[HiFiRE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cerbie No, just good 44.1, 48, or 96 will be fine. Whatever fits well. Anyway, over at HA, you can find listening tests showing that, at the least, the higher sampling rate can make a difference.

I'd be interested to see those AB results. Care to link me to them?

 

[asmox]

You know, people constantly use the 'HDD space costs so little' argument for going lossless. I personally think it's an incredibly weak argument. You're still going to use up a lot of space if your collection is big enough.. space that you might also need for other things.

As much as I would like to stick three 400GB drives in my computer, I just can't. I have other devices to worry about. I know that if I had my entire collection ripped lossless on my PC, I'd want redundancy - and I know that I can't support that with the sizes involved. I don't have a server rack at home, I don't have one of those TB array boxes.. it just isn't going to happen. Not to mention when it comes time to transcode to other formats for use on portables or whatever else.. that's even more space required.

In other words - space isn't as discardable an issue as people like to think.. not for everybody, at least.

As for sound quality.. I have all my stuff ripped @ LAME APS and I'm happy with it. It's not like I don't own the original CD's.. I do.. so I know exactly what the lossless version sounds like as well. I'm just not so hung up on the technical aspects of everything that I can't adequately enjoy music unless it's supermusictechnogeekworthy.

 

[Xakepa]

Will repl caps, easier to read

QUOTE cerbie
Originally Posted by Xakepa
Because I hate reckless greed and use of the resources of the planet. That's exactly what "loseless" is.

Lossless is nothing mroe than compressing what we've been sold for over 20 years, and thus, using it efficiently with modern technology. It's no more a waste than the rest of the electricty a computer uses. If you listen to any audio, you're wasting those resources. Wether it's lossless or not does not matter. You're not wasting any less.

WRONG. LOSELESS IS A WASTE OF HDD SPACE. BY NOT USING IT, I'M SAVING THE WORLD FROM WASTING RESOURCES ON 1 HDD...NO MATTER HOW LAME THAT SOUNDS, THAT'S A FACT

Quote:
We have 2 ears, but we want 7.1 Dolby.

1. Not everyone wants that.
2. Have you ever listened to anything in the real world? Our brain works in a three spatial dimensional environment. Not flying, we're generally happy with two dimensions, which surround sound offers. Stereo only offers one dimension (which, for music, is plenty, since there aren't things blowing up that need a direction--usually).

Quote:
We have a brain that ignores sounds and levels,

False. If this were true, no one would be complaining about excessive compression, limiting, volume being too loud, etc..

GOOGLE PSYCHOACOUSTIC AND SEE WHAT BRAIN CAN AND WHAT BRAIN CAN NOT. THAT'S WHAT I MEAN

Quote:
but we want 24-bit 192KHz digitally remastered blah bblah blah...

No, just good 44.1, 48, or 96 will be fine. Whatever fits well. Anyway, over at HA, you can find listening tests showing that, at the least, the higher sampling rate can make a difference.

IT'S BECAUSE OF INEVITABLE PRICE ONE PAYS FOR DAC-ONVERTION, AND POOR ALGORYTHMS/HARDWARE. 90% OF ALL MUSIC CD-S MADE NOWADAY ARE SO COMPRESSED THEY OVERSHOOT 16-BIT ALL OF THE TIME. 90% OF TIME POOR RESAMPLING LOWERS SQ RATHER THAN IMPROVING IT.

Quote:
Most of all, a lossy copy of good recording sounds 100 times better than "loseless" copy of contemporary (highly compressed and distorted) CD.

Google "argumentative fallacy".

CHECK HOW MANY OF YOUR OWN RECORDINGS WOULD BENEFIT FROM LOSELESS. THAN ARGUE WITH THE FACT.


Quote:
I guess if the oil was cheap we all should drive monster trucks with 12V engines.

Poor analogy. Oil has gotten more expensive in the past,

WILL YOU PLS REMIND ME WHEN? OR YOU'LL FLASH THE INFLATION BANNER BLAH BLAH

and is doing so again (the efficiency of searching and extracting it is lowering). HDD space only gets cheaper. It will not get more expensive over a long period of time.QUOTE

YOU'RE NOT GETTING THE POINT. THE FACT THAT SOMETHING IS CHEAP DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULD USE IT RECKLESSLY! PLS, THINK ON THAT.

Caps weren't meant to be shouting. Just pls think

 

[s m @]

Wow.

 

[Denim]

MP3's are the most universal format out there. They play on my PC, portables, and in my car. FLAC is great, just not usable on as many different hardware devices.

 

[cerbie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xakepa Will repl caps, easier to read WRONG. LOSELESS IS A WASTE OF HDD SPACE. BY NOT USING IT, I'M SAVING THE WORLD FROM WASTING RESOURCES ON 1 HDD...NO MATTER HOW LAME THAT SOUNDS, THAT'S A FACT

That's assuming used parts. With brand new parts, it would just mean leaving hundreds of GB free. A 1TB HDD will be reality likely before '07 (750GB is being made now).

Quote:

GOOGLE PSYCHOACOUSTIC AND SEE WHAT BRAIN CAN AND WHAT BRAIN CAN NOT. THAT'S WHAT I MEAN

OK...so we ignore things that are masked, pretty much. I'm not going to argue that more than maybe 5% of what I listen to (and that's a high estimate) could not be made transparent with MP3.
Quote:

IT'S BECAUSE OF INEVITABLE PRICE ONE PAYS FOR DAC-ONVERTION, AND POOR ALGORYTHMS/HARDWARE.

What price? Yes, there are losses, but there are always losses.
Quote:

90% OF ALL MUSIC CD-S MADE NOWADAY ARE SO COMPRESSED THEY OVERSHOOT 16-BIT ALL OF THE TIME.

Yes, but that's irrelavent for the potential sound quality of a given format (also, it tends to be the clipressed stuff that needs the highest lossy bitrates...).
Quote:

90% OF TIME POOR RESAMPLING LOWERS SQ RATHER THAN IMPROVING IT.

So? Most folks don't hear the difference between 44.1 and 48. And, then using non-PC sources, there shouldn't be resampling. Anyway, what does it have to do with wanting higher rates to begin with? If it was recorded and mixed at some bit rate and depth, why not have the end result available in that depth, just as the guy that mixed it made it?

Quote:

CHECK HOW MANY OF YOUR OWN RECORDINGS WOULD BENEFIT FROM LOSELESS. THAN ARGUE WITH THE FACT.

First, you are changing your argument and premise. Here are some things that are not necessarily related:
1. That one recording sounds good as 128k MP3 (varies by recording).
2. That one recording with all information intact (lossless) sounds worse (100x, specifically) than another recording as 128k MP3 (varies by both recordings).
3. Whether a given recording will benefit from loessless archiving (usually not dependent on SQ).

FI: Scar Tissue sounding like crap in FLAC, and One Bourbon, One Scoth, One Beer being tranpsarent at 128k MP3 (LJH's, of course), does not provide any evidence for or against the use of lossy compression.

Second, all of my recordings benefit from lossless, because using lossless is about good archiving and flexibility for the overwhelming majority of music, not percieved sound quality (it's directly for SQ on a very small selection). Fact to argue with: I recently dusted off a rack of CDs. They got that must dust, because I have not needed to remove them to listen to anything on them, nor to format-shift the music with the original as the source. That's a primary advantage of lossless archiving.

Quote:

WILL YOU PLS REMIND ME WHEN? OR YOU'LL FLASH THE INFLATION BANNER BLAH BLAH

1973
1990
Right now (and it will likely go up gradually in the future, as the search and extraction expenses keep rising). Inflation is a major problem, but not one directly tied to energy costs.

Quote:

YOU'RE NOT GETTING THE POINT. THE FACT THAT SOMETHING IS CHEAP DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULD USE IT RECKLESSLY! PLS, THINK ON THAT.

No thing should be used recklessly, even if it costs nothing. I do not think losslessly archiving music is a reckless use of my time, money, equipment, or electricity. I think re-ripping for the sixth time (yes, I got to 6 with The Final Cut

), however, is a very reckless use of a CD, CDROM drive, electricity, and my time.

Quote:

Caps weren't meant to be shouting. Just pls think

I do. Being a philosopher causes thinking.

 

[Xakepa]

Let me make it clear: I never used 128 and I started ripping my CD collection since LAME 3.94 came out, using 320 at that time and later VBR preset extreme. I do not bother re-pripping except for maybe 5 or 6 extremelly taxing CDs, where I THINK I can hear a differecne (Nirvana Unplugged comes to mind)

I disagree on many points, but let me just say that: there's a catch out there, waiting for you.

If in 5 years all the things you're listetning to will be reissued in "remastered" 24/192 DVD-A,AAC, WMA or whichever survives, than your "loseless" collection will be just as "lossy"/compressed as my recent 300+ ripped CDs MP3 collection is.

Will you go for another round than?

 

[cerbie]

On buying anew: if and only if it is done well, or is as good as the curent CD but I do not own that, and there are is no DRM in the format, or the DRM is easy enough to crack. IOW, most DVD-A, SACD, and DRM music services are a no-no; and I see no point in buying, say, Powertrip, in 192/24, if it's not more dynamic and with a bit more use of that stereo thing.

Reissues and remasters I won't care about, unless they are done well. So what if it can handle near 100kHz, and has 24 bits per sample for great detail, if it's still too hot? If done well, it won't matter what format it is in, as long as it can be shifted.

Quote:

If in 5 years all the things you're listetning to will be reissued in "remastered" 24/192 DVD-A,AAC, WMA or whichever survives, than your "loseless" collection will be just as "lossy"/compressed as my recent 300+ ripped CDs MP3 collection is.

CD v. DVD-A: both are full depth, full resolution PCM streams, with nothing missing. Neither are lossy in any way. One has greater resolution--this does not make the CD lossy by comparison. Both of these cases are ones in which the output is one-to-one, with regards the original media.

AAC and (lossy) WMA, like MP3, are lossy, and lose information. A 192/24 AAC (does AAC or WMA even support that? I know MP3 does not) at whatever-the-high-res-equivalent-to-128k-is will be just as lossy as a 44.1/16 at 128k. There are sounds that do not exist in the stream, that existed in the original media's stream. It is not one-to-one (I don't think it's even onto, but don't feel like doing that much Googling

).

There must be incentives. CD is good enough. If the incentives exist, it won't be a hardship. However, it will also not be 'another round', because we will have the technology to format-shift before the media's purchase--once again having a choice of formats, including several lossy and lossles ones.

 

[Cjattwood]

I find MP3's encoded with LAME to be perfectly comparable to lossless files myself, I am NO audiophile but do enjoy a good sound and MP3's encoded with EAC+LAME sound great to my ears on my budget setup.

 

[Piffles]

This is very polemic (and it's not my objective to start one!

) but stricly speaking, the CD format is lossy. You're not getting the entire sound as it was recorded like on analog systems (tapes, LPs), you're getting a sample of it every 1/44100 seconds. Shannon says it's okay because we consider the max frequency to be 20kHz because that's how far the ear can hear. But in all strictness, instruments produce frequencies above 20kHz, so sampling at 44,1kHz is not sufficient to rebuild the original sound. It is however, sufficient to reproduce what we humans can actually hear. I bet your dog can tell the difference between a CD and a tape.

Lossy compression methods a similar except that they don't only use the frequency range of the human ear but also other properties, which are not so obvious - hence more debatable. Even the sampling idea is still being debated now by the LP enthousiasts.

I think the great mistake with mp3 was to encourage people to encode at low bitrates. Had everyone started using decent bitrates right from the beginning (instead of this crap 128kb/s CBR rubbish), mp3, and lossy formats in general, would enjoy more credibility now in the audio scene. I just don't get why they did it. The space advantage was so huge at the time over WAVs (considering the size of HDDs at the time) that the few extra MBs needed for higher bitrates wouldn't have made that much difference. Big technical and commercial mistake in my opinion!

 

[MaZa]

MP3 encoded with LAME encoder and using good settings sounds almost exactly like original and still has smaller file than any lossless. Comparing it with original CD and lossless format, you need some insane hifi gear and golden ear to hear difference in blind-test and even then you make mistakes. Lossless formats are way overrated. Its just, mediocre MP3 files in internet give Mp3 bad name amongst hifi fans.

 

[Xakepa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaZa MP3 encoded with LAME encoder and using good settings sounds almost exactly like original and still has smaller file than any lossless. Comparing it with original CD and lossless format, you need some insane hifi gear and golden ear to hear difference in blind-test and even then you make mistakes. Lossless formats are way overrated. Its just, mediocre MP3 files in internet give Mp3 bad name amongst hifi fans.

Could not agree more.

Strictly speaking, it's a law of mathematics that you have to pay with SQ for every ADC/DAC conversion. There's no way around that, and as the digital signal processing is here to stay, there's allways will be a better way to make it. But it's the ear/brain that sets the maximum percievable fidelity...and that's what we care about.

Cerbie, 16 vs 24 bit is "lossy" with respect to fidelty. You're losing fidelity/info by converting original analog signal from the cartrige/tape to 16-bit rather than to 24. Try with the colors of your monitor.

 

[s m @]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaZa MP3 encoded with LAME encoder and using good settings sounds almost exactly like original ......Lossless formats are way overrated.

I believe you about the first part (no personal experience myself as I only listen to compressed music files while exercising, where 128 kbps is fine). But where I do use compressed files is in downloading live/unreleased music, and at the very least I find lossless much more comforting to work with, b/c at least you don't have to worry (as much) about whether someone used good encoding practice or not. Of course, with those kind of recordings you can have a whole new set of concerns, ha ha.

I will say, though, that I know there CAN be a huge difference between MP3 and lossless. What made a friend get into lossless was when he was buying live recordings from the band themselves (Primus has or had a site where they'd sell every show from their recent tours) in either MP3 or FLAC. He went MP3 the first time, not really knowing anything about the other format, but the show sounded so poor that he got into lossless just for that, and actually ended up rebuying that first show in FLAC before too long. I heard both myself and the difference was massive. The guy isn't even an audiophile. But I've heard plenty of MP3's that don't sound that bad, and these were 192 kbps, so I really can't even guess what exactly went wrong with these ones.

 

[dknightd]

I use mp3's because I can't tell the difference between 256 kbps mp3 and the original on either my headphones (Senn hd650) or my speakers (B&W 703).
I rip my CD's at 320 kbps mp3, just in case (except for a few, which I did lossless even though I couldn't hear the difference - it just seemed wrong not to). I rip LP lossless because they take more time and effort and I don't want to redo it. Redoing the CD's would also take time, but not as much. It is unlikely that my ears will get better with age, so, if I can't tell the difference now I'm not likely to be able to start.
It is also a matter of storage and backup requirements. When I started
putting music on my computer there was no losslessly compressed option that
could be conveniently used on a Mac. So I was looking at either 320 kbps or 1411 kbps - a factor of about 4. Nowdays I could losslessly compress things
and only need a factor of 2.5, or so, more space. Still, that is significant. I have more than 600GB of music on my computer. I have that backed up locally. I also keep a copy of it in my office. If I had done everything lossless I would need another 3 TB of disk (to keep three copies of what I have
already ripped, and to allow for some future expansion - I've still got LPs I'd
like to add to my computer library, and, I haven't stopped buying new music).
I suppose I could buy 3 more TB of disk, but why if I can't hear the
difference anyway? I'd rather use the money to buy more music to
fill up the disks I already have.

If I was starting over again now, or, had a smaller music collection, I'd
probably use a lossless compression for everything. But since I started
with 320kbps mp3s, I just stick with that for consistancy (and did I mention
I can't hear the difference anyway?).

Oh, maybe one day I'll want to put all this music in my truck. So I tried
an experiment years ago: I can sometimes tell a 192 mp3 (only about 1 song in ten) from the original. But 192 is fine for truck, or most any other mobile
purpose. So I reripped some tracks to 192 from 320 and from lossless.
Then did some abx'ing. I could tell the 192 from either the 320 or
the lossless. I could not tell the 192 apart from each other. So as
near as I can tell if I want to rerip my 320s into 192s I don't lose
anything more than I would ripping 192 from lossless.

 

[cerbie]

Quote:

Cerbie, 16 vs 24 bit is "lossy" with respect to fidelty. You're losing fidelity/info by converting original analog signal from the cartrige/tape to 16-bit rather than to 24. Try with the colors of your monitor.

Yes (though fidelity is a very murky word to use), and it is a totally different kind of "loss" than using a lossy codec. If you had stated that, rather than an analogy, I'd have agreed right off.