[Blackwoof]

If you have something that is badly mastered like thrash metal from the 90's or something similar then you probably won't hear much difference, crap recording is just crap and no bitrate can fix that.

Bad masters can artifact codec's too because of the noisy tones, Like black metal or noise rock. When that happens cue the bit rate being 502kbps for AAC/Ogg/MPC, 320k for mp3. While on lossless it pretty much 1300kbps the whole time depending if it not Tak or wavpack, which can avg 320 ~ 900kbps on noise songs that use bad mastering to sound crunchy as hell weirdly?.

 

[bigshot]

Your FLAC test means nothing! I trust my own ears, files and gear not anybody else's. If you're not into high quality recordings then why bother be in this hobby at all?
Not every recording will have as noticeable difference and there is certainly more compression in a lower bit-rate file that has been greatly reduced in size.

This is a listening test. You just use your ears. You can listen to it on your own gear with your own ears. You can listen to it as long as you want, and as many times as you want. The recordings in the test are high quality, chosen by a golden ear audiophile. They reflect music that doesn't compress easily. In fact, they are difficult to compress without degrading the quality. You can listen to it as long as you want. There are ten samples. All you have to do is listen to them and rank them from 1 (best) to 10 (worst). But I won't offer it unless you are serious about taking the test seriously and conscientiously. I'm not going to make an effort unless you make an effort to find out for yourself. I am doing you a favor. You aren't doing me one. If you are going to say things like "Your FLAC test means nothing!" I am going to assume you are full of it. I'm only interested if you are genuinely interested.

Just to let you know how it works... I send you a FLAC file containing ten samples. They are randomly distributed by codec (Fraunhofer MP3, LAME MP3, and AAC) in three different data rates (192, 256 and 320). One of the ten samples is lossless. The only rules are that you can only judge these samples with your ears, not your computer; and you have to rank all ten samples from best to worst. That should be easy, right? Are you interested in finding out for sure how easy it is to tell? It should be fun and illuminating!

To answer your question, I am interested in the best sound my ears can hear. I don't care at all about sound I can't.

 

[bigshot]

Bad masters can artifact codec's too because of the noisy tones,

Bad mastering sounds bad for two reasons... Number one, because the music wasn't recorded or mixed well in the first place. Secondly, because some encoders will go into clipping if a recording is hot mastered with normalization up to 100%. If you knock the level down a hair before encoding, that solves the problem. Nothing fixes badly recorded or mixed music.

 

[Paddy]

For me 320 has compression, you need the ear and equipment to hear it.

FLAC all day long.

I have both, there is no difference. The vast majority of people in the audio industry aswell as numerous studies done have confirmed that almost everyone can't tell the difference. I notice the audiophile industry is full of marketing gimmicks that do nothing to enhance the sound while costing even upwards of thousands of dollars.

 

[TheGiantHogweed]

I have both, there is no difference. The vast majority of people in the audio industry aswell as numerous studies done have confirmed that almost everyone can't tell the difference. I notice the audiophile industry is full of marketing gimmicks that do nothing to enhance the sound while costing even upwards of thousands of dollars.

I suppose it does depend on what flac it is being compared to. 16bit CD quality flac compared to 320kbps mp3 just isn't woth having the vast majority of the time for most people IMO. I have the flac from some CD rips that I thought were exceptionally well recorded in the studio, but if I want to save space in the future, I am starting to doubt i will notice the difference unless i do some very extreme a and b testing, but then what is the enjoyment in that?

I admittedly don't have high end gear, but both my open backed headphones (Audio Technica ATH-AD700s and Beyerdynamic DT880 Premium) pick up all the faults of the recordings really well. They are so open and transparent that it really can sound like you are in the studio, they just lack that weight to the low end. But in terms of details, I believe you can get better, but the steps in sound improvement will just get smaller and smaller despite paying much more.

I have always been very sensitive to sound and struggle to listen to music if it has been badly recorded (if it is modern anyway). I can still hear frequencies as high as 18khz and get driven mad whenever i am near a CRT TV or monitor. Even many hifi amplifiers that have the transformer built into them seem to emit noise that I hear and others don't.

Given just how sensitive I am to audio and all other sounds, In recent years, I have started to struggle to believe people that can instantly tell apart these two formats. If it is 24bit flac vs mps and it is a great recording, then yea it could be noticeable with the right equipment. But the difference between CD quality flac and 320kbps mp3 is just so tiny that you would have to do careful testing to tell the difference which kind of removes your ability to enjoy music!

 

[PointyFox]

Your FLAC test means nothing! I trust my own ears, files and gear not anybody else's. If you're not into high quality recordings then why bother be in this hobby at all?
Not every recording will have as noticeable difference and there is certainly more compression in a lower bit-rate file that has been greatly reduced in size.

If you have something that is badly mastered like thrash metal from the 90's or something similar then you probably won't hear much difference, crap recording is just crap and no bitrate can fix that.

Go on Show me the test! The fact we are arguing about this on an audiophile website is worrying enough.

Haha classic audiophile meme: " Your ______ test means nothing! I trust my own ears, files and gear not anybody else's. If you're not into high quality recordings then why bother be in this hobby at all?"

 

[iFi audio]

I had an old SACD deck that had a placebo button. All the manual said was when you pushed the button, the sound became "purer". When you pushed the button, a lovely purple light lit up. I tried many times to discern a difference between button in and button out, and eventually decided to leave it on because the purple light was nice. I bet magenta is something like that.

That tickled me

Spotify led is green and Tidal goes magenta only when i play MQA however for the rest of Tidal's lossless tracks the led is also on green.

Green LED indicates PCM 44/48/88/96kHz streams, so that's what xDSD gets from a device before it.

 

[bigshot]

I am starting to doubt i will notice the difference unless i do some very extreme a and b testing, but then what is the enjoyment in that?

I have a very large music library... something like a year and a half of music at last count. The difference in file size makes a difference for me. Lossless would mean spreading my library over multiple drives instead of it all being on one drive. Before I started building my library, I wanted to find the threshold where lossy was identical in all cases. I spent a couple of weeks on the project, encoding in different ways, trying all kinds of music, and researching the most difficult kinds of sounds to encode. I determined that 99% of my files sounded perfect at AAC 192 VBR. But I wanted perfect sound in just one file format. So I encoded everything at AAC 256 VBR.

I have given a bunch of people my test, and no one has been able to discern any better than I did. If you would like to take the test and find out where your threshold is, I would be happy to share it with you. There's a certain relief in not having to guess any more because you know. FireLion appears to have retreated. He probably suspects he might be wrong, but he's afraid to take the test because he's so invested in being right. There's no convincing people like that, and they will never prove their point conclusively. They'll slip around and avoid being pinned down to an objective proof forever.

 

[PointyFox]

I'm happy with anything over like 160 kbps and do most of my listening on YouTube. For me the difference is negligible to non-existent. I remember an article saying around 160-180 kbps is the threshold of audibility of differences for MP3s.

 

[iFi audio]

I'm happy with anything over like 160 kbps and do most of my listening on YouTube. For me the difference is negligible to non-existent. I remember an article saying around 160-180 kbps is the threshold of audibility of differences for MP3s.

Whatever makes us feel comfortable. Personally I have nothing against how YT content sounds if I'm not in critical audition mode. Doesn't bother me at all, but how flat some music is recorded does.

 

[TheGiantHogweed]

That tickled me



Green LED indicates PCM 44/48/88/96kHz streams, so that's what xDSD gets from a device before it.

My DAC has lights for 44 to 192. It never seems to go above 44 but I don't care as it sounds fine to me. It does however go to 48 when my computer hasn't played any audio for about a minute. Then when my PC is off, that is 88. So clearly my computer is capable of sounding better turned off than on!



I put red PVC tape over the lights to make them easy on the eyes. When it is dark, the white LEDs illuminate my room! I only use this as my DAC and use the line out on the back to go to another headphone amp. This itself isn't quite loud enough to drive 600ohm headphones well.

 

[iFi audio]

So clearly my computer is capable of sounding better turned off than on!

Yeah, clearly

I put red PVC tape over the lights to make them easy on the eyes.

For a second I thought that your machine had these red stripes as a standard. Good job though

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Bad masters can artifact codec's too because of the noisy tones, Like black metal or noise rock. When that happens cue the bit rate being 502kbps for AAC/Ogg/MPC, 320k for mp3. While on lossless it pretty much 1300kbps the whole time depending if it not Tak or wavpack, which can avg 320 ~ 900kbps on noise songs that use bad mastering to sound crunchy as hell weirdly?.

Theoretically random noise is impossible to compress and so the ultimate destroyer of all lossy codecs Now, name a genre that sounds like random noise to you, I'm sure we can think of one or two

 

[Blackwoof]

Theoretically random noise is impossible to compress and so the ultimate destroyer of all lossy codecs Now, name a genre that sounds like random noise to you, I'm sure we can think of one or two

Well musepack a odd one out it's transparent on 99% on noisy samples at 160 ~ 225kbps while the pure ones cause it avg 500 ~ 1100kbps as the 1%. Merzbow is my main example.

 

[bigshot]

So clearly my computer is capable of sounding better turned off than on!

Blacker blacks!!