Quote:
Originally Posted by Loftprojection
I'm an old fashion guy so take my comment with a grain of salt. I've done some testing over time and to me nothing sounds as good as a good old original redbook CD read by a good old CD player. Second to that is an uncompressed Exact Audio Copy of the same redbook CD on your Powerbook with a very good DAC like the MiniDAC. I can almost not imagine that someone would not be able to hear a difference versus your AAC, ALAC and so forth from either an iPod Mini or Powermac. However, if you have to use an iPod or a portable PC without an expensive DAC for either convenience or budget, then it is probably not worth it to bother going up to ALAC.
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Honestly, I think the audible loss from lossy codecs is greatly exxagerated in the audiophile community. There is a wealth of evidence available (such as those tests by hydrogenaudio) in controlled, double-blind tests showing that, in many cases (perhaps the vast majority of "real world" cases), one can achieve transparency with high quality lossy formats at bitrates around 200kbps (and sometimes lower).
Now this is simply my personal opinion on the matter, but, I think audiophiles tend to exxagerate the loss in lossy as a point of pride. As the original poster exhibited here - it is apparently a norm amongst audiophiles that one
ought to be able to distinguish between the lossy file and the original. I think this is a bit silly, really. These codecs are designed to be able to achieve transparency, and are tested on real people (with trained ears) in order to tune the psy model. The fact of the matter is that there is minimum level at which you can hear a given frequency (threshold in quiet), and information is masked by other information; sometimes a lot, such as with rock. So, both in theory and in practice, there is a lot of information contained that you simply cannot hear. What one does have to worry about is errors such as pre/post-echo, and the effect often referred to as a "swishing" or "shimmering" sound (also some with transients, some with phase, etc.). However, those sorts of issues usually arise at lower bitrates (128k and below) and are becoming increasingly rare at ~200.
Really, guys, there's nothing wrong with you if you can't tell the difference and, even if you think you can tell the difference, you may find you really can't in a double blind test. Placebo can be a powerful factor in one's listening experience. Ultimately, placebo counts in one's listening experience, as this is a subjective domain. However, that doesn't mean the lossy codec is failing beyond your finding the idea of it displeasing
