[Edwood]

 
Quote:

well, since edwood in his OP salvo referred specifically to game soundtracks, and the last few posts were about codecs, let's remember that Dolby Stereo had its first success in 1976 with star wars, and dolby digital was first heard in batman returns in 1992 and became the digital TV standard, while multichannel mpeg-2 is the european DVD standard. I'm not as confident as others here that lossy compression, or inferior tech of any kind, is going to be obsolete anytime soon. jurassic park already had a better solution in DTS in 1993, and yet very few DVDs or bluray discs will use DTS, using the space instead for alternate languages, voiceovers, out-takes, etc. certainly transcoding has come a long way since mathews' wager with pierce in 1956 at bell labs, or since shannon's surmise that sample rates of 2B times a second would suffice (where bandwidth = 0 to 22,050 Hz gives you 44.1 encoding). but still, what most game titles have been using is actually ogg vorbis (from doom 3 to GTA and from UT 2004 to america's army).
 

 
Funny you should mention multi channel surround sound.  With BluRay (and even with defunct HD-DVD) there is more often than not a lossless audio track offered.  Most common flavors are DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD.  Even the lossy formats like DTS and AC3 have double the bit rate available with BluRay.  Despite the heavy DRM, physical media is still available along with all the old school copyrights and access for the end user, unlike iTunes movies.  (which are laughable for high end home theater use).
 
I do have an unusual headphone based high end home theater system (Smyth SVS Realiser), so I can appreciate the improvement in audio quality in HD movies on BluRay lately.  So while the movie industry is moving forward with technology (even if some is pretty gimmicky like 3-D BluRay), the music industry is stagnating and moving backwards even in some respects.
 
Oh, and speaking of video games and surround sound, Creative Labs has single handedly held back the entire gaming industry with audio by stubbornly sticking with their own 4.1 Channel EAX system, rather than adopting long standing surround sound formats commonly in use for home theaters.  They naively assumed that few people would play games on their multi thousand dollar home theater systems.  And as such console games had yet another advantage (other than ease of use and much lower cost) over computer games.  I still remember all the hassles I went through to get games to properly display at 16:9 aspect ratios and getting an early Dolby Digital Live encoder transcode EAX to Dolby Digital on the fly so that I could have surround sound work through the digital inputs of my home theater receiver.
 
-Ed
 

 

[leeperry]

 
jurassic park already had a better solution in DTS in 1993, and yet very few DVDs or bluray discs will use DTS, using the space instead for alternate languages, voiceovers, out-takes, etc.

 
Quite frankly, many ppl feel that DTS is an utter waste of space and doesn't add anything to the table when you compare 1.5mbit core DTS to 640kbit core AC3. I would certainly agree, DTS is just a waste of space IMHO.
 
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152230

 there are some test than prove the AC3 640 Kb/s is more transparent than DTS 1.5 Mb/s

 

[Edwood]

Quote:

 
Quite frankly, many ppl feel that DTS is an utter waste of space and doesn't add anything to the table when you compare 1.5mbit core DTS to 640kbit core AC3. I would certainly agree, DTS is just a waste of space IMHO.
 
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152230

I can hear the difference between 1.5mbit DTS vs. 640kbit AC3.  There is more dynamics with DTS.  Mostly noticeable with frequency extremes, bass and treble.  Of course, I'm using my AIX Records PRIR, which is an excellent studio.  I love the room set up and sound.
 

 

[Young Spade]

Yea I have never (and will never) buy a lossy formated file. Why settle for lossy when you can get Lossless which you can keep and convert to whatever you want in the future if you want? It sounds better as well; looks like a win win for lossless for me. 

 

[melomaniac]

well, @leeperry: some will always push the hard choices - space vs the last bit of resolution (pun intended), or convenience (of format, etc) over the most accurate possible frequency response. but speaking just for my humble movie-watching experience, I can indeed tell the difference (with small maggies and a sub) between really good and just middling soundtrack (or game fx for that matter), and I think more people would if someone just made them aware of some more obvious differences. - that, at any rate, is why I frequent sites like this: because I suspend disbelief and leap to the foregone conclusion that audiophiles ought to agree with that, at least

 

[leeperry]

 
I can hear the difference between 1.5mbit DTS vs. 640kbit AC3.  There is more dynamics with DTS.  Mostly noticeable with frequency extremes, bass and treble.

 
I'm not saying that there's no audible difference between AC3 and DTS....very often the AC3 is simply encoded by the telecine engineers while the DTS goes through endless post-processing by the in-house DTS engineers. Also, there might be differences in the algorithms accuracy being used to decode both(not being bit-perfect and all)....We have a choice so everyone can choose what fits him best(whatever the difference being due to different encoding and/or placebo).
 
The hardcore test would be to use a great sounding lossless track, use some licenced official encoders for both formats and try it on several receivers...then you wouldn't be listening to different engineers work/decoders anymore. But tbh, these days lossless is where's the party at...the 24bit TrueHD track on The Nightmare Before Christmas BD is just out of this world!

 

[necropimp]

the funny thing is even with lossless you still get people claiming DTS-HD sounds better than TrueHD or that receiver decoded sounds better than player decoded

 

[Deep Funk]

Am I glad I have just purchased Judas Priest album in Japanese pressing... CDs can be tricky too...

 

[jilgiljongiljing]

Totally agree with OP, I havent and wont buy lossy music, period. But I still go buy cd's so I guess I'm "old-school" now?
 
On a related but unrelated note, do you really want to listen to MW2 soundtrack? Unless you didnt play the game as much as I did, cos I am absolutely sick and tired of hearing it going on and on all thru the campaign and spec ops (it single handedly ruined spec ops for me, although I still sat and finished it in veteran)

 

[Edwood]

Quote:

I'm not saying that there's no audible difference between AC3 and DTS....very often the AC3 is simply encoded by the telecine engineers while the DTS goes through endless post-processing by the in-house DTS engineers. Also, there might be differences in the algorithms accuracy being used to decode both(not being bit-perfect and all)....We have a choice so everyone can choose what fits him best(whatever the difference being due to different encoding and/or placebo).
 
The hardcore test would be to use a great sounding lossless track, use some licenced official encoders for both formats and try it on several receivers...then you wouldn't be listening to different engineers work/decoders anymore. But tbh, these days lossless is where's the party at...the 24bit TrueHD track on The Nightmare Before Christmas BD is just out of this world!

Yeah, that is true that often times more care is taken with mastering DTS audio.  So that could have an effect.  But dynamic range is something that even the best mastering cannot make up for.  I did find a few movies (DVD and BluRay) which had an AC3 version as well as DTS that sounded much closer to each other, but the DTS certainly had better dynamics and clarity, but it was certainly not a night and day difference.
 
-Ed

 

[necropimp]

Quote:

Am I glad I have just purchased Judas Priest album in Japanese pressing... CDs can be tricky too...

 
which one?

 

[MCC]

I also will not buy lossy music. Just 15 minutes ago I ABX'd a reference track encoded both in FLAC and Nero AAC VBR .65 (250k). The AAC version CLEARLY had lost some of its spatial characteristics and I easily chose the correct answer 5 times in a row. I'm currently on a "reduced setup"- I'm using the analog output directly from my Chaintech AV-710's internal DAC to my Headfive. If I can hear it on this (A TWENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SOUND CARD), just think how big the difference would be on my Stello/McIntosh. I was expecting to not be able to tell a difference on this setup but unfortunately I've proven myself wrong.
 
I'm doing this to choose a lossy encoding to squeeze my collection on my laptop- let's hope VBR .75 is acceptable!
 
Edit: The AV-710 has had its output coupling caps upgraded.

 

[Deep Funk]

Quote:

which one?

Sad Wings Of Destiny is the name of the particular album...
 

 

[Young Spade]

Quote:

I also will not buy lossy music. Just 15 minutes ago I ABX'd a reference track encoded both in FLAC and Nero AAC VBR .65 (250k). The AAC version CLEARLY had lost some of its spatial characteristics and I easily chose the correct answer 5 times in a row. I'm currently on a "reduced setup"- I'm using the analog output directly from my Chaintech AV-710's internal DAC to my Headfive. If I can hear it on this (A TWENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SOUND CARD), just think how big the difference would be on my Stello/McIntosh. I was expecting to not be able to tell a difference on this setup but unfortunately I've proven myself wrong.
 
I'm doing this to choose a lossy encoding to squeeze my collection on my laptop- let's hope VBR .75 is acceptable!
 
Edit: The AV-710 has had its output coupling caps upgraded.

 
That's what I mainly notice when I AB 320 and FLAC files. Not so much a loss of detail, more like a loss of soundstage and spacial cues. 

 

[necropimp]

Quote:

Quote:
Sad Wings Of Destiny is the name of the particular album...
 

hate to say it but the japanese cds which some people seem to think are the best are both compressed quite a bit... as it stands my personal favorite is the line records cd which sounds closest to my original ovation records vinyl still not perfect but it's the best CD i've heard of that album
 
the first two judas priest albums need someone like steve hoffman to remaster them (especially after hearing his work on the audio fidelity release of hell bent for leather)