And the audiophile loons start appearing in the comments: "on high end gear you can hear the difference between a factory and a copied CD.".
No. You can't, sir.
Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
21–30 of 56 posts
Re: Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
#22192kbs VBR with a good encoder. There's been countless tests and this is indistinguishable to the vast majority of listeners (teens might have a slight edge as the ability to hear high frequencies diminishes with age).
I don't have time to dig up citations but check out the Hydrogen Audio forums and other sane, non-cranky-audiophile, evidence based sources.
Re: Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
#23Asking which file sounds "better" is meaningless; some distortions sound good. The proper way to do this is an ABX test, where you compare both to a known original, and ask which sounds more like the original .
Do you have any links?
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ABX - sadly, of all the links on that page only the Gnome ABX one is still live. But you can find/ask for more recent material in their forums: many of the people who work on lossy audio codecs hang out there.
Re: Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
#24Asking which file sounds "better" is meaningless; some distortions sound good. The proper way to do this is an ABX test, where you compare both to a known original, and ask which sounds more like the original .
Do you have any links?
I may not disclose full details, but one of the engineers that made particular widely used audio decoder said that they've left the bug whose symptoms were slight high frequency noise.
It was widely reported to sound "better" than other "by the book" implementations.
Re: Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
#25And the audiophile loons start appearing in the comments: "on high end gear you can hear the difference between a factory and a copied CD.". No. You can't, sir.
It's fairly easy to tell between 192kbps CBR LAME and an original CD. 192kbps VBR is a bit hit or miss. High end gear can absolutely make the imperfections more noticeable.
Personally I just got fed up of the goalposts being moved around (LAME codec constantly being updated, mp3 scene switching from 3.97 -V2 to 3.98 -V0, etc.) and now I just have all my music collection in lossless.
~300MB a CD? No problem.
Re: Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
#26Should test against lossless.
Bus driver - imaginary places has really fast rapping, as mp3 its almost impossible to understand, on lossless you can grok it.
Re: Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
#27Bad choice for the sample. I however still picked #1. Choose a song with bass, and mids. The difference between 128kbps and 320kbps will become painfuly obvious.
Re: Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
#28Laptop speakers: Nope.
High Quality Headphones: Maybe.
Loud sound system in a crowded club: Definitely.
Also just because one track sounds acceptable at 192, doesn't mean another will. The only way to make sure tracks have the same 'opportunity' to sound good is to throw away less information.
Re: Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
#29And the audiophile loons start appearing in the comments: "on high end gear you can hear the difference between a factory and a copied CD.". No. You can't, sir.
Basic DSP knowledge tells us that a digital audio copy is exactly the same quality as the original.
Also, testing the difference between 128kbps and 320kbps MP3s over and over again is like drinking warm beer all the time to make sure it's really worse than the cold one.
Re: Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
#30You just need to focus on percussion to get it right - it's much more complex frequency-wise. I personally break even at V2.
You're right. That's what I ended up focusing on after a few listens and chose the correct answer, which could probably be attributed to being an ex pro drummer. Most people were probably focusing on the vocals, not at all attuned to what quality percussion sounds like, which is why more people chose the wrong answer. One might even go far as to say that more people think vocals sound better at 128 than 320.
That's also why I spent more than half my budget on percussion in equipping my ex garage band.
And that's also why you can see Jack White playing a $50 guitar and no drummer without some serious dough investment in their equipment.