[gregorio]

  You obviously have no real knowledge of the effects of bit rates. Less bits give a harsher sound.

 
You are contradicting yourself! According to you the Bladerunner DVD sounds great, which has 448Kbps for 6 channels of audio (Dolby Digital 5.1), which is fewer bits per channel than 320Kbps MP3 and way less than CD, which is roughly 1,400Kbps. Whether I know anything about the effects of bitrates is not relevant here, you've proven that you obviously don't though!
 

  More bits give a more analogue sound. Once one is not aware of that, the remainder of your argument falls apart.

 
More bits does not give a more analogue sound. And, any rational argument will fall apart when faced with incorrect and irrational statements such as yours! Learn some basics about how audio actually works and then we can have a proper discussion/argument rather than you just saying I don't understand your audio theory and me calling you an idiot for basing your audio theory on a complete fallacy, devoid of any facts!
 
G

 

[Baxide]

  More bits does not give a more analogue sound. And, any rational argument will fall apart when faced with incorrect and irrational statements such as yours! Learn some basics about how audio actually works and then we can have a proper discussion/argument rather than you just saying I don't understand your audio theory and me calling you an idiot for basing your audio theory on a complete fallacy, devoid of any facts!
 
G

Quod Erat Demonstrandum. You are only making it worse for yourself by demonstrating even more intensely that you do not grasp the concept that more bits make for a more analogue sound. Oversampling and upsampling rely on that keystone principle.

 

[castleofargh]

 Baxide is talking about bitrate of lossy format. not about bit depth (at least I guess because else his posts would make no sense at all to me). but I have a to say it's not clear when reading the posts independently.

 

[gregorio]

  You are only making it worse for yourself ...

 
I am making it worse for myself, as a rational argument is rarely effective against the irrational. However I'll comfort myself knowing that however much worse I'm making it for myself pales into insignificance compared to what you are doing for yourself, sadly, you don't even realise it though. Oversampling as an example, oh my, the hole you've dug yourself into just gets deeper!
 

   Baxide is talking about bitrate of lossy format. not about bit depth (at least I guess because else his posts would make no sense at all to me).

 
Even if he is talking about bitrate of lossy formats, his posts still doesn't make any sense because he held up as a superior example a DVD, which has a lower bitrate per channel than a 320kbps MP3.
 
G

 

[Baxide]

  Even if he is talking about bitrate of lossy formats, his posts still doesn't make any sense because he held up as a superior example a DVD, which has a lower bitrate per channel than a 320kbps MP3.
 
G

DVD audio is at least 16Bit/48kHz. I had no idea that 320bps MP3 suddenly has a higher specification than that these days. Anybody else who was aware of this?

 

[gregorio]

  DVD audio is at least 16Bit/48kHz.

As with virtually all commercial film DVDs, the sound on the Blade Runner DVD is Dolby Digital 5.1 (AC-3) format. You really should find out some basic facts if you're going to have any semblance of an intelligent public discourse and avoid looking like an idiot.
 

  I had no idea that 320bps MP3 suddenly has a higher specification than that these days.

And there we have it, you "had no idea". Stating that someone else doesn't know what they're talking about when you have "no idea" is not smart. And, it's very significantly even less smart to maintain that position despite being informed otherwise and when the person you're insulting has been working professionally in film sound for over 20 years!! Btw, it's not just "these days", it's been that way since DVD Video was released.
 
G

 

[Joe Bloggs]

By 16/48kHz you refer to the usual decoded PCM specification of the audio from DVDs (as opposed to DVD-Audio).

Let me inform you that, while the sample rate of decoded mp3s is usually 44.1kHz, their decoded bit depth can be up to 32bit:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/661411/the-fiio-x5-thread/7875#post_10498071

And gregorio's point was that the *compressed* bit rate of a 320kbps mp3 (32kbps) is greater than the *compressed* bitrate of the audio from your DVD (448kbps for 6 channels, on average 149kbps for 2 channels).

 

[Don Hills]

  DVD audio is at least 16Bit/48kHz. I had no idea that 320bps MP3 suddenly has a higher specification than that these days. Anybody else who was aware of this?

 
Many people are aware of it.
The bit depth / rate is mostly irrelevant. For both MP3 and AC-3, the limiting factor in the quality is the lossy compression that occurs between the input and the output.
16/48 in --> Lossy compression (MP3 or AC-3) --> decoding --> 16/48 out (but with some mostly inaudible sounds missing.)
Bitrate for bitrate, MP3 provides higher quality than AC-3. AC-3 uses an earlier and cruder lossy encoder. AC-3 quality drops off much faster than MP3 as the bitrate drops.
 
For DVD, each AC-3 track (stream) consists of 1 to 6 (I think 8 max) audio channels. So a "2.0" track will have 2 channels, a "5.1" track will have 6. The maximum total bitrate allowed for all channels in a track adds up to 448 Kbps. The only way you're going to get AC-3 to sound close to MP3 320 Kbps is to dedicate the full bitrate to one channel. As soon as you go to stereo you drop to 224 Kbps per channel, which is lower quality than MP3 at 224 Kbps, let alone 320 Kbps.

 

[mackie1001]

The DVD spec includes uncompressed PCM (48 or 96khz, 16, 20 or 24 bits) stereo does it not? Is that why wires are being crossed here? Your typical movie won't use such a format but I have music DVDs which do.

 

[gregorio]

  The DVD spec includes uncompressed PCM (48 or 96khz, 16, 20 or 24 bits) stereo does it not?

 
In theory it does allow those formats (and even in multi-channel) but not in practise. A professionally encoded DVD has a data rate around 5mbps. The vast majority of that bandwidth is required for the visuals, so in practise uncompressed PCM is never used on commercial film DVDs. Dolby Digital alone (448kbps) or at most, Dolby Digital + DTS (768kbps) are therefore employed. Without any visuals or with very low bitrate visuals (stills for example) a great deal more bandwidth is available, allowing use of uncompressed PCM.
 
G

 

[mackie1001]

Ah didn't realise it supported multi-channel PCM, you learn something new every day!
 
On the subject of lossy codecs and video. I wonder how DD+ compares to AAC and modern MP3 encoders at lower bit rates. The 256kbps stream I get from Netflix sounds pretty decent to my ears.

 

[DecentLevi]

Hello all, transferring a conversation here which I thought would be a more relevant thread
 
Quote:

  Is it just me or the signal actually gets clipped every time the kick hits during the drop?

 

  That above track is just another example of innumerable producers of this shameful era of producers who overcompress their songs for a louder sound, sacrificing dynamics and general fidelity to compete in a so-called loudness war. Yes that's excessive sidechaining that cuts the rest of the signal during the kick! Hideously unlistenable!

 

I usually just stream music and enjoy it fine even though I know the clarity and quality isn't the greatest since it's free, but for this type of music, do you notice if it's it worth buying the flac or purchased higher quality versions? Or the streaming versions is pretty accurate to how the producers want it already?

 
To me it seems the most obvious differences when encoding from lossless to lossy formats (FLAC / ALAC / AIFF / WAV, AKA CD quality to MP3, AC3, AAC, WMV or OGG) with occasional exception on higher lossy bitrates - is that the fine upper details become blurred so everything sounds more 'swishy', and the overall definition is reduced, so the likes of snares don't / can't hit as hard. Less noticeable are reduced soundstage and instrument separation, and all of the above get reduced incrementally depending on 'how low you go', with the lowest bitrate of 24kbps sounding effectively and literally 58x worse than an original redbook 1411kbps master.
 
However I would say a lot of the importance of encoding compression level is directly dependent on the quality of the source master. In recent 10-20 years with the rise of digital production studios, it seems far too many producers don't know how to mix/master to put it bluntly. I've seen big names (and I'm talking #1 selling superstars which I'd rather not single out) - especially hip hop, pop and even lots of rock & electronic music, putting out albums that, as a discerning audiophile on a good rig, sound like complete trash: entire albums clipping into the read with squashed dynamic range, excessive compression, etc. - so with such a bad master, a lossy encoding can sometimes be hardly even noticeable. Further enabling this trend is the fact that the general population listen with consumer quality headphones direct to an un-amped source; this could be a major part of the reason for the general ignorance of mastering quality of such a vast slice of popular music of today - because the average consumer is unable to discern it and their audio equipment isn't doing them any favors either.
 
I would say the scenario when the difference between lossy vs. lossless recordings is most obvious comes with analogue acoustic recordings such as older rock & even pop music (which is largely synthetic yet still analogye), where on the lossless source you can really enjoy the organic, lifelike sound versus how it can sound very artificial on a overcompressed file. So really the important of the compression of your file depends largely on the genre and mastering quality of the album you're listening to. Think higher bitrate for better master, and a bit lower for poor master. But then of course discerning what is well mastered or not takes a skill that I would say takes years to develop. So if you're listening to a crappy master, then streaming it won't take much away since not much fidelity was present to begin with; as most streaming services scrunch the file down about 10x lower than the original.
 
I do however use the word "compression" interchangeably: depending on context it can either refer to the "encoding compression" (file down conversion) of a song, or "dynamics compression", which is a studio process of altering the volume of a sound in relation to a time envelope. On the other hand, compression is not always a bad thing, and every song can benefit from compression when done right. Even distorted drums can sound good, especially with effects such as oscillation and saturation save for solely compression... just a few ideas I threw around also being a sound design artist.
 
Here are links to other Head-Fi forums to examples of best and worst recorded albums. And here is another forum here for best mastering engineers. This way you can get a good idea of the difference between well and poorly mastered albums, plus some extraordinary sounding albums to check out.

 

[old tech]

  Quod Erat Demonstrandum. You are only making it worse for yourself by demonstrating even more intensely that you do not grasp the concept that more bits make for a more analogue sound. Oversampling and upsampling rely on that keystone principle.

What does one mean by an "analogue sound"?  I thought all sound is analogue, otherwise we wouldn't hear it.
 
Not having a go at you, I'm just trying to grasp what sort of sound different people are trying to describe with this term.  This term gets used a lot on the Steve Hoffman forum in a way to describe something that sounds good, yet whenever I obtained an album (CD or vinyl) that a few people described as analog sounding, it was not really a natural sound - more of a mid bass emphasis and lacking, or at least a rolling-off, in treble (but good midrange though).  If that is what is meant by analogue sounding it is hardly an accurate, real world sound.
 
Am I missing something here?

 

[Baxide]

 
What does one mean by an "analogue sound"?  I thought all sound is analogue, otherwise we wouldn't hear it.
 
Not having a go at you, I'm just trying to grasp what sort of sound different people are trying to describe with this term.  This term gets used a lot on the Steve Hoffman forum in a way to describe something that sounds good, yet whenever I obtained an album (CD or vinyl) that a few people described as analog sounding, it was not really a natural sound - more of a mid bass emphasis and lacking, or at least a rolling-off, in treble (but good midrange though).  If that is what is meant by analogue sounding it is hardly an accurate, real world sound.
 
Am I missing something here?

You are missing something here. The term "analogue" is used in a different context when describing the sound properties from a digital media playback. It's like saying you got a Panasonic hoover. Most of us would know that hoover in this case means a vacuum cleaner. Digital to analogue conversion can often sound digital. The less digital it sounds, the more analogue it will sound. But of course, feel free to devise an alternative method of description.

 

[old tech]

 
You are missing something here. The term "analogue" is used in a different context when describing the sound properties from a digital media playback. It's like saying you got a Panasonic hoover. Most of us would know that hoover in this case means a vacuum cleaner. Digital to analogue conversion can often sound digital. The less digital it sounds, the more analogue it will sound. But of course, feel free to devise an alternative method of description.

I still don't get it.  Sure there are some bad digital recordings as there are good ones.  Same is true with analog recordings and playback.  Given that objectively the best of digital recordings/masterings will sound better than analogue (though subjectively YMMV) and well implemented digital playback will be closer to the source recording than any analogue playback device, which then is more "analogue sounding".  So if well recorded and mastered digital is the benchmark is it then valid when assessing analogue playback equipment or formats as "digital sounding" when they are very good and "analogue sounding" when it is not very good?