[Stecchino]

Assuming you've got a quality rig (portable OR home), what types of music do you think benefits most from being compressed LESS (i.e. 320 kpbs instead of 160 kpbs)? That leads to the question is it even fair to judge that according to genre? Perhaps the benefit of higher quality music files is determined on album by album basis due to the variance in the original recording quality.

I'd really like to hear some opinions.

 

[SteeleBlayde]

Everything benefits from better equipment except for Rap and Hip Hop.

 

[blessingx]

Acoustic in any genre.

 

[usc goose]

every genre has good recordings and crap recordings.

well done and well recorded drums, stringed instruments (including guitar and electric) and female vocals i think are the sounds that suffer most from compression.

i wouldn't really associate a genre though.

 

[robert]

a true torture test?? if you can stand the music, not everyone can, listen to anything which strikes your fancy that is either RCA Living Stereo or Mercury Living Presence 35mm. lots have been transfered to CD. they often have a bit of tape hiss, but that dissolves away after a minute.

they are, probably without exception, the closest to Real Live music that's ever been made. generally with two or three microphones.

the closest of current recordings i've heard are Water Lily Acoustics CDs. "A Meeting by the River" is uncanny.

 

[LargeSock]

To answer in a negative way, genres without a lot of distortion or synthesized instruments. Avoid metal, techno, rap, hip-hop, pop, and other similar genres.

Jazz, classical, anything acoustic basically, are where it's at. I think I'm not the only one who came to like those genres better after getting a halfway decent headphone rig.

 

[Riordan]

i disagree with the genre generalisation - much depends on the recording. i've heard too many soupy, sirupy soundstage-less orchestral recordings to accept the claim that ALL classical profits from a better system. the music would, most certainly, because the instruments aren't amplified - but if the recording is awful, a better system won't help much.

i'm actually going to make a very bold claim: the worst recordings i heard were all classical - (on the other hand so were the best recordings i heard - seems you get what you pay for).

 

[averydonovan]

I agree with others who say it isn't necessarily genre specific. I listen to a lot of stuff that tends to be less than stellar in recording quality, and trash according to many in musical material quality, but find it helps to have less compression. I listen to mostly industrial with a lot of electronics in it which easily get destroyed by MP3 compression. I find that a lot of synth-driven music has a lot of detail to the synth sounds themselves, it is not just a solid stream of single-tone noise, it is a band of frequencies that actually are more of a series of rapid pulses than just a monotone. MP3 compression usually destroys that, which I find annoying. Hearing the uncompressed version of songs compressed in MP3 will expose a lot of detail that you may not have known was there. My favorite example of this, and what I use as an encoder torture test, is Project Pitchfork "Precious New World." Encoded wrong, and the initial synth sounds will sound flat, boring. while uncompressed it has some bite. Dynamics compression in certain recordings has also helped ruined the enjoyment of the album since it loses the detail in many of the sounds as well as inducing fatigue since there is just too much loud information in the recording.

My experience with genres like classical and other acoustial genres is limited so I can't really say how compression of any kind hurts them. But I'm sure it is similar to any other music, mainly the loss of detail.

 

[robert]

Quote:

Originally posted by donovansmith My experience with genres like classical and other acoustial genres is limited so I can't really say how compression of any kind hurts them. But I'm sure it is similar to any other music, mainly the loss of detail.

in general, these genres are recorded and mastered without dynamic compression. what we do to them afterword is another question.

what i find amusing is the SACD/DVD-A war, yet the bulk (90% ??) of music sales are pop crap, which is compressed like a sponge under whoopi goldberg. neither one will sound any better with greater dynamic range or frequency response. such CDs toss away lots of the headroom (both kinds) already. people really are stuuuuuuuuuuuupid.

 

[Rempert]

I don't think need for high bitrates has a direct relationship to the "quality" of the recording. And genres probably can't be generalized by either. Each lossy compression method has its own set of sound affects that it struggles to do properly, depending on the algorithms used. String some of those problem sounds together at the same time and you will probably need a high bitrate to overcome them. But then, this is the point of VBR to give that higher bitrate if it is needed. But these problems can occur in any genre, and a song that is recorded with tons of noise, pops, hisses, clipping, and distortion could probably still have obvious artifacts (although one may have trouble deciding what is the compressions fault and what is just the bad recording).

I don't really know much about problem samples, but I would think that a "busy" percussion ensemble would be a compression nightmare.

 

[Music Fanatic]

It's a bit of a paradox, no?

Classical music (for example, string quartets) sound better under compression than rock music (for example, if you use VBR settings in LAME, they'll compress at a lower bit rate) but they also seem to sound better at high bit rates than rock too -- I think this is because classical music is just better recorded than most rock music. We've all heard the stories about Phil Spector using cheap speakers to master recordings (because he wanted it to sound good on equipment configurations that most of his audience would use) -- I just think that well recorded rock is the exception rather than the rule.

 

[Velkov]

It's not a genre thing. I listen to a lot of jazz, experimental, free, classical, artsy stuff, rather than market driven...

One of my favourite recordings ever is a piece by Gavin Bryars performed by a sax quartet. That tune sounds fine to me even at 128kbs. The Live at Massey Hall album by Herbie Hancock/Michael Brecker/Roy Hargrove/John Patitucci/Brian Blade sounds awful at 192kbs and needs 320kbs. And then there are recordings like John Coltrane, Live at Birdland - great music but a bad recording (in my opinion). It sounds bad straight from the CD...