[Inzane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by UncleFestive /img/forum/go_quote.gif I've been playing around with this very thing the last couple of days, as I'm currently loading my cd collection onto my external hard drive. I think some of the difference people can hear may lie in the quality of the encoding, decoding and the output software they are using. Using mediamonkey with Flac vs Lame encoding at 320, I could definitely hear the difference. The mp3s just sounded flat and lacking in detail. I upgraded the mp3 decoder in MM to the MAD mp3 decoder and the output to ASIO. The difference is night/day! To my ears, the mp3s now sound BETTER than the flacs! Smoother, crisper, more spacious. My little slice of audio heaven, and I have no desire to mess any further, I just sit listening with a big silly grin on my face! This is all just my experience, and I'm sure some will just discount it offhand, but it's my little world, and the sky can be any color I want it to be!

Call me crazy, but I have a hard time believing a lossy file would sound better than a lossless one.

 

[Cid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inzane /img/forum/go_quote.gif Call me crazy, but I have a hard time believing a lossy file would sound better than a lossless one.

He's probably tripping on acid.

 

[UncleFestive]

Quote:

Originally Posted by immtbiker /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you get a chance, listen to Pink Floyd's DSOTM 30th anniversary edition, the last song Eclipse. In the last 45 seconds of the song there is a section in the upper right hand corner of violins playing what some people say is the record company re-using their tape from a previous recording of either Blood Sweat and Tears, or a Beatles song, or others say it is done one purpose by Pink Floyd (head music). You need some good equipment to hear it (the better the equipment, the more pronounced it is). Then take it and convert it to a 320 .mp3 then convert it back to .wav/.cda, put it on a CD and listen to it on the same equipment, and the violins disappear. This recording also shows that CD Players, amps, headphones, interconnects, and power cords do make a difference.

The music you hear appears to be an instrumental version of "Ticket to Ride". I hear it fine on the CD. I hear it equally as well on the 320 mp3 I just burned. Why I would burn it back onto a CD is beyond me, as the point of my post was how the mp3s sound on my laptop.

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by immtbiker /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you get a chance, listen to Pink Floyd's DSOTM 30th anniversary edition, the last song Eclipse. In the last 45 seconds of the song there is a section in the upper right hand corner of violins playing what some people say is the record company re-using their tape from a previous recording of either Blood Sweat and Tears, or a Beatles song, or others say it is done one purpose by Pink Floyd (head music). You need some good equipment to hear it (the better the equipment, the more pronounced it is).

Perhaps you could make the last minute of this track available for us?
Cut out the last 45-60 seconds, compress with a lossless encoder and upload somewhere.
Not sure if its fully legal, but I guess RIAA don't care about such a small listening sample.

I really want to try this on my own!

 

[immtbiker]

Quote:

Originally Posted by UncleFestive /img/forum/go_quote.gif The music you hear appears to be an instrumental version of "Ticket to Ride". I hear it fine on the CD. I hear it equally as well on the 320 mp3 I just burned. Why I would burn it back onto a CD is beyond me, as the point of my post was how the mp3s sound on my laptop.

The only reason that I said to burn it back onto a CD from the .mp3 was so that a person testing this theory, can use the same equipment to test both the original and the compressed version.
I'm glad that you can hear the track fully. A lot of people I show it to, don't hear it, even on the CD version, which shows we all have different levels of hearing sounds. I am bothered by the boiler in the basement of my apartment when my other family members can't hear it at all, even if I mute the TV.

As a woman said in the "Letters to the Editor" in Stereophile, "It's amazing that my husband can hear the difference in $1000 interconnects, but can never hear when I ask him to take out the garbage!"

 

[Gatticus]

Yes, we all hear quite differently. Ten years ago a I tested my hearing with a tone test cd and couldn't hear anything above 17khz. Now it's probably even worse.

I read an article recently about certain cities that have an audible hum to some people and yet most can't hear this hum at all. For the people that can hear it though it drives them up the wall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum

 

[kingsqueak]

I agree that most people who claim to hear the difference have something missing in their comparison.

Poorly encoded examples that people don't realize as such I think are the big offenders. Too many people simply don't understand the settings they are using to encode or are assuming things about tracks they've attained that were encoded by other people.

I encode at -V2 --vbr-new and have A/B compared with lossless FLAC and original wav and I can't hear any difference. Using the same source and monitor for the tests.

I worked as a sound engineer for a number of years so I'm sure my hearing isn't exactly reference by now, but if there is any audible difference, unless locked inside an anechoic chamber, I would be shocked if anyone could truly hear it.

This goes into the same bucket as people using lousy source material to evaluate headphones and other source components. There are tons and tons of commercially recorded tracks that have all sorts of massive defects. Guitar amp cabinet resonances, from the player turning the bass knob all the way up and the mids down. Blown speaker drivers, blown mic elements, overdriven direct-box line signals, the list goes on. Add lousy mastering on top of these bad tracks and it's just a steaming pile of artifacts.

For people who have no background in recording, the symptoms of these problems can be attributed to their sources or to other basically imagined things. Then the game begins to compensate for the source material itself.

A simple example here is simply; how many people who talk about the sublime cymbal decays or the harsh high end, have actually spent time, up close to a drum kit while it was being played? Cymbals are painful up close, period. Recording them and mixing them to get them to properly blend into the full picture is some of the hardest work there is. Plainly, it's rare that this is done in a manner that goes beyond simply tolerable.

There's very little math when evaluating a final mix. The listener will hear what they want to hear of it, and it is in that interpretation that the audio marketplace makes its money.

If people want to hear a difference in a $5k transport with $1800 interconnects, suspended in a rubber basket, good for them. I just dislike buyer's remorse being manifested in statements of fact. It just doesn't add up and unfortunately confuses people.

 

[Digitalbath3737]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cid /img/forum/go_quote.gif I can, well I think I can. Either way, I'm archiving so for now and the future it's best to have an exact copy. There will come a time when it will be much easier to tell the difference and I'll laugh at you all who encoded in lossy formats.

Did you actually mean that there will come a time when you'll laugh at all the people who encoded in lossless? Because if anything lossy codecs are getting better and better. Take 128kbs from the 90s and compare it to lossy of today. 128kbs back then was crap. Today 128kbs is listenable (kinda). As it goes right now most people can't tell the differance from 192kbs usng audiophile worthy equipment. The lossy codecs or tomorrow 128kbs will probably be comparable to lossless.

 

[pedxing]

Six years ago, i would be able to tell a difference between the CD recording and the 320 kb/sec mp3. Because the psycho-acoustic algorithms and mp3 encoding is so much better today I can't tell a difference until it drops below 192 kb/sec. This is assuming if I can switch back and forth between the uncompressed and compressed version quickly. Otherwise for the most part, I wont be able to tell what I am listening to was a compressed mp3 or not. I just horribly compress all my archived flac files into mp3s now. At least I save space now.

 

[immtbiker]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kingsqueak /img/forum/go_quote.gif A simple example here is simply; how many people who talk about the sublime cymbal decays or the harsh high end, have actually spent time, up close to a drum kit while it was being played? Cymbals are painful up close, period. Recording them and mixing them to get them to properly blend into the full picture is some of the hardest work there is. Plainly, it's rare that this is done in a manner that goes beyond simply tolerable.

This is something that is very true and something that most people don't even think of...

On '70's and 80's rock recordings, you can barely hear the drum set because it wasn't miked independently and the sounds coming from the various components of the drum set cancelled out the rest of the sounds of the band.

Very few groups, like Steely Dan and David Sanborn did take special care in their recordings to the point that they name all the components used in the recordings (mikes, cabling, etc,).

Now if you notice, even at live recordings, most drum components are miked separately and the drum set is usually situated behind a plexiglass wall.

Listening to the original CD by Santana - "Abraxas" is a painful experience. However the original master tape was done quite well, it was just the record company's cheap mixing and mastering process that ruined the recording.
I have the current DVD-Audio version remade from the original analog masters and it is a gem. Every instrument stands up and screams out it's own identity. You can even hear the percussionist yelp in joy.

 

[kingsqueak]

Interesting thing too, some of my favorite recordings of mixes that I did were simply a DAT that was jacked into the main mix of the house mixing console during a live show. (A board mix of a live show only comes out well by "magic" as what you program during a live mix is meant for the room and not for the line-out mix. It's beyond rare that they actually both translate well.)

I've played them for people who came back to me with "what 'x' effect processor did you use on the overhead mic for the ride cymbal?". There wasn't one, wasn't even a mic there. I got all sorts of weird questions about special mics, special processing, etc. Granted I had a myriad of outboard effects running, compressors, gates, effects, etc. but the things people were hearing weren't the sort of thing you could reproduce in a calculated manner, they just sort of happen.

Example, some of the most natural sounding cymbals I've ever recorded were purely by accident. A sum of all the stage mics picking up the drums along with their intended input material. Phasing and dynamics just happened to gel.

There is skill to mixing for sure, but there is also a bit of "magic" there. One of my favorite albums that I like to think was heavily magic and not so calculated was Boston's first album. If Tom actually calculated out the depth of all those tracks, it would frighten me. Instead I like to imagine it was just one of the most magical end results that a guy with a reel to reel in his basement ever managed to put together.

There are also plenty of days that I curse the fact that I 'know better' when I listen to tracks. Boston's first album, hearing it when I was probably seven, on a pop-up lid, portable mono record player was what likely sparked my interest to get involved in how it all works. Other days I wish I hadn't asked that question.

I've dragged this pretty far off, but I think it's a useful angle to a lot of what is discussed on the forums here.

 

[RasmusseN]

my music library is ruined

today i've found out I can tell

128 kbps
320 kbps

tested both to Apple Lossless there is a big enough difference.

 

[Cid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Digitalbath3737 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Did you actually mean that there will come a time when you'll laugh at all the people who encoded in lossless? Because if anything lossy codecs are getting better and better. Take 128kbs from the 90s and compare it to lossy of today. 128kbs back then was crap. Today 128kbs is listenable (kinda). As it goes right now most people can't tell the differance from 192kbs usng audiophile worthy equipment. The lossy codecs or tomorrow 128kbs will probably be comparable to lossless.

No, not at all. I want exact copy's and anything less is not good enough for me, wither I can tell the difference or not is irrelevant. I don't have the best equipment around, but I can hear some noticeable differences between flac and lame mp3's, that difference is only going to continue to grow with better equipment. Try listening to flacs for over a year then going to mp3, it's unbearable. Even if there comes a time when I can't hear the difference, it won't matter to me as hard drives are dirt cheap and they'll continue to get bigger and cheaper.

I see no reason to use mp3. Space is not an issue for me. Flac is also open source which is a HUGE plus for me, but like I said before even if there comes a time when I can't hear a difference between flac and mp3 i'll still continue to use flac as it's free, open source and I want an exact copy of everything.

 

[gsansite]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Digitalbath3737 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Did you actually mean that there will come a time when you'll laugh at all the people who encoded in lossless? Because if anything lossy codecs are getting better and better. Take 128kbs from the 90s and compare it to lossy of today. 128kbs back then was crap. Today 128kbs is listenable (kinda). As it goes right now most people can't tell the differance from 192kbs usng audiophile worthy equipment. The lossy codecs or tomorrow 128kbs will probably be comparable to lossless.

I'm sure lossy codecs will get better, which is while I'll be keeping my lossless files to transcode from.

 

[EnOYiN]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cid /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't have the best equipment around, but I can hear some noticeable differences between flac and lame mp3's

I can't. Lame mp3 are so near to lossless as far as sound quality goes that there is hardly any audible difference left. (Please note that I am not calling you a liar I just think that there are no noticeable differences between the two)

There is always a discussion going on about whether you should save files lossless or lossy. Lossless is a way more permanent way of saving your music. I would advice people to save their music lossless if they have enough disc space or are willing to buy a larger harddrive. For us poorer beings; we will just have to wait untill our scientists come up with another affordable solution that will allow us to have that same lossless quality.

Saving in lossy or lossless formats has always been a financial problem. People who have got enough money to buy a 20 TB harddrive won't even think about saving files in a lossy format.

People also invented a thing called CD. It will most likely even outlast your computers harddrive. You will not have to extract them, not have to compress them, not have to use foobar (which does not work without you sitting in front of your screen for at least an hour) You won't have to think about installing linux (which you don't get at all ( where did my drive C: go?)) so you can use Amarok. Etc, etc, etc.

Just press play.....