[Antony6555]

Can the distortion from low bitrate stuff damage your headphones/speakers?

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Quote:

Can the distortion from low bitrate stuff damage your headphones/speakers?

No, only distortion caused by excessive volume or clipping. The bite rate itself is unimportant.

 

[tasteful]

Yep, all about volume, bite rate unimportant.

 

[Armaegis]

Quote:

A poll by Cnet found that a good proportion of listeners preferred Sky Songs streaming which could be as low as 16kbps over basic Spotify at 128kbps. Thye also found age and music preferences played a part, as in younger and more pop the more likely the lower rate was acceptable.

On some songs/albums I actually prefer lower bitrates or "lesser" headphones because the recording itself is lousy. Moving up the source or headphones can sometimes reveal bad details which may not be immediately apparent but can detract from the enjoyment of the music.

 

[Vitor Machado]

Lol guys, 64kbps MONO has the sound quality of 128kbps STEREO. So it's not thaaat bad as you're all thinking.

 

[EddieE]

Music is enjoyable.
 
It was enjoyable of a tape cassette, enjoyable off am radio, off a grammarphone...
 
Naturally people who love music want to listen to it in as high as quality as possible, but that doesn't mean you still don't feel its emotions through the lowest possible medium too.

 

[Olias of Sunhillow]

My local classical station webcasts in 40kbps mp3. It's unlistenable -- it sounds (to paraphrase Stephen King) like I'm listening to music through a saltine box.
 
When I move up to 96 or 128kbps webcasts, though, I have no complaints. I'd never _buy_ music that compressed, but for online listening the lower bit rate streams work just fine.

 

[Inceptor]

Quote:

Quote:

Can the distortion from low bitrate stuff damage your headphones/speakers?

No, only distortion caused by excessive volume or clipping. The bite rate itself is unimportant.

Does clipping caused by the amp being overdriven damage the headphones themselves? If not, does overdriving the amp cause damage to the amp itself?

 

[logwed]

This thread makes me a bit sad. The OP needs to get out of the mindset that top of the line equipment is a requirement for enjoying music. I still enjoy listening through my Portapros and iPod even when I have a much higher quality system that I can listen to nearly whenever I want. I'll crank the speakers (not nearly as nice as my rig) when I really want to jam out, and I don't find myself less satisfied. I'm not trying to be all high and mighty, but people need to enjoy what they have.

 

[xXFallenAngelXx]

I enjoy 192-320mp3s and some flac..though I can only distinguish a bit of improvement of sq and only when I focus really hard..may just be my brain telling me it has to sound better..I agree on some low bitrates on badly recorded music..higher bitrates bring out the best and worst of some recordings. Also some music I can only find in 128kbps..although its not the best to me, but its tolerable

 

[tasteful]

Quote:

This thread makes me a bit sad. The OP needs to get out of the mindset that top of the line equipment is a requirement for enjoying music. I still enjoy listening through my Portapros and iPod even when I have a much higher quality system that I can listen to nearly whenever I want. I'll crank the speakers (not nearly as nice as my rig) when I really want to jam out, and I don't find myself less satisfied. I'm not trying to be all high and mighty, but people need to enjoy what they have.

 
I'm the OP and I agree!
 

 

[logwed]

Quote:

I'm the OP and I agree!
 

I kinda figured that's why you made this thread, to point out that any music is a good thing. 
 
Also, I really don't like how it's chaining these quotes.

 

[xnor]

I'm not the OP and I also agree. And I also don't like the quotation system. 

 

[plonter]

Quote:

It's the cat food paradigm.  Your cat will eat the Friskies and not complain until you decide one day to buy her some Wellness Core.  Then she'll starve herself to death unless you keep buying her the expensive stuff...
 
Since a lot of the quality loss in mp3 and mp4 compression is missing information, unless you know the song well enough to know what's missing, or it's really poor enough that you start to hear the digital artifacts and distortion, ignorance is relative bliss I suppose.  Of course, I'm of the mind that ignorance is tautological, but that's because I'm an arrogant, elitist audiophile

.

I agree.  one can't know what he is missing unless he heard better and in our case is the original music...same thing with gear,you may think that your system is the best in the world unless you tried some better system.  but anyway,it is still nice to know that 64 kbs mp3 sounded reasonable to the op.

 

[haloxt]

Audio compression takes into consideration how we perceive and interpret sound. It is not inconceivable that some manipulation of this sort could make recorded music "sound better". Sometimes real life music is not really all that euphonic, but I have found some audio compression codecs to lend to a feeling of euphony.