lossy compared to a real analogue sound perhaps, but it is not a lossy format.

 

[davvy]

This has become a really interesting discussion. Thanks for all the comments.

Quote:

But for critical listening or component evaluation, come on! I would only use mpeg as a joke... Give me the most unaltered version available. I don't see how even the most die-hard data compression fan would choose a butchered copy over the original under these circumstances. It is a matter of principle!

This is what I am grappling with myself. I kind of agree with you, but then I honestly can't hear a difference, so it really is more a matter of principle rather than anything else. I guess in the future, storage space will be so cheap that there will be no need for any lossy compression and then this whole debate will go away. But for the moment, I have over 60GB of EAC/LAME MP3s, and I don't feel inclined to fork out the kind of money it would take to get enough hard drive space to hold all that in FLAC. But with an eye to the future, I have started archiving any new CDs that I rip into FLAC (which gets burned onto DVD and archived) as well as MP3 (which stays on my hard drive.

Quote:

Really? OK, in that case I want to purchase/download true hi-rez (not fake hi-rez SACD or DVD-A) that is unmistakebly superior to vinyl.

The problem as I see it is that we don't really know what is superior to what. This is why I am keen on blind testing, because as far as I can see it is the only way to get some answers. What I would love to know is what is the point at which increasing the number of bits and sampling rate of digital audio results in no audible increase in sound quality. As far as I can discover, no-one really knows the answer to this. Over at hydrogen audio they argue that no-one has proven that 24 bit, 96 kHz DVD Audio (or SACD for that matter) sounds any better than CD (or that it doesn't either). Then on another forum I found that the general opinion was that increasing from 16 bit to 24 bit resulted in audible improvements, but increasing the sample rate above 44.1 kHz did not. And I personally have been unable to even hear a difference between -alt preset MP3s and the original CD. If you can compress the data on a CD down to about one seventh of its original size and hear minimal if any difference, is it really likely that you are going to be able to hear an improvement over CD when moving to higher resolutions ? Again I don't know the answer (and I don't know if anybody truely does).

The problem is that companies bring out new formats with the aim of making money and so naturally claim that they sound superior to CD. And then no-one actually does any proper testing to validate this. Naturally a lot of people say it sounds better, but is this just placebo effect because they think it should sound better or is it real ?? WE DONT KNOW. And the fact that a lot of high res recordings are in 5.1 rather than good old stereo complicates things even further.

I am a (medical) doctor so allow me to use a medical analogy. To me, audiophiles are like doctors used to be 30 or 40 years ago before the importance of evidence based medicine (and large blinded randomised trials) was recognised. There were a lot of bright people with good intentions, but because there wasn't proper testing, there were a lot of things being done that seemed like a good idea, but actually were subsequently proven to be useless or even harmful. I could give you numerous examples. I think audiophiles are a lot like that right now. There are a lot of good people giving their opinions in good faith, but because there is a lack of proper testing, it is inevitable that these opinions are clouded by prejudices and placebo effects. And the problem is that we don't know which things they are right about and which things they aren't.