[3lusiv3]

If you can't the difference then there is no difference. That's why I encode at high bitrate AAC. I can't hear the difference between 300+kbps AAC files and uncompressed files so I don't see the point in filling my hard drive with bloated file sizes.

 

[commando]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3lusiv3 so I don't see the point in filling my hard drive with bloated file sizes.

I do it for for transcoding later, backups, etc. I often resample my FLAC's down to 128kbps for my mp3 player.

 

[drminky]

I find it really depends on the recording. MP3s can sound great on some well recorded (and well produced/eq'd) music. Likewise, on really poor recordings you are unlikely to hear any benefit going lossless. That being said, there is usually some noticeable difference on my system between lossless and mp3 (up to 224vbr, anyway). Tape hiss (or the absense thereof) is the first giveaway. As mentioned before cymbals lose their 'splash' and become rather scratchy. Fine details, like light fingering on a flute, for example, just are not there. Overally, on mp3 the music loses a quality hard to describe; a certain 'presence' and 'sparkle' and transients suffer. This combination makes it especially unmistakable on, say, acoustic guitars. Not something you notice when it's not there, but something I cannot help but notice when it is.

The differences are very slight and very subtle, however. I find it is very much like the difference between an fine turtable cartridge and a mid-level one. The vast majority will not notice any difference, but if your system is revealing enough, and your ears get accustomed to listening for the details, you won't mistake it.

That being said, Alot of these MP3 artifacts are exactly what happen on harsh brickwall-filtered cd players anyway. if I listen straight out of my powerbook, I doubt I could hear any difference at all!

 

[CEO Matt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by astro Could you hear the difference between these two? #1 and #2 I know my HD497 aren't the greatest, but people are claiming they can easily hear the difference on their tincan logitech speakers.

Tested the tracks, and by ABXing on foobar the difference is clear. not sure if i could tell by hearing them seperately in the space of a day but one after the other it's clear, the sibilance of the cymbals really give it away. There's just something missing on the lq track.

I i personally use and like FLAC for the fact that there's not that loss in file quality, it's just as the cd sounds. sure it may be hard to hear the difference in mp3 over the original cd, but with flac there is none. Setup is a RME96/8PAD (for test it was a vibra128 haha) to a vintage sansui reciever to MDR-F1's.

 

[JayG]

This is not scientific so if you don't agree just consider me crazy and move on. I can definitely hear the difference between 128 and higher res mp3 and lossless. When the encoding gets better, it definitely gets more difficult when listening for specific differences. Try this though. Rip the same song to 256 mp3 and lossless. Then play them both, except don't listen to the sound, listen to the music. I know I for one feel more involved and feel like the music is more real sounding and more authentic on the lossless file. When the song ends it just seems like I heard better music. I have done this on a limited scale with blind testing, but it's hard without someone to help. Maybe it's psychological, or maybe our ears and brains have the ability to hear things and differences we can't put our finger on or don't know we hear. Something to think about.

-Jay

 

[Reck45]

The easiest way to tell the difference between bitrates is the bass cleaness and the midrange definition.

I can hear the difference between 128, 160 and 192 all the way to 224 MP3 pretty easily. Even in a blind test I got about a 80% accuracy rate. To me 224 and 256 are not distinguishable. Then I can hear the difference between that and 320. All these tests I did with lame. There is a small difference between 320 and a normal ape file. Maybe even not enough to justify the space of a lossless rip. Yea but it is true that mp3s are slightly warm sounding.

 

[Publius]

Why are you guys even caring about CBR bitrates in terms of audibility? Everybody knows they suck, at least up to 320 or maybe 256, because there will always be artifacts present at those bitrates for certain samples. This would be less of a one-sided discussion about how bad MP3 is if it were discussing modern VBR encodings; CBR may be useful as an absolute benchmark for how well artifacts can be heard, but they have no relevance for actual MP3 quality.

Oh, and 16/17 ABX on the two tracks, due to a stereo collapse within the first half second. (I was getting too smug on the one failure.) I strongly suspect that the low-volume highly directional audio on the first few seconds is one of the worst case scenarios for 128kbps and I'm not sure if I could ABX deeper into the track. ER-4S on mobo audio.

 

[BRBJackson]

Before deciding on a bitrate to rip my collection into my Pod, I did a bunch of A/B comparos. MP3 and AAC at 128k was sheer torture to listen to. Compressed, dead and processed sounding. I could still hear a bit too much artifacting at 192. Though I would've liked to go 256 or 320k, I finally decided on 224k AAC, in the interests of fitting at least 60% of the CD collection into 40GB. That said, the Pod is only used portably, so I'm less worried about that last bit of detail.

 

[Daroid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by astro Could you hear the difference between these two? #1 and #2 I know my HD497 aren't the greatest, but people are claiming they can easily hear the difference on their tincan logitech speakers.

Nice to hear about placebo effects on logitech speakers, don't believe them

Not having read replies below your post yet, I'll say there is a marginal difference. The cymbal at around 0:10 is flat and undetailed with the 128 kbps version. The beat/hihat throughout is also masked. In the beat, there's somewthing wrong with the bass on the 128 kpbs, it misses details at the beat... but it was a very minor difference.

 

[Publius]

Most of artifact audibility is going to be training and not gear - ie, if you don't know what it sounds like, you likely won't notice it, no matter what you're listening with. Background noise is also an important consideration - if you have a quiet room, you ought to be able to hear artifacts even on $5 bundled headphones, let alone logitechs, but if the background noise is 70db, not even a HD650 with a DAC1 is going to let you hear anything different.

If you want to train yourself for this sort of thing, I'd do encodes at 80k, and note all the issues you find. Use the foobar ABX util and focus on short-term switching between samples - ie, only focus on one second or so of audio. Then go to 96 and do the same thing, but note which things have improved. Keep doing this up to 128 and you should be able to zero in on what's getting affected.

But unless you plan on jumping ship to HydrogenAudio to do encoder testing, this is mainly useful for bragging rights and nothing else. And I wouldn't start bragging unless you can ABX --alt-preset-standard with most material.

 

[Distroyed]

Alright Astro, you can tell them that both your samples were the exact same file :b

 

[astro]

It's too hard to fake it, it's too easy to tell just by looking at the size of the file.

I guess I do lose a lot of the details from the white noise my computer fans produce, despite them running on such a low RPM to begin with.
My HD497 picks up background noise very easily being open.

 

[IstariAsuka]

I've attached some electrostatics to my portable CDP before, and even with THAT as a source, I could definately hear the difference even between a 320kbps mp3 and the original, uncompressed file.

Lower end equipment like my typical setup (unamped HD495s), though, and it's hard to tell past about 192kbps on most tracks in general, though there are some things, particularly organs, that I still can tell apart.

Luckily, I'll soon be upgrading my setup, so then I suppose I'll need to encode at a higher bitrate!

 

[shimage]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Distroyed I can hear the difference between 128 and 192, but rarely is the difference audible beyond that, even on expensive hardware. Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to justify their ludicrious credit card statements.

edit2: ok, so since I don't want to sound like I'm bragging (since I'm really not that good at it), I'm going to say that it's not only possible, but not difficult to ABX lame -aps from lossless even with pretty cruddy equipment (read: SBLive! and HD490s), particularly with test samples off the lame website. As Publius mentioned though, if you can't hear differences, just be happy and stop asking silly questions.

edit:
Quote:

Originally Posted by astro It's too hard to fake it, it's too easy to tell just by looking at the size of the file.

Oh.... I see how it is... actually, you generally post stuff as losslessly compressed (or uncompressed) decoded files, so that the testers can't tell which is which. Of course, if they notice that they're bit for bit copies of each other, well...

 

[Distroyed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shimage edit2: ok, so since I don't want to sound like I'm bragging (since I'm really not that good at it), I'm going to say that it's not only possible, but not difficult to ABX lame -aps from lossless even with pretty cruddy equipment (read: SBLive! and HD490s), particularly with test samples off the lame website. As Publius mentioned though, if you can't hear differences, just be happy and stop asking silly questions.

So you'd consider the Dac1 to be cruddy equipment?