Why does Tidal sound better to my ears?

[pstickne]

In theory, but I bet you couldn't tell the difference between the two anyway. Fraunhofer MP3 CBR, perhaps. MP3 LAME VBR, no. I've been sharing a lossy test file with folks for a couple of years. At CBR, most people can't discern at 192. At 256 with LAME and AAC, it turns to random chance for everyone. Slap VBR on top of that, and you can be pretty sure it is audibly transparent for everyone.

Haha. Just wanted to share something I just learned about MQA

“The next stage is perhaps the cleverest, a folding technique that maintains playback compatibility with existing PCM hardware. The new 24/96 file first undergoes decimation from 24-bit to typically 16-bit, with dither and noise shaping applied to preserve something similar to 20-bit resolution.”

Seems a bit like the process done when making and audio CD.

 

[pstickne]

I'd argue that Opus is the best

Please expand, and define “best”.

I’ve been smacked around on even AAC 256 vs MP3 256.. eg. if a sound is technically different and nobody notices.

 

[TronII]

In theory, but I bet you couldn't tell the difference between the two anyway. Fraunhofer MP3 CBR, perhaps. MP3 LAME VBR, no. I've been sharing a lossy test file with folks for a couple of years. At CBR, most people can't discern at 192. At 256 with LAME and AAC, it turns to random chance for everyone. Slap VBR on top of that, and you can be pretty sure it is audibly transparent for everyone.

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
With this test, I can consistently hear the difference between 192 and 256 kbps MP3, with sightly less consistency between 320kbps. I can't hear the difference between uncompressed Wave and MP3 320 kbps with any kind of consistency. So, for me, MP3 reaches audible transparency around there. Supposedly, AAC reaches transparency at 256 kbps, and Opus reaches it at 192 kbps (which It's VBR, anyway). Opus is also open source and reaches smaller sizes than MP3 and AAC with ease. But I'm biased .

 

[TronII]

Please expand, and define “best”.

I’ve been smacked around on even AAC 256 vs MP3 256.. eg. if a sound is technically different and nobody notices.

See my reply to bigshot; It wins the bitrate wars, size wars, and it's open source

 

[pstickne]

See my reply to bigshot; It wins the bitrate wars, size wars, and it's open source

I’ll take it. Now, to get in BT and a huge marketing campaign

I wonder how encoding resources/latency compares? I’ll look it up later, of course.

 

[bigshot]

LAME MP3 is not the same as Fraunhofer MP3. If you add VBR, you aren't really comparing a data rate any more. It keeps changing. With AAC, the data rate can theoretically go beyond 320. I don't know if any other codec can do that.

 

[TronII]

LAME MP3 is not the same as Fraunhofer MP3. If you add VBR, you aren't really comparing a data rate any more. It keeps changing. With AAC, the data rate can theoretically go beyond 320. I don't know if any other codec can do that.

You can set Opus' target bit rate all the way up to 512 kbps, but it can theoretically to all the way up to the bitrate of the original recording if needed, via VBR

 

[TronII]

LAME MP3 is not the same as Fraunhofer MP3. If you add VBR, you aren't really comparing a data rate any more. It keeps changing. With AAC, the data rate can theoretically go beyond 320. I don't know if any other codec can do that.

I had no idea they were different. I looked on Hydrogen Audio after reading this, and it seems that LAME added VBR support to MP3?

 

[bigshot]

The codec is different too. It's kind of like MP4 lite. Halfway between MP3 and MP4.

 

[castleofargh]

the quality of a lossy codec is usually decided by how low the bitrate can be before we start noticing problems by ear. with that in mind, opus is great. otherwise, as far as I know they are all transparent for like 99.99% of music under normal listening condition when used in their respective high settings. how close to the original they are, that's irrelevant the second we agree to use a psychoacoustic model, and they all do.

 

[turbomustang84]

I'm surprised they don't have Metallica on Tidal or Qobuz

 

[bfreedma]

I'm surprised they don't have Metallica on Tidal or Qobuz

Metallica won't license their music to Tidal and Qobuz. They have their own streaming service, mostly focused on live music.

 

[turbomustang84]

Metallica won't license their music to Tidal and Qobuz. They have their own streaming service, mostly focused on live music.

Full discography is on Deezer

 

[stenog]

I'm surprised they don't have Metallica on Tidal or Qobuz

Metallica is on Tidal at least in my region, maybe it's different in the US?

 

[bfreedma]

Full discography is on Deezer

Must have been offered enough money by Deezer and Spotify.