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24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

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Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#171

Post by stcredzero »

PaulHoule wrote: post #156
stcredzero wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since everyone is listening of crappy earbuds, they compress the hell out of it and destroy all dynamic range. More compression and less dynamic range is beneficial for certain environments. Noisy subways. Watching TV in a noisy downtown apartment. Basically, crappy, noisy environments. In those, compression will help you actually hear the music and speech. However, the fact that this should be done in the master is…

Dynamic range is a solved problem if people cared. You attach some metadata to the audio file that says certain parts should be level boosted in a noisy environment and there you go.

Or, just turn on software compression on a modern device with such a feature implemented, and there you go.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#172

Post by grawprog »

Kaiyou wrote: post #89
mruts wrote: post #4

Problem with music sounding bad doesn’t really have much to do with the distributed format: V0, V1, or 320 mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac. You can only the difference between mp3 and flac at shitty bitrates no one uses anymore (like 120). The reason why a lot of recent digital music sounds bad is because of the intentionally terrible mastering. Since everyone is listening of crappy ear…

> mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac I did a blind test between 128-mp3, 320-mp3 and flac hearing classical music. While it's true that the 128-mp3 is obvious to find, it also isn't too difficult to find the 320-mp3. Flac just sounds better. Described as a feeling, flac is more voluminous and doesn't feel cut short. For fun, I also let my parents take this test and they could tell, too. Th…

You also lose some of the fullness on the extreme low end, it's noticeable even with a fairly low end subwoofer.

Something also ends up missing in the midranges. I was working on a track once where all I had was 320 mp3 version of the vocals. At some point I replaced it with a flac copy of the same vocal recording, from the same original wav source and the difference was noticeable right away without changing any of my equalizer settings or anything. It just punched through more and the clarity improved.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#173

Post by rurp »

I have a related question that someone here probably has a good answer for. I recently heard a song I like on the radio while driving. Shortly after it played I pulled up the same song on Spotify with my phone, plugged my phone into the car stereo through the headphone jack, and played it. The quality was MUCH worse. What's the likely reason for that?

I know very little about audio but my best guesses are:

1. The media cable was poor quality and/or playing music through the headphone jack is worse quality than radio station airwaves.

2. Spotify was sending back poor quality audio, possibly because I was not on wifi.

I'm sure the particulars matter but does anyone have a best guess as to why the quality would be so much worse? I don't really expect mainstream radio stations to serve up the highest quality audio, but maybe my assumptions are way off.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#174

Post by SloopJon »

mruts wrote: post #4

Problem with music sounding bad doesn’t really have much to do with the distributed format: V0, V1, or 320 mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac. You can only the difference between mp3 and flac at shitty bitrates no one uses anymore (like 120). The reason why a lot of recent digital music sounds bad is because of the intentionally terrible mastering. Since everyone is listening of crappy ear…

> That being said, I think flac is generally a good choice for a music collection.

One other consideration for a music collection from CDs is getting a good rip in the first place. I've had some horrible rips in iTunes, even with error correction enabled. I have much more confidence using a tool like XLD that supports AccurateRip, which probably doesn't work with a lossy format.

If you want to transcode after the rip, fine, but you may as well hang on to the FLAC.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#175

Post by chubot »

rurp wrote: post #173

I have a related question that someone here probably has a good answer for. I recently heard a song I like on the radio while driving. Shortly after it played I pulled up the same song on Spotify with my phone, plugged my phone into the car stereo through the headphone jack, and played it. The quality was MUCH worse. What's the likely reason for that? I know very little about audio but my best guesses are: 1. The med…

Spotify definitely sends you low quality audio at times. Most people won't notice on common speakers and headphones, but even my "bad" speakers revealed the difference.

Amazon Music seems to be pretty good as far as quality is concerned. I think they download the MP3s onto the phone's local storage so they don't have bandwidth issues? Either way, I could hear the difference between Spotify and Amazon music. The difference between Amazon music and my own MP3s was not as apparent.

Pandora seems to sound "fine", although I seldom play it loud enough to notice. Spotify was the only one where I noticed the quality being notably bad. It's possible it's due to a low bandwidth fallback. And maybe they throttle their own servers at peak times, in addition to detecting the lack of local wi-fi.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#176

Post by apcragg »

IWeldMelons wrote: post #127
vortico wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resamplers these days take advance of our faster computers to use near-brickwall filters, like a 1024-point windowed sinc. With this, you can create a steep filter from 20-22 kHz with better than -100 dBr attenuation beyond the Nyquist frequency. This is enough to stop worrying about the aliasing caused by the bandpass filter. I've never heard of what newaccoutnas is talking about, but I guess if a high-frequency sou…

Well, there are several things to keep in mind. 1. The sharper the frequency response the worse ringing in the phase response. 2. Human hearing is a mystery and the near ultrasonic freq may actually have some influence on the perception of the music. 3. You need to use analog filters before the ADC and after the DAC anyway, and it is so much easier to implement with a much less steep freq response, if used with highe…

That's true for IIR filters but not FIR filters, which modern (This century) signal processing uses. A 1024-point windowed sinc will have linear phase across the entire passband, that's one of the main reasons we use FIR filters.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#177

Post by Symbiote »

stcredzero wrote: post #81
mruts wrote: post #4

Problem with music sounding bad doesn’t really have much to do with the distributed format: V0, V1, or 320 mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac. You can only the difference between mp3 and flac at shitty bitrates no one uses anymore (like 120). The reason why a lot of recent digital music sounds bad is because of the intentionally terrible mastering. Since everyone is listening of crappy ear…

Since everyone is listening of crappy earbuds, they compress the hell out of it and destroy all dynamic range. More compression and less dynamic range is beneficial for certain environments. Noisy subways. Watching TV in a noisy downtown apartment. Basically, crappy, noisy environments. In those, compression will help you actually hear the music and speech. However, the fact that this should be done in the master is…

In the 1990s, car stereos sometimes had a "loudness" button which did exactly as you suggest.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#178

Post by [deleted] »

KerrickStaley wrote: post #164

Question: Is 192 kHz better when you want to slow down (or speed up) a track significantly while keeping pitches the same? Does it produce less noticeable artifacts? When DJing, I often speed up or slow down a track I'm cueing in order to match the tempo of the playing song. So having 192 kHz tracks might be better (although usually you try not to change a song's tempo too far from the original anyway).

[deleted]

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#179

Post by gwbas1c »

KerrickStaley wrote: post #164

Question: Is 192 kHz better when you want to slow down (or speed up) a track significantly while keeping pitches the same? Does it produce less noticeable artifacts? When DJing, I often speed up or slow down a track I'm cueing in order to match the tempo of the playing song. So having 192 kHz tracks might be better (although usually you try not to change a song's tempo too far from the original anyway).

No, it's not. You answered your own question here:

> while keeping pitches the same

All 192khz does is preserve higher frequencies. If you're keeping pitches the same, there's no advantage to using an extremely high sampling rate for your source material. The advantage comes if you're going to lower pitches.

(Note that some algorithms need higher sampling rates to avoid aliasing. That shouldn't be the case anymore, but if you're hearing a substantial increase in quality just going up to 192 khz, most likely one of your algorithms is faulty.)

(Note 2: I say "substantial increase" because some people can detect up to 27khz.)

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#180

Post by jpalomaki »

rurp wrote: post #173

I have a related question that someone here probably has a good answer for. I recently heard a song I like on the radio while driving. Shortly after it played I pulled up the same song on Spotify with my phone, plugged my phone into the car stereo through the headphone jack, and played it. The quality was MUCH worse. What's the likely reason for that? I know very little about audio but my best guesses are: 1. The med…

There's quality setting in app settings, where you can choose the quality. Choices are automatic, low, normal, high very high. I guess "automatic" can adjust the quality based on connection.
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