[bigshot]

Lossy isn't the way it was back in the olden days. A lot of people need to update their views about it.

 

[Blackwoof]

Lossy isn't the way it was back in the olden days. A lot of people need to update their views about it.

Yup, these days Lossy audio is transparent at 192kbps. But i stick with V1 Lame for metal/Noise and V3 for less complex(doom metal, ambient, etc). Since most Ambient content i have when done at V1 = 165 ~ 240kbps while V3 = 64 ~ 180kbps. Aeoga has two albums that artifact at 160kbps Apple AAC.

 

[peskypesky]

Lossy isn't the way it was back in the olden days. A lot of people need to update their views about it.

What's sad is that even on the HydrogenAudio forum, you have people disparaging lossy codecs. Of course, they can never back up their criticisms with ABX test results.
smh

 

[Blackwoof]

What's sad is that even on the HydrogenAudio forum, you have people disparaging lossy codecs. Of course, they can never back up their criticisms with ABX test results.
smh

The site a joke at this point they use made up claims why Musepack sucks despite their own tests on the 192kbps multi test, shows to your average joe 160kbps = 5,0.

 

[bigshot]

Forums don't have credibility, individuals do. It's the job of all of us who browse the internet to sort the wheat from the chaff. No one is going to do it for us.

 

[Blackwoof]

Yeah, I just use there wiki for basic info and avoid the forums. Since they don't like It when you show them samples that AAC/Vorbis struggle with, but MPC/Lame at 160kbps are transparent. MPC's limited support mean nothing these days when Android/ios have 3rd party apps that can play it.

 

[peskypesky]

Eddy Cue is Apple’s senior vice president of services and the person who oversees Apple Music. He didn’t mince words when he told Billboard that the sudden proliferation of lossless audio isn’t going to significantly evolve or change how we listen to music. “There’s no question it’s not going to be lossless,” he said when asked what technologies will bring about the “next-gen” of music streaming. Cue firmly stands on the side of the crowd that argues most people can’t hear any difference between CD-quality or hi-res tracks and the AAC or MP3 files that’ve been filling their ears for so long now. He did acknowledge that the higher-bit rate tracks might matter to music lovers with particularly sharp hearing or premium audio equipment, but he was also direct about how niche that group is.

“The reality of lossless is: if you take 100 people and you take a stereo song in lossless and you take a song that’s been in Apple Music that’s compressed, I don’t know if it’s 99 or 98 can’t tell the difference.” Cue revealed that he has regularly done blind tests with the Apple Music team, and they confirm how rare it is for anyone to be able to consistently recognize lossless audio. “You can tell somebody, ‘Oh, you’re listening to a lossless [song],’ and they tell you, ‘Oh, wow. That sounds incredible.’ They’re just saying it because you told them it’s lossless and it sounds like the right thing to say, but you just can’t tell.”

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/9/22525028/apple-music-spatial-audio-dolby-atmos-hands-on

 

[bigshot]

It's interesting that Apple is introducing something that makes no difference (lossless) at the same time it's introducing a primitive version of what will change the face of home audio in the future (DSPs).

 

[Steve999]

It's interesting that Apple is introducing something that makes no difference (lossless) at the same time it's introducing a primitive version of what will change the face of home audio in the future (DSPs).

[Edit—as already noted by @peskypesky above—sorry about that]: There’s an interview with an Apple exec, I think in Billboard magazine, where he states that lossless is just being provided to satisfy a small number of customers, that he cannot tell the difference between Apple‘s lossless and lossy music streaming, and that 98 or 99 percent of e population can’t either. And I think he’s understating things a bit and probably knows it. But it’s refreshing to see some truth in marketing on this, instead of the hi-res / MQA etc. types of gibberish or even perhaps misinformation we see from Amazon, Tidal, to a lesser extent Qobuz, etc.

I read somewhere the idea that Apple and Amazon and Google provide music streaming as yet another magnet into their respective highly profitable ecosystems, rather than as a money-maker. That sounds about right to me.

DSP and Atmos are big moves here by Apple, agreed, and after a day of experimenting with it, I agree it seems like a primitive and even underwhelming beginning.

After a day of playing around with everything, I just turned it all off on my iPad and my Apple TV—the lossless, the spatializer, the Atmos. Maybe I’ll try again later if there‘s been some dramatic progress. But kudos to them for not over-selling or over-hyping the lossless. And it’s there if I want it.

 

[Blackwoof]

The ones that overhype Lossless never show DBT's if they can tell 256 ~ 320kbps. While others think minor amount of tracks that artefact with 320 MP3 renders it a dud don't even try AAC/Vorbis at 256kbps to see if they perform better. Reddit audio subs are full of people suddenly claiming they can tell 320 vs lossless but stop replying when told if they did a ABX before commenting or hide behind that they use $1000+ speakers/Headphones.

 

[71 dB]

... or hide behind that they use $1000+ speakers/Headphones.

At worst this is "I have thicker wallet than you so ****!" -type of bullying.

Almost never do I see online mentioned, that it is not as simple as owning expensive/good quality gear. It might be actually the other way around! Lossy coding is based on the assumption we can't hear, at least easily, what data is missing because of temporal and spectral masking effects of our hearing. Well, low quality speakers/headphones have temporal and spectral issues themselves and it is not guaranteed that auditory masking effects work the way they are supposed to. This might lead to the situation where low quality speakers and headphones can make it actually easier to hear artefacts of lossy coding in the music. At least we can't assume high quality audio gear makes it easier. People think just because in general high quality audio gear makes it easier to hear detail, also lossy coding artefacts can be heard more easily. However, perceptual coding artefacts aren't any kind of detail. It is detail supposed to be masked and having all that detail reproduced accurately makes them masked if possible. Having that detail distorted due to low quality gear causes not-so-perfect masking and those coding artefacts can become more noticeable.

 

[bigshot]

That's a fine theory, but I don't think it would play out in practice. I would think the alteration of the sound by poor quality transducers would hide whatever small amount of artifacting the compression is causing. I don't see how a nice big glop of garbled sound would make a very small bit of garbled sound more audible.

By the way, there's an interesting discussion on the Head-Fi Facebook group about why audiophiles argue so much. Folks should check it out. There are some really good theories there.

 

[Blackwoof]

I don't see how a nice big glop of garbled sound would make a very small bit of garbled sound more audible.

Poorly recorded music can cause codecs to ask for over 256kbps because It just assumes your feeding it something like Noise music or broken FM radio & noisy vinyl rips. I've gotten hounded on Hydrogen audio/Reddit for pointing out that can happen, It got cringy when some HA took it as a personal attack?.

 

[bigshot]

It really isn't the way the music was recorded, it's randomized noise. The surface noise of the 78 is separate from the music itself. 78s with a lot of random pops and clicks and surface noise, which is made of a whole bunch of clicks massed together, is very hard to encode. But if you play back the resulting mess of artifacting on a fancy stereo, it's going to sound just as bad as playing it through a cheap one. Low fidelity artifacts still sound like artifacts.

 

[peskypesky]

The ones that overhype Lossless never show DBT's if they can tell 256 ~ 320kbps. While others think minor amount of tracks that artefact with 320 MP3 renders it a dud don't even try AAC/Vorbis at 256kbps to see if they perform better. Reddit audio subs are full of people suddenly claiming they can tell 320 vs lossless but stop replying when told if they did a ABX before commenting or hide behind that they use $1000+ speakers/Headphones.

Exactly.

The lossless fanboys and high-res fanboys are terrified of ABX testing because they secretly know they would fail to distinguish those files from a 246kb aac.

I have an audiophile brother who spends huge amounts of money on equipment and high-res files....but won't do an ABX test. And yes, he always says that he can tell the difference because he has super expensive equipment.

As a frugal person, I'll never understand people who are afraid of saving money.