The Man Who Broke the Music Business • Hacker News Board

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#71

Post by Nursie » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 11:07 AM UTC

Gigablah wrote: post #65

Nursie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some parts of the world (Singapore, Malaysia are places I have seen) there are shops in malls that openly sell copies of stuff. In fact when I first bought a PS3 and went looking for games for it in Singapore I was frequently turned away with "Oh, you want originals? We don't do that here".

You probably won't find a lot of places like that in Singapore anymore. They've really cleaned up over the past 10 years.

Huh, OK. I guess it probably was about 9 years ago now. How time flies!

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#72

Post by tempodox » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 1:07 PM UTC

wishinghand wrote: post #45

drostie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably the weakest compliment that I've heard for a set of headphones ever. I have something like 7 pairs of earbuds and I pine for the bass that I remember from my crummy Philips HS820 (foldable neckband) headphones. For some reason the only place to get good earbuds is from someone who is selling something else: Samsung's in-ear earbuds sold with Galaxy devices and Apple's earbuds are both somewhere betwee…

>For some reason the only place to get good earbuds is from someone who is selling something else Or you buy quality stand-alones from Shure, Sennheiser, Beyer Dynamic, or Sony (and many more probably)? I always throw into my e-waste bin the Apple earbuds since they're both really low quality. The Shure SE215s are so much better than any bundled earbuds it's barely an opinion.

I can confirm that the Beyerdynamic DX160 iE are indeed excellent for their price.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#73

Post by lozf » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 1:07 PM UTC

donohoe wrote: post #15

louthy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could tell the difference. I produce music, and I can usually tell the difference between low and high bit-rate MP3s. Certain sounds are handled poorly at lower bit-rates: especially high-frequency sounds - you tend to hear obvious artifacting which comes across as 'mushy'. The link above is clearly a biased example where there are barely any real high-end sounds, and therefore it would easily fool an untrained ear…

Being totally sincere and serious here; but could you create such a test?

There have been many properly conducted (double blind, level matched) ABX[1] tests. It's easy to test yourself: encode a lossless CD rip to various bitrates of whatever codec you want to try, and use software like the ABX plugin for foobar2000, or similar standalone software to compare the lossless and lossy versions. You may be surprised at how low you can go before noticing much difference.

Some sounds compress better than others, and the different codecs (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.) tend to have different problem samples, so take your time and play about. Of course the only point in lossy encoding is to save space (or bandwidth), so it makes sense to do it efficiently hence MP3 CBR320 is rarely the best option, despite it's popularity as a common "go to" solution.

[1]: http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=16295

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#74

Post by lozf » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 1:25 PM UTC

harshreality wrote: post #4

tempodox wrote: post #2

...if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD... The thing is, MP3 _isn't_ “just as good”. A rendering in lossless compression from a CD still sounds different than a 320 kBPS MP3. Which is why I just can't get over the iTunesStore selling sound in 256 kBPS. Much too bad. Amazon does 320 kBPS, but it's still not good enough.

Have you ABX tested 320kbps mp3 against flac? If so, what track was it, and what audio equipment? If not, the difference you heard was the placebo effect of knowing it was flac.

Here are a couple of ABX logs that demonstrate an audible difference between 320 and FLAC

* http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=70598

* http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=100256&...

All lossy codecs have some problem samples and cranking up the bitrate isn't a guarantee of transparency. Newer codecs tend to do better than MP3, and at lower bitrates. The only point in lossy encoding is to save space, so it makes sense to do it as efficiently as possible, and considering that, 320 CBR is actually the worst of both worlds because it always wastes space, and is often overkill anyway.

An AAC file from a good implementation of the encoder (e.g. Apples, or either from Fraunhofer including the Open Source FDK-AAC from Android) will usually (for most people, with most music) achieve transparency in the mid to high hundreds of kbps.

The material listened to always makes a difference, therefore unqualified arguments about "can always tell" or "never can tell" are always flawed.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#75

Post by amyjess » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 2:06 PM UTC

ugexe wrote: post #67

flyinghamster wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with audiophile gear is that it is really a scam to separate people from their money. I've found that, for me at least, the best deals for music fidelity are in studio-type equipment. A good pair of powered mid-field studio monitors and a Focusrite FireWire audio interface gets me sound that would cost $thousands if I bought audiophile-market gear. Also, there are some interesting audio cards for the Rasp…

I'd be surprised if anyone here didn't consider monster brand equipment a ripoff. Thought that was pretty well known, even for non tech people.

I know somebody who used to buy Monster, but only because he worked at Best Buy (this was years ago: he quit Best Buy in 2007), and his employee discount was so good that he was paying considerably less for Monster than he would've paid for dirt-cheap cables anywhere else.

He would show off, too: dude had his apartment wired with Monster outdoor cables, just because he wanted to show off that his employee discount was so good that even a broke-ass college student can afford to buy Monster outdoor cables on it and use them everywhere.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#76

Post by mattchow » Wed, Apr 22, 2015, 6:09 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #28

[deleted]

for me, it was about getting anything and everything the moment it hit the sites. It was just fun knowing I had access to it faster than most others. Most of the time spent in the irc channel was just bullshitting about what was going on in front of you.