What kind of music survives lossy compression best?

[trains are bad]

What do you think? Is it kind of pointless to insist on lossless for something like Metallica?

 

[Bunnyears]

Muzak survives best. Anything worth listening to should be listened to with the best possible sound quality. It's too bad that larger files drain so much battery power in hard drive players, otherwise I would only use a lossless format on my ipod.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Despite the perception that music like metal is easily compressed, quite the opposite is true, being often very complex and fast sounding, compression degrades metal quicker than many other forms of music in my experience. This is especially true in the treble, which is generally very "busy" in metal, which is bad new for compression. Classical doesn't compress well either, the nuances of the soundstage just die. I'd think the most easily compressable music would be minimal electronic, since it doesn't use ambient instruments, and doesn't have much action to slur together.

 

[zChan]

My opinion is with Iron_Dreamer
Accustic music with lots of space between the notes. Can Jack Johnson ever sound bad!?

Cymbal happy stuff doesn't fare well, as compression tends to cuts off the highs first.

 

[ojnihs]

I'm also agreeing with Peter on this one as well. Considering that I listen to metal mostly, I find that metal suffers the most audio degrading the more you compress it. I can't stand the way metal tracks sound when the bitrate is anything lower than 224 kbps. It seems that anything lower adds too much artifacts to the cymbals, and being a sucker for the drum tracks, it just doesn't sit too well with me.

 

[Hell_Gopher]

I think recent compressed pop recordings sound pretty much as good at low bitrates.

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

Hippity-Hop/Rap The Nth generational samplings already sound like GouShr

 

[Bunnyears]

Anything by Hans-Peter Kyburth. The less you can hear of his stuff the better off the world is.

 

[Beach123456]

Quote:

Originally Posted by trains are bad What do you think? Is it kind of pointless to insist on lossless for something like Metallica?

Don't compress Metallica!!!

The first time i listened to metallica was on 128 compression and I hated it, but then realized I loved that song when i actually heard it off the CD. I think when compression is opinion changing it is pretty strong.

 

[K2Grey]

I think something like Metallica would actually suffer, since there's alot going on (granted, I don't remember what I heard of Master of Puppets too well).

For what it's worth, most people who successfully ABX lossy stuff, generally concentrate on the cymbals and high-hats and stuff of that nature (IIRC).

 

[saint.panda]

In fact, metal and the likes are very complex if you run a fourier frequency analysis and that's what really counts when doing a compression that utilizes sophisticated but aesthetically-undemanding algorithms.

If you go by cardinal numbers, this is the kind of music that will lose the most when being compressed. However, seen from the ordinal side of the road, I think classical music suffers the most because the loss of air and instrument separation is more critical than the absence of an electric guitar's 3rd order harmonics.

This is the classical music fan speaking of course.

 

[Oliver :)]

You never know. If you use ALAC you can have iTunes sort your lib by bitrate and be in for a surprise. In my lib, Marilyn Manson's Valentine's Day (1160kBit/s) and Van Halen's Ain't Talking 'Bout Love (1155kBit/s) on top, with lots of songs that feature plenty distorted instruments and such following. On the low end (<500kBit/s) there is a surprising amount of well recorded classical & jazz tracks, as well as oldies with limited frequency response.