[Gallictic]

Hi guys, I'm still trying to discover the various types of sounds and how they all work together on a whole so go easy on me.
 
Throughout my quest for knowledge, I've seen thousand and thousands of posts saying the lossless (FLAC) is the best way to go and we lose sound quality with lossy music ect ect.
 
My question is how is lossless better than lossy. This is not a debate about convenience or portability. I want to know why do we need to listen to something that extends beyond the human range of hearing frequencies (20 Hz - 20 kHz).
 
To my understanding, most high end lossy algorithms cut off frequencies that cannot be heard by humans (320kbps mp3 cuts off at around 20 kHz) .
 
Is that just wrong?
 
If its right then why do we need lossless if we cannot really hear the frequencies anyway and they are just taking up space? Am I just missing something here?
 
TL;DR
 
Why lossless over lossy when looking at frequencies?

Cheers!
 
PS: If you need clarification on what im asking then I'll be glad to clarify. I wrote this in a hurry.
 
 
 
 
 

 

[SDDL-UP]

I'm buying a CD, and I figure why not put 100% of it into my music collection? Why would I settle for 85% of it, even if I can't tell a difference? Just getting what I paid for!

I would hate to be a person that upgrades something in their playback chain only to discover it exposes a lossy format!

There is simply NO NEED for a lossy format IMO.

 

[MacedonianHero]

Lossless when re-translated back digitally it is a bit for bit identical translation to the original recording. Lossy music simply is not....it has data missing. The lower the rate 128 vs. 256 vs 320 the more data bits that are missing (and therefore worse sound quality).

Here's a good source:

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/1233

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gallictic /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
To my understanding, most high end lossy algorithms cut off frequencies that cannot be heard by humans (320kbps mp3 cuts off at around 20 kHz) .

 
Lossy compression schemes don't simply limit bandwidth (by the way, CD's cut off at around 20kHz as well). There's much more to it than that. And it's audible.
 
Lossless compression schemes allow you to retain all the information while still reducing the storage requirements, though not as much as lossy schemes.
 
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[nick_charles]

 
Quote:

Hi guys, I'm still trying to discover the various types of sounds and how they all work together on a whole so go easy on me.
 
Throughout my quest for knowledge, I've seen thousand and thousands of posts saying the lossless (FLAC) is the best way to go and we lose sound quality with lossy music ect ect.
 
My question is how is lossless better than lossy. This is not a debate about convenience or portability. I want to know why do we need to listen to something that extends beyond the human range of hearing frequencies (20 Hz - 20 kHz).
 
Lossy compression is a bit more complicated than just truncating high frequencies, many codecs/bit-rates cut off long before 20K with minimal impact, but all rely heavily on masking, this on a slice by slice basis analyses the frequencies and their amplitudes and removes frequencies that are low enough in amplitude to be inaudible due to being masked by adjacent frequencies, so the dominant frequencies are passed through and others (perceptually inaudible) are hacked out - this process can be so good as to allow the codec to remove 4/5th of the data and stilll be perceptually transparent (most of the time)
 
 
 
To my understanding, most high end lossy algorithms cut off frequencies that cannot be heard by humans (320kbps mp3 cuts off at around 20 kHz) .
 
Is that just wrong?
 
If its right then why do we need lossless if we cannot really hear the frequencies anyway and they are just taking up space? Am I just missing something here?
 
TL;DR
 
Why lossless over lossy when looking at frequencies?

Cheers!
 
PS: If you need clarification on what im asking then I'll be glad to clarify. I wrote this in a hurry.
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

[Gallictic]

Quote:

 
Lossy compression schemes don't simply limit bandwidth (by the way, CD's cut off at around 20kHz as well). There's much more to it than that. And it's audible.
 
Lossless compression schemes allow you to retain all the information while still reducing the storage requirements, though not as much as lossy schemes.
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
This is great info thanks!

 

 

[Gallictic]

Quote:Originally Posted by Gallictic 

Hi guys, I'm still trying to discover the various types of sounds and how they all work together on a whole so go easy on me.
 
Throughout my quest for knowledge, I've seen thousand and thousands of posts saying the lossless (FLAC) is the best way to go and we lose sound quality with lossy music ect ect.
 
My question is how is lossless better than lossy. This is not a debate about convenience or portability. I want to know why do we need to listen to something that extends beyond the human range of hearing frequencies (20 Hz - 20 kHz).
 
Lossy compression is a bit more complicated than just truncating high frequencies, many codecs/bit-rates cut off long before 20K with minimal impact, but all rely heavily on masking, this on a slice by slice basis analyses the frequencies and their amplitudes and removes frequencies that are low enough in amplitude to be inaudible due to being masked by adjacent frequencies, so the dominant frequencies are passed through and others (perceptually inaudible) are hacked out - this process can be so good as to allow the codec to remove 4/5th of the data and stilll be perceptually transparent (most of the time)
 
 
 
To my understanding, most high end lossy algorithms cut off frequencies that cannot be heard by humans (320kbps mp3 cuts off at around 20 kHz) .
 
Is that just wrong?
 
If its right then why do we need lossless if we cannot really hear the frequencies anyway and they are just taking up space? Am I just missing something here?
 
TL;DR
 
Why lossless over lossy when looking at frequencies?

Cheers!
 
PS: If you need clarification on what im asking then I'll be glad to clarify. I wrote this in a hurry.
 
-
-
-
-
-
 
Im guessing that some low standard headphones will skip the missing frequencies because they are masked by the more dominant ones?
Will one notice the difference between a FLAC and 320 mp3 if they are just listening casually? or does it take a well trained ear?
 
 

 

[crayonhead]

it really depends. I have one good pair of balanced earphones (ATH-AD700) and I use for listening on the go. If you listen to music constantly and use an amp, the difference can really be heard with the higher and lower frequencies. For example, Gorillaz... on plastic beach (flac format), I can hear minute differences from the itunes played version, and i'm also using a PA2V2 amp. But if you listen casually, not much would change in your perception. The only way to bring out the differences between lossy and lossless is to run it through an amp and then listen to it.

 

[Uncle Erik]

Practically speaking, when you can get 1TB of storage for around $50, there's no point in ripping lossy files. It was more important back when drive space cost more.

I've seen arguments about the audibility of various lossy schemes, but why not just put the whole disc on your computer? Storage is cheap and I don't see any drawbacks to having lossless files.

 

[rroseperry]

If you've got players that can't play lossless files, it's just simpler to have music ripped to 320 for drag-n-drop ease.
 

 

[Zabardo]

To answer the OP I wanna say because we can but in reality we use lossless because its the closest we can get digitally to an actual CD and while lossy was great for portability and size before, right now we have the means to have everything on lossless plus, in some bass heavy genres you have a noticeable cut when playing the songs on a lossy like DnB.
 
Bottom line if you have a proper equipment you can take advantage on lossless just as much you can take on CDs.

 

[Gallictic]

So how about headphones then?
 
The Shure HD 800 has a minimum frequency of 6 ​Hz and a maximum of 51 ​kHz. One cannot hear such low and high frequencies.
Is there another factor that justifies such extended frequencies again?

 

[Blisse]

So I can't blame my audio files for any imperfections in the music. Not including bad rips, but you get the point. Peace of mind. 

 

[tranhieu]

Quote:

So how about headphones then?
 
The Shure HD 800 has a minimum frequency of 6 ​Hz and a maximum of 51 ​kHz. One cannot hear such low and high frequencies.
Is there another factor that justifies such extended frequencies again?

to minimize the effect of roll off at 2 ends.
that has nothing to do with frequency range of lossless file though. there are many iem out there cannot reach 20khz or even if they do, they already rolloff long before reaching 20khz. as already being said above, storing lossless files is mostly for the peace of mind.

 

[jman1503]

I may be wrong, but don't we use lossless because it sounds exactly like the original? Perhaps regarding the frequencies, there are sounds that we percieve but do not hear which adds to the listening experience.  This is a high frequency eqivalent to tactile sound perhaps?