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24/192 music downloads are silly

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Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#381

Post by kstenerud »

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #337
kstenerud wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep FLAC copies just so that I have lossless versions that I can convert into the lossy format du jour, but for actually listening, I mass-convert to lossy. I've listened to FLAC and properly encoded MP3 files (@192 and 160) on $50,000 audio equipment, and I can't tell the difference.

I'm curious, did you listen in a properly treated room? As in with bass traps, panel traps, diffusers, a cloud, first reflection points covered, etc? Because I can hear a difference on less that $10,000 of playback equipment, but in a fully treated listening room. And I know from the days when I used an untreated room, there would be no way I could tell in an untreated room, even with a million dollars of equipment.…

It was an audiophile who'd spent a small fortune decking out his "listening room". I imagine that he knew what he was doing.

I humored him by teasing out which one was which without him noticing, and then saying the lossless one sounded better. Didn't want to hurt his feelings. And really, the sound system as a whole sounded awesome. I just couldn't tell the difference between the formats.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#383

Post by GrantS »

smosher_ wrote: post #301

The argument is fine for listening to a finished product but those absolutes in the post have some hidden assumptions that don't hold in all real-world scenarios. That probably sounds like BS. Hear me out. A common practice for DJs is to use special decks to DJ from iPods, or other digital sources (eg. regular turntables with timecode vinyls operating a PC.) DJing involves playback speed adjustment when there is a BP…

I had a similar reaction. In addition to the article's assumption that the consumers and producers of audio are distinct groups with no overlap, there is the assumption that humans will be the only ones listening (rather than computers, e.g. Shazam).

Those two factors are probably not enough to change the way ALL music is distributed, but they deserve to be acknowledged and dismissed with proper evidence as well.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#384

Post by golergka »

Stratoscope wrote: post #253
Lazlo_Nibble wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, no. Bit-perfect ripping is trivial and routine, and tools like the AccurateRip DB (which has checksums for around three million different titles you can use to verify the checksums on your own rips) and the CUEtools database (which has recovery records you can use to correct bit errors on your own rips) prove it. I routinely get bit-accurate single-pass high-speed rips--no "paranoid" settings or re-reads--of disc…

Oh sure, your rips may be perfect at the bit level, but how do you know that they're free of sub-bit quantization that isn't detectable by electronic circuits but can be heard by the human ear? This sub-bit jitter and interference can travel along with a digital file and sneak right past your ordinary bit-level error detection and correction, no matter how lossless you make it. That's because these errors aren't visi…

For a second I was terrified at the thought that you're being serious.

That comment is just perfect.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#385

Post by jordanlev »

the_duck wrote: post #82

There's a special irony to the fact that this high fidelity audio format is being promoted by Neil Young. Young's a rock musician. He's been around loud noises (e.g. rock concerts) most of his life. He's also 69 years old. Our ability to hear high frequencies decreases dramatically with age and exposure [1]. If anyone were able to discriminate 24/192 from 16/44.1, it sure as heck wouldn't be an elderly rock musician.…

Neil Young is an enigma, and has never been very consistent. (I say this as a HUGE fan of his -- one of my favorite musicians who has ever lived).

For example, he just released an album that was recorded in what is basically a phone booth. http://www.clashmusic.com/news/neil-young-makes-entire-album...

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#386

Post by cLeEOGPw »

tsotha wrote: post #280
masklinn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people buy $500 wooden knobs to make their volume pots sound better. (or was that a hoax? i can't tell anymore) Some people buy small pyramids to elevate their cables off the floor, some people buy mats to put onto your CDs before putting the CD in a player ( http://dagogo.com/millenniums-m-cd-mat-carbon-cd-damper-revi... ), some people buy $1000+/meter digital interconnect cables ( http://www.theabsolutesound…

>Self-styled audiophiles are, by and large, idiots with way too much money plagued by magical thinking. I agree on the "plagued by magical thinking" part, but not all these people are idiots. Some of them are quite intelligent, in fact. I think they just want to be "in the know", and are able to suspend their normal skepticism in order to belong. One of the smartest and most productive programmers I ever met was take…

> but not all these people are idiots

Not to be picky, but it bugs me to see when people talk about two different things and don't understand each other.

Intelligence is not a linear value that could be compared like "person1 intelligence > person2 intelligence". With both of these terms there are always skipped implication of the area of intelligence.

By "idiots" he meant "small amount of/incorrect knowledge in the area of audio quality and human hearing", and by "intelligent" you mean "big amount of knowledge and efficiency in the area of writing computer code".

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#387

Post by sp332 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #197
cthalupa wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bose and beats* are by, every /objective/ measure, shitty products. Subjectively, you might like them, but the faithfulness of audio reproduction is not a subjective matter. You can play a tone and measure how well that tone is actually played back. You can then also objectively compare things that produce that playback quality at various price points and figure out if they're priced competitively. There is plenty of…

Are Beats shitty or just expensive? How little would I have to pay to get same quality? I am finding it hard to believe that they are actually shitty, while I find it very easy to believe that they are way overpriced. I have never listened to Beats headphones but I imagine they have a lot of base-boost (based on absolutely nothing), but that is not the same as shitty.

Yeah, Dr. Dre is on record saying that he's not an audio engineer but he knows what makes hip-hop music sound good. So he never claimed they had "flat response" or anything.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#388

Post by tammer »

errantspark wrote: post #18

I once spent ~2 hours explaining all of this (well maybe not all of it) to a friend of mine who was studying sound design at the time. He didn't believe me. I even transcoded some 24/192 FLAC Pink Floyd I had lying around and made him do a double blind test to show him that he'd prefer the slightly louder song every time, even if the louder song was 192kbps vs the FLAC. He did. He still doesn't believe me. He still t…

The article specifically mentions that lossless formats offer advantages over compressed formats. The argument is 24/192 encodes lossless files vs 16/48, which I feel the author soundly confirms.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#390

Post by kazinator »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #279
kazinator wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bose knows how to coax a bass note or two out of a small plastic box.

Bose knows marketing. I've got excellent bookshelf speakers that were cheaper than the equivalent from Bose, but the reviews and tests showed them to be way better. My (small!) speakers end up producing way too much bass for the room they're in, in fact, and I use Foobar 2000 with the "MathAudio Room EQ" plug-in to get a flatter speaker response from them. But their problem isn't that they can't produce bass notes.

Whoosh ... I think my comment went over some people's heads. A "one note bass" isn't a good thing, technically. I did not say that Bose is great at making speakers with excellent bass.
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