The Death of High Fidelity 377
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Rolling Stone has an interesting story on how record producers alter the way they mix albums to compensate for the limitations of MP3 sound. Much of the information left out during MP3 compression is at the very high and low ends, which is why some MP3s sound flat. Without enough low end, 'you don't get the punch anymore. It decreases the punch of the kick drum and how the speaker gets pushed when the guitarist plays a power chord.' The inner ear automatically compresses blasts of high volume to protect itself, so we associate compression with loudness. After a few minutes, constant loudness grows fatiguing to the brain. Though few listeners realize this consciously, many feel an urge to skip to another song."
Loudness War (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Loudness War (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Loudness War (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Loudness War (Score:5, Informative)
You don't compress differently when exporting to MP3 than you do when exporting to CD. Let's not look upon an MP3 as a majestical format where audio mysteriously takes on a life of its own and sounds strikingly different. It doesn't. An MP3 is simply the same signal that you find on a CD transformed into the frequency domain, frequencies with lesser engery quantized greater, or dropped if below the absolute threshold of hearing, some spatial information discarded (depending on the encoding mode), and written out as a bitstream. An MP3 is certainly a degraded version of the original signal, but the degradation can't really be compensated for via compression. If anything, EQ would be a better solution.
I really think this article is completely off-base. Compression is completely unrelated to MP3, it's a technique used independently of the format.
MOD DOWN the whole story, Flamebait (Score:5, Informative)
I think you resumed in two sentences the whole "audiophile" dilemma. Let's face it, modern recordings suck and no processing will change that. Meanwhile, well intentioned but ill informed people will debate endlessly if vacuum tubes are better than transistors, if analog is better than digital, if lossless compression is better than lossy.
Raising these subjects is flamebait, the people who defend vacuum tubes or analog recordings are comparing their own favorite recordings with modern recordings, not the absolute value of the audio equipment itself.
One of my own favorite musics is a recording of the nine Beethoven symphonies, done by the Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1962-1963. I have several versions of these in both analog medium, tape and LPs, and also in CDs, which I have ripped to mp3 to carry in my portable player. To rip the mp3 I used the CDs, not any of the analog versions, because the sound is cleaner in the CDs.
OTOH, I have also some other CDs of those same pieces, same orchestra, same conductor, same recording company, done entirely in digital formats. I think they aren't as good as the old ones. The reason? Not because they are digital, but because of the difference between a Karajan in his 30s compared to the same man 20+ years later. Or it could also show the difference between the criteria used by Deutsche Gramophon in the 1960s and the 1980s.
However, one thing I'm sure of is that if a CD copy of an analog recording is better than an analog copy of the same recording you cannot say digital sound is inferior. And if an mp3 copy of a CD containing music originally recorded in analog format sounds better than an LP of exactly the same recording, you cannot say mp3 has intrinsic fidelity problems.
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Not stating what type of equipment one uses for comparisons/ratings of audio experiences does not help to cure the condition.
However, one thing I'm sure of is that if a CD copy of an analog recording is better than an analog copy of the same recording you cannot say digital sound is inferior. And if an mp3 copy of a CD containing music originally recorded in analog format sounds better than an LP of exactly the same recording, you cannot say mp3 has intrinsic fidelity problems.
Ye
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You make it sound so bad.
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Re:MOD DOWN the whole story, Flamebait (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work with a mastering engineer that had specialized in vinyl and he talked about some of the things he would have to contend with when working with records. He mentioned that those problems became really evident after digital had really taken off and become established only to introduce the 'resurgence' of releasing 7inch 'remix' records and having to explain to his clients why the records sounded so much different from the existing digital masters.
Besides the obvious problem of space (signal with a lot of low-freq content can significantly reduce the amount of recording time on one side of a record, for instance, so a lot of modern music, rap, r&b, and rock) would have to be heavily sonically modified to be pressed onto vinyl) in general the low-end and high-end of the source is *very* heavily EQed on the front end (before etching) and then given the 'reverse' of the same EQ on the back-end (after detected by the needle).
Such heavy handed EQ is necessary to 'deal' with the limitations of the format and because there is no such thing as perfect EQ there is always a change in the tone of the original source.
I suspect, but admittedly have no proof, that much of what is 'appealing' to vinyl is the learned tonality of all of this processing. I am not even saying that the process is 'good' or 'bad' I merely mean to suggest that it is there and a large part of that 'vinyl sound.'
A similar process is done with cassette tape recording to address the limitations of the high-end of audible signal and noise.
As a personal anecdote, when I first started working with digital I admit that I, too, first considered digital to be 'cold' and 'sterile'. But after working with digital more I discovered that the REAL problem with digital was its veracity. Working in analog is often a lot of 'pushing' the waveform to 'extract' a certain sound out of the tape (with FANTASTIC effect -- NOTHING sounds like drums and guitars, recorded VERY hot, to virgin 24-track 2" tape. NOTHING. but you achieve that sound not because analog is better but because of what happens when you do analog 'wrong'.). With digital you get EXACTLY what you put down so in order to achieve a 'sound' you have to generate that sound before you press record on the digital deck. When we first learned this, we would sometimes track drums on 2" analog first (citing my previous comment about 2"), and then dump it to digital to do the rest of the record (that is done a lot less now -- almost never -- we were being lazy).
Most of getting 'good sound' out of digital was more a matter of relearning how to record to the newer medium
Re:MOD DOWN the whole story, Flamebait (Score:5, Informative)
All lovers of "the vinyl sound" should read your post.
It's actually worse than that: there were several standards for vinyl equalization. Since 1954, the RIAA equalization [wikipedia.org] has been the de-facto standard, but there were literally dozens earlier, which means if you play it back on the wrong equipment you get the wrong sound. And, as you say, even with the right equipment the equalization was hardly a perfect process.
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FM to store audio was also used on videotape, although the tapes do degrade over time, and the mechanism for playback is overly complex, in comparison to disk based systems.
A laserdisk based FM audio system could theoretically store hours and hours of hq au
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i think it's a mistake to think of the iPOD (or other digital portable players) solely as a tool to carry music with you as you travel. Instead, think of the iPOD as the source of all music for your stereo system. Instead of plowing thru 200 LPs, 100 cassette tapes, and 500 CDs (roughly my collection), everything is in one physical item, easily cross
Re:MOD DOWN the whole story, Flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
The same is the case with newer metal releases. I found that, almost universally, albums released in the last couple of years have great quality and sound much cleaner than those released in the 90s or earlier (excepting artists like King Crimson, who probably were all sound engineers).
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OTOH, I have also some other CDs of those same pieces, same orchestra, same conductor, same recording company, done entirely in digital formats. I think they aren't as good as the old ones. The reason? Not because they are digital, but because of the difference between a Karajan in his 30s compared to the same man 20+ years later. Or it could also show the difference between the criteria used by Deutsche Gramophon in the 1960s and the 1980s. However, one thing I'm sure of is that if a CD copy of an analog recording is better than an analog copy of the same recording you cannot say digital sound is inferior. And if an mp3 copy of a CD containing music originally recorded in analog format sounds better than an LP of exactly the same recording, you cannot say mp3 has intrinsic fidelity problems.
I remember reading somewhere that some of the primitive digital equipment in the 70s and 80s had limitations that often left analog versions sounding better. It wasn't until we perfected the digital process that digital recordings really sounded good. Part of the problem was that digital audio was seen as a way to eliminate hiss, when we didn't understand that our ears work best when quiet sounds fade gracefully into hiss.
Re:Loudness War (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally it wasn't until you got into equipment that was so expensive that mostly I couldn't hope to afford it that I told the difference even with recording that *were* good. I have a few pieces of equipment that are good (my headphones are) but that mostly just lets me hear all the imperfections.
Maybe once I can afford the price of my house in audio equipment I may care (and believe me, I would *love* too and am not complaining about anyone who has), but until then I don't so much. I do, however, agree with the idea that the "loudness war" (along with other problems) mostly destroyed most new music out there. Not because I can tell much difference in the quality of recordings but because the music in general is also created to take advantage of it instead of sounding good.
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Which, as far as my understanding goes, gives evidence of a difference. Besides, good practice to enhance fidelity is to quote a source.
CC.
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If a raw, live performance in a studio is imperceptibly different from a recording of that performance, that's another matter all together, and it doesn't seem to be something that is being tested in the sorts of comparison studies you mention.
Nobody listens to music any more (Score:2)
Two definitions of word 'compression' (Score:5, Informative)
Audio compression means to reduce the amount of difference between the loudest and softest sounds of an audio recording or signal. This is what a guitar stompbox pedal like the MXR Dyna-comp does or what the NE571 Compandor IC does.
File compression is to transform the time-domain voltage samples of a digital audio recording, convert them in frequency domain, and discard data below a certain threshold.
Compression means to make smaller. Audio compression reduces volume range and file compression reduces file data size. But they are completely different concepts.
Both types of compression are done on audio recordings by the music industry. Both affect the resultant product.
But they are completely different processes that affect the music in completely different ways. And many of the music professionals quoted in the article couldn't tell or honestly didn't know the difference.
Who sells MP3? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Judgment day (Score:3, Funny)
How true. I tried to warn people that their hair would fall out and blindless would ensue but would anyone believe me then? MP3's are the devil's work.
Repent and bow at the altar of vinyl before it's too late.
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lolbull (Score:2, Informative)
i think what matters what is where the sound is coming out from
speaker/headphone quality etc
This article seems dubious (Score:4, Informative)
Compression is a horrible thing, of course, because essentially what is happening today is that even those of us who buy CDs hoping to avoid the artifacts of lossy formats are subject to some random guy deciding during mastering that "hey, this will stand out more against the competition if the whole thing is really loud and unsubtle". But to tie this against MP3 is a very far stretch of the imagination, IMO.
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As i have no interest in reading another audiophile oppinion piece, i dont know what the article means in that case.
Does this explain my change in taste? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't help, but think that softer stuff like that has a much lower chance of being compressed into distortion.
Re:Does this explain my change in taste? (Score:5, Funny)
not just mp3's (Score:2, Informative)
The first thing I think of though is not how can we improve the delivery medium, but rather why are equalizers not considered at all? Especially in digital media where the EQ can be activated from the song's information
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Use the EQ to bring out the artificial loudness, but leave the details there for the people who want to disable the EQ and just listen to the original piece.
Actually equalisers have little to do with the loudness in questions, besides for the fact that they like to master sounds into having every octave sound as loud, or so I heard. But the core of the problem is compression, which is a simple time-domain effect on the values of samples (in a way similar to gamma in an image).
The true question is, why do
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It's amazing that half of these threads are a rehashed circle-jerk on analog/digital/mp3 compression concerns. The point of the article is that the music was intentionally made loud and thus the amplitudes of the dynamic range are consistently being chopped in modern recordings, thus nullifying the point of using an independent Amplifier to modify the sound to how you want it.
Take Heavy Metal music of the 1970s to today. Take Judas Priest for an example. The album British Steel showed an incredibly crisp,
Priest~ (Score:2)
Meh (Score:4, Interesting)
1.: Record producers did try to fit the sound for low-fi at least as far back as the seventies. This was done to make sure the songs were still recognizable on your transistor radio at the beach or on the tape deck in your car.
2.: *My* MP3s sound just fine, thank you.
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Record producers did try to fit the sound for low-fi at least as far back as the seventies
As far as I'm aware, Phil Spector's early-1960s records were recorded to sound good on AM radio. Also, if you think about it, the "Wall of Sound" could be considered as aiming at the same target as compression did later. It aimed to give the listener an... erm, wall of sound that filled the whole audio spectrum. Some might argue that it did this in a more artistically interesting way, but it still seemed to be aiming for the same thing.
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Dynamic Range! (Score:5, Informative)
MP3 compression is yet another issue.
Radio in general (Score:5, Informative)
Next time you have the radio on, listen closely...those little crackles in the background is not noise from a bummy signal, it's distortion from over-processing the already over-processed song.
Music that's older (recorded when the technology wasn't so hot) comes pre-clipped because they didn't have amazing compression devices to keep everything in check so the varying levels max out. It's not as bad since it were tubes causing the clipping (and they have a softer sound), but it sounds awful.
Anonymous because this is my profession.
MP3 compression does not... (Score:5, Informative)
The authors have no idea what they are talking about and are probably a combination of prejudiced and stone deaf.
Re:MP3 compression does not... (Score:5, Interesting)
If they can't tell the difference then they probably have little business talking about the subtleties of music production and recording formats.
Even better is the idea of producers (gasp) altering the mix to suit MP3s better. Maybe they should look up the original purpose of mastering compressors, especially those with a lat/vert mode. Yup - they're there to compensate for the limitations of your precious, precious vinyl.
Rithm vs Melody (Score:2)
There was a time where there was a war between rithm vs melody lovers. Now it seems the war is over (by now) rythm has won, let's go back to jungle, and forget those gentle sounds.
Just remember, the music you hear when kid will stay with you for all your life.
Not about lossiness... (Score:5, Informative)
You can still hear most of the dynamic range on a well encoded MP3 or Vorbis file, IMHO. If it's present in the first place, that is.
Never mind discussing whether FLAC or MP3 or OGG are the best ; what does it matter if the master has already been sabotaged by marketing, compressed to sound "loud" so that it gets instant attention on the radio? Yeah, sure, it gets attention ; the same way a fire alarm or a fog horn does, by inflicting an ear-cringing reflex.
-- Butch Vig, producer and Garbage mastermind
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If he'd said "we've lowered the bar" would you have agreed with him?
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The truth is only a very small portion of the people care for real audio quality and the rest are easy to be convinced by apparent loudness. I did some tests with the mu
Lower frequencies (Score:5, Informative)
Much of the information left out during MP3 compression is at the very high and low ends, which is why some MP3s sound flat.
Wait, I thought that the MP3 compression was basically achieved by cutting the sound into overlapping chunks, performing a DCT on each chunk, discarding the less important bins according to a psychoacoustic model and compression the thing like in a ZIP file? If so that means that the frequency scale stays linear, and so there would be little interest in getting rid of frequencies under say 30-35 Hz since they represent about 0.15% of the data in a plain old track sampled at 44,100 Hz.
So the MP3 compression doesn't actually discard the "low end" as they call it, does it? Wouldn't the "flatness" they're talking about be due to how frame sizes affect transient (short) sounds and makes them softer?
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Video Illustration of the Loudness War (Score:5, Informative)
The Problem Is (Score:4, Funny)
Also, you'll find your aural experience greatly improved if the wires are of high quality and raised slightly above floor level. I've also noticed marked improvements if you chill the wires(and generally keep the room cool). Cool equipment = warm sound. Who knew?
It's called the auralgasm setup for a reason!
I call BS (Score:2)
Bullshit. The record companies are too lazy/cheap to spend extra time doing ANYTHING that requires any extra time or effort. That's why many CDs in the early days sounded lousy. They just took the original analog tapes and put them onto CD with no remixing or remastering. Recording engineers spent decades learning all sorts of tricks to make music sound good when transferred to a vinyl LP and didn't bother to
Not a major difference (Score:2, Insightful)
As a hobbyist electronic music composer... (Score:2, Informative)
Basically, people often don't realize that compression/limiting started as a handy tool for the mixing engineer.
Sometimes you need a good way of making something sound louder while increasing its harmonic content, and a limiter can do just that.
Also, when done in proper amounts, compression of the entire track can cause the recording to sound more unified.
The fact th
Sounds like... (Score:2, Funny)
But just for good measure - add some super-clean gold-plated copper cables at $1500 per foot.
That will fix it.
The article was mostly about audio compression (Score:5, Insightful)
apparent levels by up to 10 dB or more during the mastering stages without any digital clipping artifacts. (a.k.a. brick-wall limiting)
There is no question that a lot of great points were raised in the article, however when it comes to MP3 (the 'other' form of compression)
as a person who has participated in recording, mixing and mastering sessions for over 30 years, and constantly listens to master recordings,
can only say that it is pathetic how bad they sound on large audio playback systems, which some of us have and listen to.
(For example pick a very large loft, or someone's home theater for 20 people, not to say anything of a proper auditorium)
You might not hear it at home, on computer speakers or certainly not your earbuds, but the bigger the stereo, the more it is obvious.
And actually what is the most disturbing is that what is very, very wrong about lossy encoding formats is that it doesn't necessarily affect so
much the frequency response, as it does the 'punch', transients and other intangibles which when played on those large-format systems become
quickly apparent. The same way a graphic designer will not try and magnify this site's jpg logo (415 x 55 pixels, I did check) to a more
adequate 16,000 x 2122 for billboard and poster printing, as there will be obvious and nasty pixelization artifacts, there are similar phenomenons
happening with audio, and they are - at best - poorly understood, and at worst dismissed as being the brainchild of crackpots with too
much time on their hands, the New-Age idealists like those who read John Diamond's "Life Energy In Music" and keep a stack of copies
of 'Absolute Sound' by the bathroom stall.
Suffice to say that the combination of both forms of compression (finalizing, plus lossy encoding) do make for a pretty formidable opponent that
already has greatly affected the public's perception of what 'sounds good' and doesn't. And it's not likely to get better.
Fear not, for those who care about listening to music in more proper manners, there are plenty of options available, from an arguably limited selection
of SACDs of some great Jazz, Classical and Pop, to fantastic vinyl playback systems, or ways to re-process those CDs that are too loud and give them
back some form of dynamic range, which will involve spending time re-mastering them with specific analog//tube//tape-machine type equipment, and is
obviously not a recommended activity for what seems to make the most of today's impatient 'click-click' listeners, the Attention-Deficit-Disorder-addled set.
As for the Hydrogen Audio bunch that keeps doing those double-blind tests and play with oscilloscope and frequency analyzers, I think they should
once try them again, but in a place that holds a couple of thousand listeners, and they may come back around to the fact that even CD-resolution
is quite atrocious to listen to, when compared to something like formats that can actually reproduce the original master recordings in a way they should,
such as DSD or 24-bit / 96 kHz encoded music. (not to say anything of a proper 1/2" open-reel master copy)
So in essence, while some of these people quoted in the article all agree that something's wrong, most of them cannot put their finger on it, as it is
something that is far more in the domain of the perceptual and psychoacoustics than an exact science.
It is mind-boggling that 25 years after the CD was introduced, most people consider progress to be size-reduction and loudness, and all attempt
at making a case for higher-fidelity have commercially failed, but again there are far larger problems looming over our heads today.
As someone who has made a living with playing recorded sounds in very large venues, I can however vouch for the fact that even if people do not exa
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Re:The article was mostly about audio compression (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite. There may be no digitisation (but only if the entire mastering process has been analogue as well), but there is a lower limit to the detail that can be reproduced: none of the process steps (the cutting process on the master, and the various pressing steps) can reproduce the input signal down to the molecular level.
IIRC you can't reproduce much more accurately than with 16-bit digitisation.
Vinyl does have a superior sampling rate to CD (although the same limit as above applies).
The dynamic range of vinyl is much more limited than that of CD, though. The dynamic range depends on the thickness of the record and the groove pitch, but most commercial recordings are limited to 50 dB or so, so for most music you do need some compression.
The dynamic range of a small group of musicians is something like 90 dB, an orchestra can reach 120 dB, so in practice you need compression for any recording.
Good luck with that, Zuki (Score:2)
Since you pretty well said everything that was on my mind, I thought I'd drop in a few ancillary comments.
I practically cringe every time one of these 'audiophile' flamebait / troll articles appears on /. .. This is one of those subjects with which /. has become a parody of itself. You know the up-modded posts about expensive wooden knobs and fancy cables are just a few lines down the page amidst a Slashgasm of smug, self-congratulatory back-patting by users all to quick to dismiss the finer, more subtle q
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You might not hear it at home, on computer speakers or certainly not your earbuds, but the bigger the stereo, the more it is obvious. And actually what is the most disturbing is that what is very, very wrong about lossy encoding formats is that it doesn't necessarily affect so much the frequency response, as it does the 'punch', transients and other intangibles which when played on those large-format systems become quickly apparent. (emphasis added)
Thank you for your well-reasoned and clear comment. I RTFA and I agree with you. I'd like to elaborate a bit on the part of your comment I quoted. It seems to me that they used the term "MP3" rather flippantly: to mean BOTH the compressed audio format AND listening to music on an iPod's tiny ear buds. If I'm listening to music on a portable player with ear buds, then it's an almost certainty that I'm listening to an MP3 (Ogg, etc. notwithstanding). But it is NOT the case that all MP3's are listened to
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amazing. finally i've found someone who has done real double blind tests of lossy audio data compression versus high quality originals in real spaces, and has proven conclusively that at least 99% of the listening audience can tell the difference. could you post a URL where i can read the details of your testing, so that i can post it whenever some fool shows up and claims that every double blind test to date has shown that virtually no-one can tell the difference? i'd also love to read your work on DSD an
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You keep putting the blame squarely in the hands of the format. I put the blame Firmly in the hands of the Audio engineers. you guys know you are destroying the sound.
I record live events with a mixture of equipment. From high end binaural mic's coupled with a portable DAT recorder to my chump-change cheapie using a personally matched pair of cheapie electro's into a mp3 recorder. and EVERY single time I get far superior recordings than the best audio engineers produce and release. I get
The difference is huge (Score:2)
The difference was huge. Even with my poor $150 speakers I could hear the difference. The biggest difference was the bass. My subwoofer was a lot more active, and the music sounded richer.
FUD (Score:2)
With respect to hifi equipment (because you can't hear the stuff they're doing on portables):
For roll off (loss of highs and lows) there's the loudness control and/or equalizers.
This is necessary because the auditory system has roll off at low volume.
For volume, there's a volume control.
Obvious.
For dynamic compression there's dynamic range expanders.
An extra piece of equipment, not cheap but not overly costly. But it has t
What about my $4000 dancable cables? (Score:2)
MP3's and Audiophilia (Score:2)
Mp3's generally sound bad. Well, rather than make a broad sweeping claim, I'd more say they have an "mp3 soun
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You don't actually know how VBR works, do you? It actually reduces the amount of judgment the software is making over what's important, by assuming everything is equally important, rather than individual sounds in more complex parts being considered less important, as is the case in
Umm, did I miss something? (Score:3, Insightful)
Producers don't care about the music or quality or fidelity anymore. It's all about the dollar. "What can I sell to people?" This is part of the reason why I don't buy music anymore. The last two CDs I bought were both Paul McCartney albums. (Though "memory almost full" is pretty crappy.) I occasionally buy singles from itunes but that's it.
I like to think that my music [binarybeats.com] is mixed well.
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Yet people still talk shit because I list
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Maybe you could rip a sample from those LP's to MP3 and put it online somewhere, so we could decide for ourselves if it sounds better ?-)
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You are correct to a point. But there are also limits as to what the human ear can distinguish. The 44.1 Khz, 16 bit format of CD and standard WAV recordings was settled on for marketing reasons, not technical ones. That resolution came about because the Marketing Department at Phillips, in the early 1970s when this was being developed, had three criteria
Re:...still own LP's - which which were compressed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And people wonder why I still own LP's (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, you should LOVE MP3 if you like the random crappy distortions LPs have.
Just take a look at what frequency domain corrections used to correct the horrible bias of LPs.
Vs them, MP3 is HiFi^2.
Re:And people wonder why I still own LP's (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, and just look at how easily and elegantly they are dealt with. A simple pair of R-C filter networks which are, in essence, a mirror-image of the RIAA pre-emphasis networks used in the amplifier(s) driving the cutter head on the record lathe. The RIAA emphasis curve is a true open standard, and with careful selection of components, it's trivial to execute a proper de-emphasis stage.
So, no bit-juggling, no psychoacoustic algorithms, just smooth analog correction that can easily be within 1% of standard across the entire audio frequency band. And the RIAA curve isn't the first attempt at getting this right - there were other emphasis schemes in the early days (old Columbia, RCA, others) which proved less effective than the RIAA standard which was eventually adopted universally. But all of this was worked out 50 years ago..
To sum up, I have no idea what you're on about with this 'horrible bias of LPs' comment. Those issues were dealt with long, long ago.
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Interesting)
I do encode my mp3s using LAME at 192 kbps and even though I would not characterize the sound as sucky, I could detect a difference between the mp3s and the original (CD played on a 13 year old relatively higher end Sony CD Player). The article is on the mark, the bass and the punch of drums at the bottom end is not as strong. I do not detect differences on the high end, perhaps because of my aging ears.
It could be that the mp3s encoded in the latest version of LAME could have closed the gap but it is also likely that the difference is exacerbated by the fact that I am playing the mp3s via the laptop's headphone jack hooked up to the stereo amp. I wish someone would manufacture an mp3 player with better analog output circuitry designed not for headphone / earphone listening but for hooking up to hifi components.
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Insightful)
Burn a CD. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can now play both on the same relatively high-end CD player. (Or you could try playing both from a laptop, if you like, but I'll bet the CD player is better.)
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Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Informative)
In tests, MP3s made with LAME at the default settings are usually very hard to distinguish from the original. The test is to play the original (A), then the MP3 (B) and then a random choice of the original or the MP3 (X). The listener then has to guess if X was the original or the MP3. This is repeated several times until the results are statistically valid. In most cased people, even audiophiles with high end equipment, cannot accurately determine which one X is.
It's all about flexibility (Score:3, Informative)
I do it to future proof my collection. At some point down the line everyone will move away from lossy codec X to lossy codec X2 which will provide higher compression (as in file size). Some time later lossy codec Y will be introduced which will offer further benefi
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it isn't. It's the smartest possible choice. There is no loss of stereo separation in LAME "joint stereo" (actually, mid/side or matrix stereo), unlike in intensity stereo encoding, which isn't even implemented in LAME. How LAME works by default is that it analyses each frame separately to see whether it is more efficient to encode the frame in LR or MS. Most of the time, not every frame is encoded in "joint stereo". If there was an audible effect to stereo imaging from using MS encoding, the stereo image would continuously pump back and forth as the encoding method changes. Never heard of anyone complaining about that happening...
The drawback to MS encoding is that LAME is only optimised for stereo listening - if the compressed track is played back through a Dolby Pro Logic decoder, the quality of the rear channel sound can suffer audibly in some cases. In Dolby Stereo, the rear channel is L-R, just like the S channel in MS encoded stereo. LAME only optimises the decoded LR stereo signals for audible artifacts, not the S signal when listened to as is. As far as I know, that is the only scenario where using LAME in LR mode exclusively has been shown to improve sound quality. In all other situations, it performs much better in automatic LR/MS mode, or "joint stereo", so the encoder can decide where to use the bits available.
See this [freeuk.net] old page for an explanation of MS encoding. There's lots to be found on the topic in Hydrogenaudio's archives, but I can't be arsed to do a search right now.
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and of course the file size.. but who CARES IF YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU IN THE CAR
personally being (LITERALLY) 1/2 deaf I can't tell the god damn difference between mp3 or ogg files vs CD or FLAC..etc higher fidelity formats anyway.
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Losers 'think' there is a difference.
Double blind tests show otherwise.
And yes I have excellent hearing.
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Funny)
You need to get some of those speaker baffles made from oxygen-free copper.
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(For the record, I rip exclusively to FLAC (with Grip) and transcode what I need into Ogg Vorbis.)
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What matters is "how well does this codec which takes up less space compare to this codec which takes up more space?" If you can't tell the difference then the codec which takes up less space might as well be lossless.
Most people who rattle on about lossle
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It's not like they lose the dynamic range just when converting to mp3's. Hell, even old recordings being "remastered" today are being purposely stripped of their dynamic range just to make it "louder".
Some people need to go and actually read the article.
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Informative)
Bits in audio are all about dynamic range.. you still need all the bits for loud music as well as quiet music.
16 bits gives you 96 dB, and 24 bits gives you 144 dB. This is why 16bit is "good enough" for most music, but recording is almost always done at 24 bits to allow for more accuracy of level adjustments and mixing. Then down-mixed to 16 bits.
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Informative)
For mastering and mixing of course you need more bits, so that you preserve 16 data-ful bits at the end of the process.
24 bit CDs would do *nothing* to preserve sound quality *after* dynamic range compression. The data has already been lost, adding more 0s doesn't get you anything.
More bits on the master recording might help, but that has nothing to do with the CD format, and everything to do with the mastering process.
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