[Argyris]

It definitely varies depending on the source material. Using my settings, it's actually kind of comical looking at the bitrate counter on Kansas' Leftoverture, which spends most of its time below 150kbps, is usually around 130kbps, and on occasion even dips below 100kbps! It's a truly crappy sounding album, with almost no treble energy, barely any imaging, and lots of uninteresting "wall of sound" arrangement. This presents little challenge to the encoder; the average for the original album (non-bonus) tracks is 136kbps. Most of the rest of my collection has an average of >170kbps, and some of the more complex and shimmery-sounding albums (the Yes and Genesis stuff, mostly) push that closer to ~180kbps.
 
Like I said before, VBR AAC (NOT what iTunes gives you; you need to use the encoder backend I linked in my last post) is incredibly efficient. It's a little fiddly getting it set up, but you only need to do it once. After that, you're probably saving a good 25% of space over what you'd otherwise need to use to achieve the same overall fidelity.
 
 
 
Of course you know you're an audiophile when you a) know the difference between ABR and VBR, and b) know that iTunes doesn't expose the latter capability of the QT AAC encoder.

 

[GL1TCH3D]

Not necessarily. I mean the differences between 128 and 256 is much more noticeable than 256 vs 320 but even then I feel it's noticeable.

What about flac and 320kps? Which music genes should I keep flac, which is fine with mp3?
I am interested in your opinions, because I plan to downsize my music library so that it can fit in my phone.

Honestly for portable use I wouldn't even bother with lossless if space is an issue.
I personally use wav on the go because I have a 120gb ipod classic along with a CLAS and O2 as a portable rig for the hd800.
I wouldn't really bother otherwise (and even with this rig you often won't hear differences, it depends on the recording quality and the intensity of the song, I could probably go with 320kbps mp3 without noticing a difference).

 

[GL1TCH3D]

[quote name="Brooko" url="/t/544391/you-know-youre-an-audiophile-when/4530#post_8882158"

You guys ever tried an abx (blind test) using Foobar 2000 abx plugin (volume matched) .... or is it just a feeling ...... ?

Most people who say they can tell the difference between aac256 vs 320mp3, or even aac256/320mp3 and flac, have never actually tested themselves under proper conditions. The results are usually ..... enlightening.[/quote]

I have tried the foobar blind test. Very briefly though. I got a solid percentage correct and I feel it really depends in the song, and even then you have to pay attention. It won't jump out at you like a 128kbps mp3.

I also made my friend do the test, he choose the lcd2r1 to do it, he got it right between 320kbps mp3 and flac 2/3rds of the time.

 

[Brooko]

Quote:

I have tried the foobar blind test. Very briefly though. I got a solid percentage correct and I feel it really depends in the song, and even then you have to pay attention. It won't jump out at you like a 128kbps mp3.
I also made my friend do the test, he choose the lcd2r1 to do it, he got it right between 320kbps mp3 and flac 2/3rds of the time.

 
Here's the deal though - you have to do at least 15 tests to get a meaningful result.  Your 'very briefly' and 'solid percentage' essentially mean nothing - and are worse when you state publicly you can tell the difference.  That just means a whole generation of new 'audiophiles' will repeat what they hear from the generation before - without actually testing themselves etc - and without actually knowing rather than guessing.  There is no shame in being unable to tell the difference no matter how good our gear is.  With the technology improvements in the codecs over the years, we're not supposed to be able to tell the difference.
 
BTW 2/3rds of the time (for your friend) is a statistically failed test.  To actually tell the difference you need to be more than 10 tests, and below 5%.  All the result says is that he's actually just like the vast majority of the rest of us ...... he's guessing and can't tell the difference either.
 
Please note - I'm not attacking here - far from it - I'm just encouraging others to actually be aware of their own limitations.  Endless parroting of the same false assumptions over and over helps no-one.

 

[stevenswall]

^I've tested it with CD rips from original Journey, Billy Joel, and Boston CD's... It was about 50/50 comparing a 320kbps MP3 to 1411 WAV after 20+ tests. Now I want to try it with 128kbps. I used the Ultimate Ears TripleFi 10, and my Etymotic Mc5.

 

[headphone man07]

when you want to use dr dre beats as a shooting pigeon.
when you have a headphone,amp/dac and eq preset for every song in your library.

When your friends think you're
headphonesexual (you are attracted to headphones)
You take your home rig on the train.

you pack some money your tickets and your home rig + selection of headphones on a 2 week holiday.

you were conned into a one way ticket for your holiday because you couldn't afford the two way because of the headphones you just bought.

 

[PakoBoy]

I did also a test between flac and 320kbps. I listened to 5 songs faild 5 times

 

[Argyris]

Quote:

There is no shame in being unable to tell the difference no matter how good our gear is.  With the technology improvements in the codecs over the years, we're not supposed to be able to tell the difference.

 
Agreed. The whole point is to fool human hearing into not missing the discarded information. It's supposed to be transparent. I think a lot of audiophiles consider it like "street cred" to claim that they can hear the difference between lossy and lossless compression. It validates both their gear and their prowess, and it gives them something they can use to look down on the "unwashed masses" who like Beats and who listen at 128kbps. To me, this is not a good attitude.
 
I fully believe that, eventually, there will be a codec (likely a highly evolved form of one of the existing ones) that will be transparent to virtually everybody at 128kbps. These codecs rely upon psychoacoustic trickery, and at this point we still only barely understand the basics of how our brains interpret our hearing. The more we learn about how humans hear, the more efficient our codecs will become at discarding only the information (and at only the correct times) that (it) won't be missed.
 
As it is, I'm already amazed at how far AAC has come. It was always more efficient than MP3, but I'm still surprised just how low the average bitrate of my newly-encoded library is. At an average of 163kbps, that's a little more than 11% of the uncompressed size. There may be a few passages lurking in there where I can spot the compression--I haven't listened to the whole library yet and I'm still evaluating my settings. But if I do find something, I'll just encode that individual track or album using higher settings. No need to redo the ones where I can't tell the difference.

 

[Sotone]

When you go to many concerts in great halls an realize that no equipment can equal the sound of a great orchestra or chamber music ensemble performing live. 

 

[takato14]

Quote:

When you go to many concerts in great halls an realize that no equipment can equal the sound of a great orchestra or chamber music ensemble performing live. 

Except maybe the SR-009 with a Smyth Realiser.

 

[Argyris]

Quote:

Except maybe the SR-009 with a Smyth Realiser.

 
I imagine that would just sound like a really good set of speakers, though, since that's what it attempts to synthesize.
 
Still would love to hear one, though.

 

[Argyris]

You know you're an audiophile when your Web Design instructor is talking about "embedding audio files" and you stop posting on Head-Fi to pay attention for a second (only to realize what he really said).

 

[enderbender]

When metal suddenly becomes meditative as you try to find order within the chaos

 

[wolfetan44]

Quote:

 
Wouldn't this also depend largely on the sound device & headphones?  I can't see how effective this test would be for someone like me, i.e. having a laptop with Beats Audio (soooo much better than the headphones) and Ultrasone DJ1.

Really? People say Beats Audio is absolutely terrible and its one of the noisest jacks they've ever used..

 

[takato14]

Quote:

Quote:

 
Wouldn't this also depend largely on the sound device & headphones?  I can't see how effective this test would be for someone like me, i.e. having a laptop with Beats Audio (soooo much better than the headphones) and Ultrasone DJ1.

Really? People say Beats Audio is absolutely terrible and its one of the noisest jacks they've ever used..

Beats audio is quite literally nothing more than a simple software EQ. If you're hearing noise, its EMI from the device's motherboard or something.