[Barock]

It's good news in a way - for portable equipment it means it's not really necessary to go beyond 192k MP3, hence more music on the move. At home, of course you can go as lossless as you like. Unless of course you use the same equipment for both home and away.

 

[Stoin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fenixdown110 /img/forum/go_quote.gif How many times have we all heard or participated in the same argument? lol

Not enough!

I saw the article on TR and my first though is there must be a thread on head-fi by now. At least the author admits it is not the most scientific test in the world. It would need more than a few 30 second samples and 7 people for that.

 

[gevorg]

FLAC vs MP3 debate is so old. The new kid on the block is FLAC vs. WAV.

 

[crapback]

FLAC sounds so much better than WAV. Why do you think it has more letters???

 

[fenixdown110]

But WAV is a bigger file, so it must be better!

 

[etiolate]

these are better than motorcycles.

 

[fenixdown110]

These are better than humans.

 

[MrGreen]

I like the way people time and time again tell us that they can hear the difference, and yet refuse to take a short ABX over at hydrogenaudio.

I have very revealing speakers, and I probably cant tell the difference between a decent V0 and FLAC. Why? The difference is so small that you'd have to be listening for sounds rather than the music.

Why would I waste my time on something so trivial?
Just rip to flac and be done with it.

 

[DavidMorton]

The sound of music, and what you like, is completely and totally subjective. The fact that people preferred the 192 might actually prove that there is a difference in hearing the items, even if people can't put their fingers on it.

For example, the other day, I sat my wife down, and played her a 1 minute section of "No Suprises" by Radiohead. I did it on several different headphones. The phones I used were the following:

Bose In-Ear
Bose QC3
Sony MDR-NC22 Noise Cancelling
Zune Premium
No-Name (Pure PUR-800)
Klipsch S4

I thought for sure she'd like the Klipsch the best. She didn't, surprisingly. Here were her details:

Bose In-Ear "Sounds like I'm in a can"
Bose QC3 "Warm sound"
Sony - "I like these! The sound is really good on these." (I felt they were really tinny and lacked tons of bass)
Zune Premium "Whoah! I didn't even realize there was an acoustic guitar back there. These sound really nice and smooth"
Pur-800 - "These sound like the Zune Premium"
Klipsch S4 - "I can hear some distortion in them."

What was distortion to my wife was the general audio hiss you get while recording. This was inaudible using the other headphones. I prefer this, as I feel like it's a more "real" sound.

In any case, the point is, different people have different tapes. It's not that the Zune or the Sony are "good enough" for my wife. It's that she actually prefers it to the nicer quality headphones. She likes the sound.

If you like lossless, and want to deal with the non-compression of it, go for it. If you like 192K better, great! Go with that.

 

[fenixdown110]

Very good point there. Just stick with what you like.

 

[Nigel79]

Quote:

Originally Posted by etiolate /img/forum/go_quote.gif these are better than motorcycles.

Seems like you wouldnt want to go around a curve to fast with one of those. I've owned a few bikes and I guess I don't get it. The lean is the most important thing.

 

[Budgie]

(They have an articulated front end so they can lean into a turn. I wouldn't be seen on one myself, however.)

These type of "comparison tests" say more about the listener and music used, then then equipment or file played.

 

[bangraman]

It's not that surprising in one aspect. A 192K file is still artifact-prone, but not to the obviously defective range of 128K... and people might confuse the artifacts as additional sonic information as the fundamentals of the rendition will not be anywhere near as compromised as a 128K file.


Take the Etymotic ER-4. Comparatively crap earphones in terms of actual accuracy, but it's still preferred by many here due to it's ability to 'texturise' the music with it's higher-frequency distortion, leading to an impression of more detail, compounded by its tonal character. Same delusion in the end.

 

[b0dhi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrGreen /img/forum/go_quote.gif I like the way people time and time again tell us that they can hear the difference, and yet refuse to take a short ABX over at hydrogenaudio.

I like how people demand that others take tests they themselves do not even begin to understand.

 

[dallan]

If you are used to listening to mp3s like the general public, they may sound better to you because you have grown accustom to that sound. So when you have a test your are going to choose those.