[Wildcatsare1]

I believe Skyline is planning on using the Foobar Tool, I am not familiar with it, using JRiver 20 presently. We will have 560's, HD800's, Alpha Dogs and some Audeze Cans for the test.

 

[money4me247]

Foobar has an ABX plugin you guys might like to use.

I certainly can't tell the difference, but it might be different on a hp that has highs like the HE-560. Even then, I'd imagine it's pretty minor and only obvious if you really listen for it and know which sections it is more obvious in.

lol i recently tried with the he560 and i couldnt tell the difference personally. however, i can easily pick up on distortions and noise on songs that are less than 320kbps. actually a bit annoying, cant enjoy my low quality tracks like i used to. this r extremely resolving and bit up rly tiny distortion ive never noticed b4. relistenin with my he400 confirms source distortion but a lot of it is stuff ive bever noticed

 

[Moosecraft]

Lossy vs lossless is quite a big difference imo, its audible for most headphones for me.

 

[iKhaos]

I can only catch lossless vs lossy on certain tracks.
A lot of it is in cymbal crashes so higher frequencies, for me anyway.

 

[saxelrod92]

For me lossy vs lossless is about a sense of fullness vs lacking it. Like I think the reason most people dont notice much difference is because they aren't using the right criteria, which is usually a sense of resolution, since that is what lossless quality is referred to. Hi-res. But from a technicality point of view all lossless quality is, is all the data existing and heard vs lossy has literal bits of missing data based on an algorithm that determines the least audible bits of sound to remove. Doing this to me causes a sense of simplicity to the sound, its pretty subtle but once you notice it you always will notice it. All my 320kbps music sounds great in regards to resolution, but its really obvious theres bits of data missing int he sound and frequencies. think of it like a series of lines, the thicker lines being the most noticed sounds and frequencies, and then each line drawn next to the original thick line gets thinner and thinner, and the algorithm says it will delete those most outer thinnest lines and just leave the thick line. Well when you hear lossless and you hear all the lines, and then compare it to lossy where those smaller thin lines are missing, to me it creates this lack of fullness, as if there are just empty black spaces in the sound. It actually made lossless sound worse to me the first month I started listening to it because there was always sound, always data, always something making noise. Compared to being used to lossy where you get used to the emptiness in a way, the lack of data an start thinking its normal. but once I got used to lossless after a month, I instantly noticed how much was missing in lossy. Of course the only real exception to this was simple electronic music like hardstyle or house. There isnt that much detail or extra sounds in the first place, so not much changes between the formats. In those cases you can get away with 320kbps and not miss anything. Otherwise I feel lossless cd quality audio should be standard, as the minimum. And have the lossy qualities be special case situations for saving space, in the same way higher res qualities are special case for getting a little more out of the sound, but are not needed for being able to hear all the data in a file.
 
Also to keep this slightly on topic lol, you only really notice all these differences when using headphones like the he-560 or of similar quality, and of course the gear to drive them.

 

[DigitalFreak]

Only have them for a short while but sounding good

 

[Wildcatsare1]

For me lossy vs lossless is about a sense of fullness vs lacking it. Like I think the reason most people dont notice much difference is because they aren't using the right criteria, which is usually a sense of resolution, since that is what lossless quality is referred to. Hi-res. But from a technicality point of view all lossless quality is, is all the data existing and heard vs lossy has literal bits of missing data based on an algorithm that determines the least audible bits of sound to remove. Doing this to me causes a sense of simplicity to the sound, its pretty subtle but once you notice it you always will notice it. All my 320kbps music sounds great in regards to resolution, but its really obvious theres bits of data missing int he sound and frequencies. think of it like a series of lines, the thicker lines being the most noticed sounds and frequencies, and then each line drawn next to the original thick line gets thinner and thinner, and the algorithm says it will delete those most outer thinnest lines and just leave the thick line. Well when you hear lossless and you hear all the lines, and then compare it to lossy where those smaller thin lines are missing, to me it creates this lack of fullness, as if there are just empty black spaces in the sound. It actually made lossless sound worse to me the first month I started listening to it because there was always sound, always data, always something making noise. Compared to being used to lossy where you get used to the emptiness in a way, the lack of data an start thinking its normal. but once I got used to lossless after a month, I instantly noticed how much was missing in lossy. Of course the only real exception to this was simple electronic music like hardstyle or house. There isnt that much detail or extra sounds in the first place, so not much changes between the formats. In those cases you can get away with 320kbps and not miss anything. Otherwise I feel lossless cd quality audio should be standard, as the minimum. And have the lossy qualities be special case situations for saving space, in the same way higher res qualities are special case for getting a little more out of the sound, but are not needed for being able to hear all the data in a file.

Also to keep this slightly on topic lol, you only really notice all these differences when using headphones like the he-560 or of similar quality, and of course the gear to drive them.

Very well put, too me the compressed music sounds muffled and a bit lifeless, hopefully we can use my 560's and a pair of the 800's for the test. Listening last night it was very clear that the MP3's were "missing" something. We will see on Saturday.

 

[money4me247]

slow vs fast headphones? real or not real? he-560 slow or fast? discuss!

 

[conquerator2]

Head-fi is a hilarious place at times

 

[Wildcatsare1]

slow vs fast headphones? real or not real? he-560 slow or fast? discuss!

So money, you are saying you cannot hear the difference between compressed tracks and lossless? Do you listen to metal only, at very loud levels?

 

[tuna47]

At 320 and up I have trouble telling the difference but I am 67 yrs young so my ears might not be the best

 

[money4me247]

So money, you are saying you cannot hear the difference between compressed tracks and lossless? Do you listen to metal only, at very loud levels?

I am just saying that I've tried those blind ABX testing between lossless and compressed on the HE-560 and could not accurate pick out which is which. Though I am not too intimately familiar with the test tracks, I think whatever differences exists must be extremely subtle and difficult to hear, or at least I would better need to know what to listen for. In my own personal music collection, I can easily hear distortions of sub-320kbps mp3s. The HE-560 is extremely resolving and music I used to enjoy without any issues, I've started noticed very subtle distortions. Of course, when the source is clean, it is pretty heavenly heh
 
Semi-off-topic, but I was recently engaged in a discussion about headphone speed and an argument brought up was that the timescale of differences in cumulative spectral decay plots is below the 20ms threshold of temporal masking. So I was wondering if I could get nicer answers in a friendly environment about headphone speed, whether it really exists, and specifically how it relates to the HE-560. Just mildly curious haahh.

 

[Wildcatsare1]

I am just saying that I've tried those blind ABX testing between lossless and compressed on the HE-560 and could not accurate pick out which is which. Though I am not too intimately familiar with the test tracks, I think whatever differences exists must be extremely subtle and difficult to hear, or at least I would better need to know what to listen for. In my own personal music collection, I can easily hear distortions of sub-320kbps mp3s. The HE-560 is extremely resolving and music I used to enjoy without any issues, I've started noticed very subtle distortions. Of course, when the source is clean, it is pretty heavenly heh

Semi-off-topic, but I was recently engaged in a discussion about headphone speed and an argument brought up was that the timescale of differences in cumulative spectral decay plots is below the 20ms threshold of temporal masking. So I was wondering if I could get nicer answers in a friendly environment about headphone speed, whether it really exists, and specifically how it relates to the HE-560. Just mildly curious haahh.

 

[conquerator2]

Back to open grilles 

 

 

[GloryUprising]

My initial impressions after the Headamp demo brings me this analogy.

The he560 is to lcd2 what akg is to Sennheiser.

I think the 560s sound more like the way I wanted the hd700/800s to sound in that the bass is actually there and as clean as the rest of the range. I'll have more complete and coherent thoughts later, typing on my phone sucks...