I agree. But audiophiles will always think that can hear something that the human ear cannot detect; well at least the difference between one recording and the next.
It's the same people who think super expensive vodka is better than a $10 bottle.
I found it hard to believe that SJ listened to vinyl. This is truly amazing!
Given that he was an old hippie, it isn't all that surprising to me. The reason would have been partly that he no doubt had a huge collection of vinyl. But the fact that he listened to vinyl is no indication that he had any misgivings about the superiority of digital recording. It is exceedingly unlikely that he would have believed that vinyl recordings were inherently superior to digital recordings given a good encoding scheme and adequate bitrate.
I vaguely remember us having this exact argument months, years? ago
Yes so do I. It was just over a year ago. Wasn't that where you were totaly pwned by the Mod, Mr H, when he informed you his electrical engineering Phd topic was to do with audio amplifiers?
So one year on, and having pointed lots of people to the compressed/uncompressed file, no one has been able to distinguish between the sections, even when those people tell me the difference even between 320 kbs mp3 and CD is night and day; chalk and cheese. For some strange reason, their powers of discrimination seem to evaporate the instant they listen to that file.
Totally agree. It's like if people argued that 256-color or 16-bit graphics are plenty either because they have bad monitors are can't be bothered with looking at 2 pictures side by side to see the difference themselves - apparently, the fact that you can't visually see the difference in higher quality audio somehow must mean it's not there? (Though technically if you played/re-digitized it you would see a difference in the waveform...)
A well-dithered 16-bit graphic will look good too - think CD. It doesn't mean that 'true color' (24 bit) won't look better - or ever higher bit depth / higher resolution. At some point you won't be able to tell the difference - 24/192 is pretty damned good and probably going higher won't make a difference for most people's systems. Storage is cheap, bandwidth just keeps improving, so why not get a good copy of the music or at least have the option?
This isn't an argument about whether cryogenically freezing your wall outlet will give you purer sound, it's quite demonstrable.
But, your argument is specious. As for the headphones, I mostly listen through a pair of Sennheiser HD580. As for the particular Sennheiser headphones in the post to which you replied, that pair happens to be a DJ model and not one of their best. The closed back has the single advantage of noise isolation, to the detriment of sound quality. The air spring effect can be used to good effect if and only if the driver itself is over damped so as to avoid a high Q resonance. And even in that case, there will still be a cavity resonance, i.e., standing waves set up between the back side of the diaphragm and the wall in back. These are the reasons that Sennheiser's better headphones always have been open back and always will be open back.
But as for your comments, the analogy to display resolution and bit depth and so on is always one that is easy to make. But it and of itself it does not prove anything at all. And the comparison with imaging is a bogus comparison for a fundamental reason. With any image, it is always potentially possible to display it on a display with greater pixel resolution, and for this reason there is always a potential advantage for using greater quantity of pixels in the image file. But bit depth is another matter. It translates into the amount of fine variation in brightness, hue, and saturation. There is inherently a limit to the ability of human vision to detect these differences. To keep it simple, consider the case of grey scale. Initially as you increase the bit depth, the brightness of the reproduced image gets closer and closer to the original, i.e., is neither whiter nor blacker than the original. But at a certain point, the human eye simply can no longer perceive the difference. Double the bit depth and scan and encode again, and you cannot tell any difference at all between that copy and the previous one, or between either and the original. Common sense tells you that eventually this will happen. It is not a question of whether it will happen. It is only a question of what the bit depth has to be, in order for this to happen. And once you have reached that point and are entirely certain that you have reached that point, there is absolutely no reason to increase the bit depth of the scan any further. It is the same with audio encoding, and even with perceptual encoding.
The question of whether perceptual encoding can be indistinguishable from the original is a moot question. The only question that is even worth considering is what amount of compression, given a specific encoding scheme, can be tolerated without introducing some artifact by which any listener would be able to hear any difference between that recording and the original. IF you are entirely certain that the bit rate that you have used is perfectly adequate such that no person could every detect any difference between that recording and a non-lossy recording with arbitrarily high quantization rate and word size, then there is no discernible reason to use a higher bit rate. Because, IF it is true that no one can hear then difference, THEN it is true that no one can hear the difference. The only meaningful, valid questions are what people can and cannot hear. To dismiss all perceptual coding techniques in the manner that manner people do is equivalent to asserting that it is not possible, using a perceptual coding technique, to make a recording that no person would be able to recognize as different from a master using arbitrarily high quantization rate and word size. It is manifestly ludicrous to suggest that this would be the case, yet this is precisely what people are in effect asserting when they criticize perceptual encoding categorically. It is logically preposterous.
He/she may have wasted money spending that much on a stereo system, but if so, it would be entirely the same if they had spent that money and then used some other source.
It is logically, manifestly absurd to suggest that when the bit rate is adequate, that perceptual encoding is inherently inferior, i.e., cannot be indistinguishable from the original or from a master using arbitrarily high quantization rate and word size (sample size). It is utterly ludicrous to suggest otherwise. Common sense should tell you that as long as the bit rate is adequately, that no Human being would ever be able to hear any difference whatsoever. What you assert however in effect, is that no matter how high the bit rate, that there will always be some artifact that someone will be able to hear. This is what you assert in effect, and it is simply ludicrous. In fact, anyone who has any technical comprehension whatsoever of these matters knows perfectly well that these claims with respect to perceptual encoding are logically absurd. Only people who lack the technical comprehension (and the common sense) are prone to disparage perceptual encoding categorically in the manner that you do.
HD audio already exists in the form of SACD and DVD-A. But it barely exists, marketwise. Consumers don't care so much about quality as quantity and ease of use or "good enough". The iPod made music easy to listen to again, like in the days of cassette. It also improved on cassettes in many other ways. That's why it was successful.
What Young wants is never going to be mainstream. I'm sure Jobs may have looked into making music better, but was challenged with how to package and sell it to millions, not thousands.
I wouldn't mind an iPod HD, but I can't use my CDs as source material. I need properly remastered music that is available and even SACD and DVD-A don't have enough titles to serve everyone.
Besides, I don't think the music industry wants people sharing higher quality music, either.
There is also the fact that when the question was seriously undertaken in the form of a scientific study conducted over a period of a couple of years, that the conclusion was that no person could be found who could demonstrate the ability to reliable distinguish between standard CD and the so-called high resolution formats. The companies who backed those formats knew this before they introduced them, and they introduced them only because there appeared to be a market for them. That is not to say that you do not own any high-resolution discs that sound any better than standard CDs typically sound. Those discs that sound better were either recorded originally using better equipment, or else they were remastered in some way that corrected for some limitation that was present in the prior CD release of the same material.
No I haven't. I conducted controlled tests which satisfied me that there was no audible difference between the output from my ipod and that from my CD player. Given the vastly greater convenience inherent in the former, using it was a no brainer.
I keep trying to say something that seems to me that should be obvious to everyone, but that for some reason is not. It should be obvious to everyone who has any sense that the question of whether perceptual encoding is inherently flawed is moot. It should be obvious that as long as it is done carefully and with adequately high bit rate, that no person would be able to hear any difference whatsoever between that recording and a master that was recorded with linear PCM using arbitrarily high sample rate and sample size. This ought to be obvious, to everyone. Yet, there are still lots of people who for some inexplicable reason assert, explicitly or implicitly, that there is something inherently wrong with perceptual encoding. This is effectively what they assert when they argue that only non-lossy compression is acceptable. Some people just cannot tolerate the idea that some of the music is being discarded, and for this reason they insist on something that logically is ludicrous: that even though you cannot hear any difference whatsoever between two recordings, that one still sounds better than the other.
It really sounds like it is one of those fake projects that newbies get assigned to.
Apple has moved away from discs and hard drives into SSDs, which makes this sound quite strange.
I'm sure Apple will become very interested in selling us on the benefits of music formats with larger file sizes when they want us to upgrade from 1TB SSD iPhones and Macbook Airs to 10TB SSD iPhones and MacBook Airs.
On my iPhone, my music is all 128k AAC. I can sometimes hear the difference, but I'm usually out in an urban setting, with the music turned down enough so I can hear the M23 before it takes me out. At home, my collection is all ALAC. It can't add fidelity to a poorly mixed, pumped and clumped album. But once you listen to, for example, the first minute of Pat Methany's Last Train Home in both formats on a decent system, you will hear the difference forever, and on any other album where there is one.
I'm not talking the proverbial $7K (or $70K) system. The industry has raised the level of mediocrity so far that a $700 system (an Onkyo receiver, set of Polk speakers, and nearly any CD/DVD/BD player over $100 as one example) can easily give you a level of quality that a several grand system would only approach 20 years ago.
I was involved with building an FM station in the '70s. We committed to building the best sounding station we could within the limitations of the medium. Average listeners, not audiophiles, began calling as soon as we were on the air. Folks at home listening on decent stereos commented about how other stations would begin to annoy them after an hour, even if they were playing great music, but that they could listen to us all day. Listeners in their cars or in office settings complained that we often sounded "too soft." All commented that they were hearing things in familiar music they hadn't noticed before (no, not more cowbell). Why? We were applying the least compression, equalization, and limiting we could. People couldn't tell us why, but they heard the difference. And the more they listened, the more they heard.
There are a lot of smoke and mirrors in audio, but there is a level of quality most people will hear once one or two examples are pointed out. That level is much higher than many are willing to acknowledge.
And, of course, YMMV.
I don't have the Pat Methany that you referred to, but I am very interested in the question of whether 128 kbps AAC avoids artifacts that I can hear. My CD collection is also encoded at that rate. I have encoded a few CDs at higher rate, and sometimes thought I could hear a difference, but after a careful comparison, eventually concluded that I could not hear any difference. If there are any other examples that you have, perhaps in classic rock or mainstream classical, I would be interested in knowing.
As for improvements in cost/quality ratio over the past twenty years, I'm not so inclined to agree, but partly this is due to inflation. Twenty years ago we are talking 1990. Just about any audio amplifier of average quality sounded the same as any other except when driven into non-linearity at a level with a more expensive amp with greater power capability would remain linear. And I can't tell that the price has come down, unless perhaps you take inflation into account and compare in terms of 1990 dollars. I'm not so sure about that. And as for speakers, good speakers seem more expensive today than ever. I don't think my hearing has improved, but when I listen to new speakers nowadays, I often hear some obvious coloration and I just don't recall that so much in earlier decades. Memory is a factor there of course, but in the 70s and 80s there were a lot of good sounding speakers that did not cost over a grand for a pair. Nowadays it seems that you cannot find a good sounding pair of speaker for less than about that much per pair. There are lots of really, really good speakers, but most of them seem to be very expensive, upwards of two thousand per pair. (Not to suggest that all speakers that cost that much are good ...)
One area where cost has certainly come down is with CD players. Of course nowadays most disc players are multi-format players. But most cheap DVD players nowadays, including many that sell for perhaps as little as $100, are probably sonically indistinguishable from the most expensive CD players. But even in 1990, the typical CD player costing a couple hundred bucks was probably not sonically distinguishable from the most expensive CD player.
Now, as for "compression". One of the problems with this word is that it means two completely different things, depending on the context. When you talk about compression in the context of FM radio broadcast, you are almost certainly talking about compression of dynamic range, and probably with respect to low-frequency content in particular. But in the context of the discussion here, the word "compression" refers to file compression, i.e., reduction in the number of bits used to record each second of music. It is a completely different thing. Of course there is the possibility that sonically there will be similarity, but this is not something that ought to be taken for granted, and it is desirable to avoid confusing the two meanings of the word "compression".
Most Canadians have triple digit IQ's but not this man. I am embarrassed to be Canadian after hearing his ignorant ramblings. He obviously doesn't understand the relationship between frequency response, sampling rate and encoding bit depth. He seems to be stuck on the file size as his main yardstick.
There is a market for very large file music and that market has an IQ inversely proportional to their preferred file size and the thickness of their wallet.
I know I tried to reverse-bias a listening test between a Denon receiver driving its own internal amp vs. driving an Aragon, telling my wife that the Denon was much newer & fancier, and she listened for a minute and said so actually thought the Aragon sounded better. I was hoping it was just me, frankly. but it just sounded much better - smoother, better imaging. Same exact setup other than the extra interconnects from the Denon to the Aragon - I was switching speakers between amps.
My wife is not an audiophile and I was trying to bias her towards the Denon. Non-scientific, definitely, and not your double-blind double-blind case anyway.
Obviously there are items where there is no difference. Special power cords seem dubious considering the poor quality of your line voltage. Power conditioners theoretically make sense, though I haven't ever tried one myself... when you hear clicks and noises coming over the line when your fridge / AC / vacuum / etc. turn on, that's all on the line, so removing that seems pretty logical. On the other hand, there are differences in speakers - which makes sense considering the differences in cabinets, driver materials, crossovers, etc., there are differences in amps (listen to an electrostat driven with an A-B amp vs. tube amp). But in the end, pick the sound you prefer.
But for what was being discussed, take a good picture (RAW) then down-convert it to a compressed format - think JPEG. I'm sure you're not arguing that there's no difference between that and the original when you have them side by side? There are cases where the compression is less harmful/obvious, but many places (hard edges, high detail) where it's clear that JPEG throws away details - better still, reduce it to 16-bit instead of 24-bit depth to complete the analogy. You will see the difference. Throwing away a huge amount of the music signal is no different. (And the differences in video output was pretty large between different cards - ringing was very visible depending on card and cable not so many years back...)
But let's assume anyone who thinks they can hear any difference is just crazy. So what? Let us download the higher quality sound, you don't have to, OK?
When you did that casual listening test between the two amps, the absolute most you proved is that the two amps sounded different. It seems unlikely that they would, and I am inclined to think that the two of you tricked yourselves into that conclusion, but even if they really did sound different, that in itself is not proof of the superior quality of one over the other. It is a well-known fact that many people prefer the different sound of tube amps. Over the decades various reasons have been proposed for why tube amps would, in theory, sound more accurate, but none of those supposed reasons stand up to careful scrutiny. The difference that is most obvious by far is the difference in the spectral makeup of the harmonic distortion when the amps are driven to clipping, i.e., whether the harmonic components are even-order or odd-order. Here there are differences even within tube amps, so it does not make sense to attribute the effect to the "softer" distortion of one type of clipping over another, and that's before even considering the question of whether the onset and severity of clipping is the same for the two amps. The point is that even if you were truly able to hear a difference, that in and of itself does not constitute proof that the more expensive amp is more accurate than the less expensive amp. Until you can prove otherwise, you have to allow the possibility that you like the sound of a less accurate amp, and the conundrum is that through listening tests alone, it is not possible to prove otherwise. It is a conundrum.
The stuff about the fact that image files can be converted in ways such that the difference is visually apparent does not prove anything at all about the subject at hand and has no relevance whatsoever. Unless of course your point was to argue that it is in fact possible to apply perceptual encoding using a very low bit rate such that the difference would be obvious.
That and $1000 Monster Cables, $200 wooden knobs for your receiver and a crystal pyramid hat to wear.
Oh, don't make me laugh so hard that it hurts. And nowadays Monster Cables are considered the practical alternative to overpriced hype. I found some excellent speaker wire at Lowe's a few months ago. I found it in the lawn and garden section, where substantial lengths of it could be purchased at a fraction of the price for "speaker cable". It was packaged and sold as power cable for low-voltage landscape lighting. Great stuff.
And even though you didn't venture into the vinyl fray, you reminded me of Michael Fremer at Stereophile giving a glowing endorsement of a vinyl demagnetizer of some sort. I suppose that might make sense, but only if first you can explain how it would make sense to demagnetize a non-magnetic substance. He of course is the guy who writes all the vinyl and analog stuff for Stereofool.
The community there have a collection of killer samples that defeat some compression algorithm's. The search function may well lead you to them. They even seem to have a thread discussing the same topic as this thread - Neal young's tosh.
SACD is only dead if we stop buying them! I for one still do. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours sounds amazing on SACD.
Maybe so. I haven't heard if. But if I did, my first question would be whether the reason is because of remastering that was done, or because of the SACD per se. In other words, if you took that nice new digital master and then re-sampled it carefully to the CD standard, would it sound any different? How many comparisons of that particular sort have you been able to do at all, much less in a controlled environment where you expectations will not be able to influence the result?
Many people listen to music as background noise while doing other things. Often, it is in noisy environments where the extra quality would be drowned out anyhow.
But, when watching a movie or TV show, people are more likely to have most of their attention focused on the movie or TV, so having higher quality there makes sense.
But, in the post to which you replied, by Bloodshotrollinred (whatever), that poster was in effect asserting that ALL recordings done using perceptual encoding inherently contain audible artifacts, no matter what bit rate is used, and no matter how carefully the encoding scheme was devised. To me it is obvious that this defies common sense, and I do not understand why other people do not readily deduce that as long as the bit rate is adequately high, that perceptual encoding will not introduce audible artifacts. He was asserting in effect the perceptual encoding always introduces audible artifacts, and you implicitly endorsed his nonsensical position.
... done carefully and with adequately high bit rate, that no person would be able to hear any difference whatsoever between that recording and a master that was recorded with linear PCM using arbitrarily high sample rate and sample size. ... Yet, there are still lots of people who ... assert...that there is something inherently wrong with perceptual encoding.
Bingo.
If you have an infinitely high sampling frequency and an infinitely high bit depth then the digital waveform is identical to the analog waveform. Therefore, they will sound identical. The higher the sampling rate (e.g., 44.1kHz, 192kHz) and bit depth (e.g., 16 bits, 24 bits), the better the digital waveform approximates the analog (i.e., original) waveform. Humans are not perfect. At some point, even the most discriminating listener will be unable to tell the difference between the approximation and the original waveforms.
Actually it's easy to hear the difference between mp3s and higher quality audio files with modest equipment if you listen carefully. Some folks care about "sound" quality of the music and not just music itself. For me "good" sound quality helps me to be more engaged in the music. My wife could care less. She's just interested music itself. This is neither good or bad, just different approaches to "listening" to music.
In fact I can hear the sound quality difference in my Ford factory car stereo between XMRadio, MP3 files, and apple lossless files. XMRadio has the lowest sound qaulity. I would described the sound as an unnatural "plastic" sound. MP3s and apple lossless files played through my ipod touch via the usb port both sound better than XMRadio and the apple lossless files sound the best. Do I notice on the highway? Not as much as I'm more focused on the road, but I do notice when I'm waiting for my kids. The XMRadio sound will drive me crazy.
If there's no perceptible difference in sound quality than why do recording companies and artists spend any money any recording equipment that's better than a 16bit/44khz. You can buy a Tascam DP-008 Digital 8-Track Recorder for a $200. What more do you need?
Getting "better" sounding quality music doesn't have to break the bank either. You can use your beloved mac to "power" it.
On the "low" end for $350 you can get the HRT Streamer II and a pair of Audio Engine A2 speakers. This will improve the sound quality of any mp3/aac/flac file played through your Mac with iTunes. I don't use any fancy cables, but you might want to experiment with the USB cable from the mac to the DAC.
On the "high" end for $750 you can move up to the HRT Streamer II+ and a pair of Audio Engine A5 speakers. And if you want to listen to the Hi-Res files you can use Songbird (no charge) and buy those Hi-Res music files from HDTracks, Linn Records or subscribe to B & W Society of Sound (I'm sure there are other sites I don't know about).
I have this set up running on a 3 year old MacBook Pro and I think the "sound" is quite engaging. Good transients, sound stage spcing, music pacing, air around the instruments, etc. The sound is especially good with Hi-Res audio 24bit/96khz (I haven't tried 24bit/192khz), and I think the sound is pretty darn good with mp3s bought from the iTunes store, Amazon, or eMusic and with apple lossless files I create from my CDs. Much better than I would've imagined they could be.
I'm sure there are other USB DACs and powered speaker combinations that sound great are in the same general price range.
No need to wait for Neil or Apple to get better sound today.
All you are asserting in effect is that all music recorded in a perceptual format sounds the same as your MP3 files, no matter what bit rate you used and no matter what bit rate is used for the other perceptual encoding. In fact, you are in effect arguing that MP3 at an extremely low bit rate sounds entirely the same as an MP3 at an extremely high bit rate.
But do not feel alone. Roughly half of the posts here have in effect argued the same thing.
(Full disclosure: I'm also Canadian, but never measured my IQ.)
Like Mr. Young, CD or MP3-quality audio makes me edgy and physically uncomfortable. Do I have the neurological, biological and technological savvy to be able to convincingly explain it? No, but the problem is still there. Analogue and high-def audio just simply sound better to my ears.
My guess is that Mr. Young likely chose file size as the largest barrier in that conversation; I haven't heard him focus on it before but neither has he discussed Apple directly. Perhaps file size IS the problem for Apple, as it could notionally conflict with their push for iCloud, who knows.
But Mr. Young is rightly frustrated that music isn't readily available in the quality it should be. He can hear the difference, I can, and many other music-lovers do too.
Studios have recorded at least in 24/96 for 10 years (though not many engineers properly mix for it). A venue such as iTunes would help open things up.
Throw yourself right in with all the other people who came here and wrote a post that said in effect that all MP3 sounds the same no matter the bit rate.
Comments
I agree. But audiophiles will always think that can hear something that the human ear cannot detect; well at least the difference between one recording and the next.
It's the same people who think super expensive vodka is better than a $10 bottle.
Ignorant statements.
I found it hard to believe that SJ listened to vinyl. This is truly amazing!
Given that he was an old hippie, it isn't all that surprising to me. The reason would have been partly that he no doubt had a huge collection of vinyl. But the fact that he listened to vinyl is no indication that he had any misgivings about the superiority of digital recording. It is exceedingly unlikely that he would have believed that vinyl recordings were inherently superior to digital recordings given a good encoding scheme and adequate bitrate.
Ignorant statements.
It seems $10 vodka leads to deafness.
I vaguely remember us having this exact argument months, years? ago
Yes so do I. It was just over a year ago. Wasn't that where you were totaly pwned by the Mod, Mr H, when he informed you his electrical engineering Phd topic was to do with audio amplifiers?
So one year on, and having pointed lots of people to the compressed/uncompressed file, no one has been able to distinguish between the sections, even when those people tell me the difference even between 320 kbs mp3 and CD is night and day; chalk and cheese. For some strange reason, their powers of discrimination seem to evaporate the instant they listen to that file.
It seems $10 vodka leads to deafness.
What leads to blindness?
Totally agree. It's like if people argued that 256-color or 16-bit graphics are plenty either because they have bad monitors are can't be bothered with looking at 2 pictures side by side to see the difference themselves - apparently, the fact that you can't visually see the difference in higher quality audio somehow must mean it's not there? (Though technically if you played/re-digitized it you would see a difference in the waveform...)
A well-dithered 16-bit graphic will look good too - think CD. It doesn't mean that 'true color' (24 bit) won't look better - or ever higher bit depth / higher resolution. At some point you won't be able to tell the difference - 24/192 is pretty damned good and probably going higher won't make a difference for most people's systems. Storage is cheap, bandwidth just keeps improving, so why not get a good copy of the music or at least have the option?
This isn't an argument about whether cryogenically freezing your wall outlet will give you purer sound, it's quite demonstrable.
But, your argument is specious. As for the headphones, I mostly listen through a pair of Sennheiser HD580. As for the particular Sennheiser headphones in the post to which you replied, that pair happens to be a DJ model and not one of their best. The closed back has the single advantage of noise isolation, to the detriment of sound quality. The air spring effect can be used to good effect if and only if the driver itself is over damped so as to avoid a high Q resonance. And even in that case, there will still be a cavity resonance, i.e., standing waves set up between the back side of the diaphragm and the wall in back. These are the reasons that Sennheiser's better headphones always have been open back and always will be open back.
But as for your comments, the analogy to display resolution and bit depth and so on is always one that is easy to make. But it and of itself it does not prove anything at all. And the comparison with imaging is a bogus comparison for a fundamental reason. With any image, it is always potentially possible to display it on a display with greater pixel resolution, and for this reason there is always a potential advantage for using greater quantity of pixels in the image file. But bit depth is another matter. It translates into the amount of fine variation in brightness, hue, and saturation. There is inherently a limit to the ability of human vision to detect these differences. To keep it simple, consider the case of grey scale. Initially as you increase the bit depth, the brightness of the reproduced image gets closer and closer to the original, i.e., is neither whiter nor blacker than the original. But at a certain point, the human eye simply can no longer perceive the difference. Double the bit depth and scan and encode again, and you cannot tell any difference at all between that copy and the previous one, or between either and the original. Common sense tells you that eventually this will happen. It is not a question of whether it will happen. It is only a question of what the bit depth has to be, in order for this to happen. And once you have reached that point and are entirely certain that you have reached that point, there is absolutely no reason to increase the bit depth of the scan any further. It is the same with audio encoding, and even with perceptual encoding.
The question of whether perceptual encoding can be indistinguishable from the original is a moot question. The only question that is even worth considering is what amount of compression, given a specific encoding scheme, can be tolerated without introducing some artifact by which any listener would be able to hear any difference between that recording and the original. IF you are entirely certain that the bit rate that you have used is perfectly adequate such that no person could every detect any difference between that recording and a non-lossy recording with arbitrarily high quantization rate and word size, then there is no discernible reason to use a higher bit rate. Because, IF it is true that no one can hear then difference, THEN it is true that no one can hear the difference. The only meaningful, valid questions are what people can and cannot hear. To dismiss all perceptual coding techniques in the manner that manner people do is equivalent to asserting that it is not possible, using a perceptual coding technique, to make a recording that no person would be able to recognize as different from a master using arbitrarily high quantization rate and word size. It is manifestly ludicrous to suggest that this would be the case, yet this is precisely what people are in effect asserting when they criticize perceptual encoding categorically. It is logically preposterous.
Then you wasted your money.
He/she may have wasted money spending that much on a stereo system, but if so, it would be entirely the same if they had spent that money and then used some other source.
It is logically, manifestly absurd to suggest that when the bit rate is adequate, that perceptual encoding is inherently inferior, i.e., cannot be indistinguishable from the original or from a master using arbitrarily high quantization rate and word size (sample size). It is utterly ludicrous to suggest otherwise. Common sense should tell you that as long as the bit rate is adequately, that no Human being would ever be able to hear any difference whatsoever. What you assert however in effect, is that no matter how high the bit rate, that there will always be some artifact that someone will be able to hear. This is what you assert in effect, and it is simply ludicrous. In fact, anyone who has any technical comprehension whatsoever of these matters knows perfectly well that these claims with respect to perceptual encoding are logically absurd. Only people who lack the technical comprehension (and the common sense) are prone to disparage perceptual encoding categorically in the manner that you do.
HD audio already exists in the form of SACD and DVD-A. But it barely exists, marketwise. Consumers don't care so much about quality as quantity and ease of use or "good enough". The iPod made music easy to listen to again, like in the days of cassette. It also improved on cassettes in many other ways. That's why it was successful.
What Young wants is never going to be mainstream. I'm sure Jobs may have looked into making music better, but was challenged with how to package and sell it to millions, not thousands.
I wouldn't mind an iPod HD, but I can't use my CDs as source material. I need properly remastered music that is available and even SACD and DVD-A don't have enough titles to serve everyone.
Besides, I don't think the music industry wants people sharing higher quality music, either.
There is also the fact that when the question was seriously undertaken in the form of a scientific study conducted over a period of a couple of years, that the conclusion was that no person could be found who could demonstrate the ability to reliable distinguish between standard CD and the so-called high resolution formats. The companies who backed those formats knew this before they introduced them, and they introduced them only because there appeared to be a market for them. That is not to say that you do not own any high-resolution discs that sound any better than standard CDs typically sound. Those discs that sound better were either recorded originally using better equipment, or else they were remastered in some way that corrected for some limitation that was present in the prior CD release of the same material.
No I haven't. I conducted controlled tests which satisfied me that there was no audible difference between the output from my ipod and that from my CD player. Given the vastly greater convenience inherent in the former, using it was a no brainer.
Not that I think much of any HiFi magazine, but Stereophile happen to have reviewed the same model of iPod I use: http://www.stereophile.com/budgetcom...934/index.html
I keep trying to say something that seems to me that should be obvious to everyone, but that for some reason is not. It should be obvious to everyone who has any sense that the question of whether perceptual encoding is inherently flawed is moot. It should be obvious that as long as it is done carefully and with adequately high bit rate, that no person would be able to hear any difference whatsoever between that recording and a master that was recorded with linear PCM using arbitrarily high sample rate and sample size. This ought to be obvious, to everyone. Yet, there are still lots of people who for some inexplicable reason assert, explicitly or implicitly, that there is something inherently wrong with perceptual encoding. This is effectively what they assert when they argue that only non-lossy compression is acceptable. Some people just cannot tolerate the idea that some of the music is being discarded, and for this reason they insist on something that logically is ludicrous: that even though you cannot hear any difference whatsoever between two recordings, that one still sounds better than the other.
It really sounds like it is one of those fake projects that newbies get assigned to.
Apple has moved away from discs and hard drives into SSDs, which makes this sound quite strange.
I'm sure Apple will become very interested in selling us on the benefits of music formats with larger file sizes when they want us to upgrade from 1TB SSD iPhones and Macbook Airs to 10TB SSD iPhones and MacBook Airs.
On my iPhone, my music is all 128k AAC. I can sometimes hear the difference, but I'm usually out in an urban setting, with the music turned down enough so I can hear the M23 before it takes me out. At home, my collection is all ALAC. It can't add fidelity to a poorly mixed, pumped and clumped album. But once you listen to, for example, the first minute of Pat Methany's Last Train Home in both formats on a decent system, you will hear the difference forever, and on any other album where there is one.
I'm not talking the proverbial $7K (or $70K) system. The industry has raised the level of mediocrity so far that a $700 system (an Onkyo receiver, set of Polk speakers, and nearly any CD/DVD/BD player over $100 as one example) can easily give you a level of quality that a several grand system would only approach 20 years ago.
I was involved with building an FM station in the '70s. We committed to building the best sounding station we could within the limitations of the medium. Average listeners, not audiophiles, began calling as soon as we were on the air. Folks at home listening on decent stereos commented about how other stations would begin to annoy them after an hour, even if they were playing great music, but that they could listen to us all day. Listeners in their cars or in office settings complained that we often sounded "too soft." All commented that they were hearing things in familiar music they hadn't noticed before (no, not more cowbell). Why? We were applying the least compression, equalization, and limiting we could. People couldn't tell us why, but they heard the difference. And the more they listened, the more they heard.
There are a lot of smoke and mirrors in audio, but there is a level of quality most people will hear once one or two examples are pointed out. That level is much higher than many are willing to acknowledge.
And, of course, YMMV.
I don't have the Pat Methany that you referred to, but I am very interested in the question of whether 128 kbps AAC avoids artifacts that I can hear. My CD collection is also encoded at that rate. I have encoded a few CDs at higher rate, and sometimes thought I could hear a difference, but after a careful comparison, eventually concluded that I could not hear any difference. If there are any other examples that you have, perhaps in classic rock or mainstream classical, I would be interested in knowing.
As for improvements in cost/quality ratio over the past twenty years, I'm not so inclined to agree, but partly this is due to inflation. Twenty years ago we are talking 1990. Just about any audio amplifier of average quality sounded the same as any other except when driven into non-linearity at a level with a more expensive amp with greater power capability would remain linear. And I can't tell that the price has come down, unless perhaps you take inflation into account and compare in terms of 1990 dollars. I'm not so sure about that. And as for speakers, good speakers seem more expensive today than ever. I don't think my hearing has improved, but when I listen to new speakers nowadays, I often hear some obvious coloration and I just don't recall that so much in earlier decades. Memory is a factor there of course, but in the 70s and 80s there were a lot of good sounding speakers that did not cost over a grand for a pair. Nowadays it seems that you cannot find a good sounding pair of speaker for less than about that much per pair. There are lots of really, really good speakers, but most of them seem to be very expensive, upwards of two thousand per pair. (Not to suggest that all speakers that cost that much are good ...)
One area where cost has certainly come down is with CD players. Of course nowadays most disc players are multi-format players. But most cheap DVD players nowadays, including many that sell for perhaps as little as $100, are probably sonically indistinguishable from the most expensive CD players. But even in 1990, the typical CD player costing a couple hundred bucks was probably not sonically distinguishable from the most expensive CD player.
Now, as for "compression". One of the problems with this word is that it means two completely different things, depending on the context. When you talk about compression in the context of FM radio broadcast, you are almost certainly talking about compression of dynamic range, and probably with respect to low-frequency content in particular. But in the context of the discussion here, the word "compression" refers to file compression, i.e., reduction in the number of bits used to record each second of music. It is a completely different thing. Of course there is the possibility that sonically there will be similarity, but this is not something that ought to be taken for granted, and it is desirable to avoid confusing the two meanings of the word "compression".
Most Canadians have triple digit IQ's but not this man. I am embarrassed to be Canadian after hearing his ignorant ramblings. He obviously doesn't understand the relationship between frequency response, sampling rate and encoding bit depth. He seems to be stuck on the file size as his main yardstick.
There is a market for very large file music and that market has an IQ inversely proportional to their preferred file size and the thickness of their wallet.
My favorite post so far in this discussion!
I know I tried to reverse-bias a listening test between a Denon receiver driving its own internal amp vs. driving an Aragon, telling my wife that the Denon was much newer & fancier, and she listened for a minute and said so actually thought the Aragon sounded better. I was hoping it was just me, frankly. but it just sounded much better - smoother, better imaging. Same exact setup other than the extra interconnects from the Denon to the Aragon - I was switching speakers between amps.
My wife is not an audiophile and I was trying to bias her towards the Denon. Non-scientific, definitely, and not your double-blind double-blind case anyway.
Obviously there are items where there is no difference. Special power cords seem dubious considering the poor quality of your line voltage. Power conditioners theoretically make sense, though I haven't ever tried one myself... when you hear clicks and noises coming over the line when your fridge / AC / vacuum / etc. turn on, that's all on the line, so removing that seems pretty logical. On the other hand, there are differences in speakers - which makes sense considering the differences in cabinets, driver materials, crossovers, etc., there are differences in amps (listen to an electrostat driven with an A-B amp vs. tube amp). But in the end, pick the sound you prefer.
But for what was being discussed, take a good picture (RAW) then down-convert it to a compressed format - think JPEG. I'm sure you're not arguing that there's no difference between that and the original when you have them side by side? There are cases where the compression is less harmful/obvious, but many places (hard edges, high detail) where it's clear that JPEG throws away details - better still, reduce it to 16-bit instead of 24-bit depth to complete the analogy. You will see the difference. Throwing away a huge amount of the music signal is no different. (And the differences in video output was pretty large between different cards - ringing was very visible depending on card and cable not so many years back...)
But let's assume anyone who thinks they can hear any difference is just crazy. So what? Let us download the higher quality sound, you don't have to, OK?
When you did that casual listening test between the two amps, the absolute most you proved is that the two amps sounded different. It seems unlikely that they would, and I am inclined to think that the two of you tricked yourselves into that conclusion, but even if they really did sound different, that in itself is not proof of the superior quality of one over the other. It is a well-known fact that many people prefer the different sound of tube amps. Over the decades various reasons have been proposed for why tube amps would, in theory, sound more accurate, but none of those supposed reasons stand up to careful scrutiny. The difference that is most obvious by far is the difference in the spectral makeup of the harmonic distortion when the amps are driven to clipping, i.e., whether the harmonic components are even-order or odd-order. Here there are differences even within tube amps, so it does not make sense to attribute the effect to the "softer" distortion of one type of clipping over another, and that's before even considering the question of whether the onset and severity of clipping is the same for the two amps. The point is that even if you were truly able to hear a difference, that in and of itself does not constitute proof that the more expensive amp is more accurate than the less expensive amp. Until you can prove otherwise, you have to allow the possibility that you like the sound of a less accurate amp, and the conundrum is that through listening tests alone, it is not possible to prove otherwise. It is a conundrum.
The stuff about the fact that image files can be converted in ways such that the difference is visually apparent does not prove anything at all about the subject at hand and has no relevance whatsoever. Unless of course your point was to argue that it is in fact possible to apply perceptual encoding using a very low bit rate such that the difference would be obvious.
That and $1000 Monster Cables, $200 wooden knobs for your receiver and a crystal pyramid hat to wear.
Oh, don't make me laugh so hard that it hurts. And nowadays Monster Cables are considered the practical alternative to overpriced hype. I found some excellent speaker wire at Lowe's a few months ago. I found it in the lawn and garden section, where substantial lengths of it could be purchased at a fraction of the price for "speaker cable". It was packaged and sold as power cable for low-voltage landscape lighting. Great stuff.
And even though you didn't venture into the vinyl fray, you reminded me of Michael Fremer at Stereophile giving a glowing endorsement of a vinyl demagnetizer of some sort. I suppose that might make sense, but only if first you can explain how it would make sense to demagnetize a non-magnetic substance. He of course is the guy who writes all the vinyl and analog stuff for Stereofool.
If there are any other examples that you have, perhaps in classic rock or mainstream classical, I would be interested in knowing.
Check out http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/
The community there have a collection of killer samples that defeat some compression algorithm's. The search function may well lead you to them. They even seem to have a thread discussing the same topic as this thread - Neal young's tosh.
SACD is only dead if we stop buying them! I for one still do. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours sounds amazing on SACD.
Maybe so. I haven't heard if. But if I did, my first question would be whether the reason is because of remastering that was done, or because of the SACD per se. In other words, if you took that nice new digital master and then re-sampled it carefully to the CD standard, would it sound any different? How many comparisons of that particular sort have you been able to do at all, much less in a controlled environment where you expectations will not be able to influence the result?
Many people listen to music as background noise while doing other things. Often, it is in noisy environments where the extra quality would be drowned out anyhow.
But, when watching a movie or TV show, people are more likely to have most of their attention focused on the movie or TV, so having higher quality there makes sense.
But, in the post to which you replied, by Bloodshotrollinred (whatever), that poster was in effect asserting that ALL recordings done using perceptual encoding inherently contain audible artifacts, no matter what bit rate is used, and no matter how carefully the encoding scheme was devised. To me it is obvious that this defies common sense, and I do not understand why other people do not readily deduce that as long as the bit rate is adequately high, that perceptual encoding will not introduce audible artifacts. He was asserting in effect the perceptual encoding always introduces audible artifacts, and you implicitly endorsed his nonsensical position.
... done carefully and with adequately high bit rate, that no person would be able to hear any difference whatsoever between that recording and a master that was recorded with linear PCM using arbitrarily high sample rate and sample size. ... Yet, there are still lots of people who ... assert...that there is something inherently wrong with perceptual encoding.
Bingo.
If you have an infinitely high sampling frequency and an infinitely high bit depth then the digital waveform is identical to the analog waveform. Therefore, they will sound identical. The higher the sampling rate (e.g., 44.1kHz, 192kHz) and bit depth (e.g., 16 bits, 24 bits), the better the digital waveform approximates the analog (i.e., original) waveform. Humans are not perfect. At some point, even the most discriminating listener will be unable to tell the difference between the approximation and the original waveforms.
Actually it's easy to hear the difference between mp3s and higher quality audio files with modest equipment if you listen carefully. Some folks care about "sound" quality of the music and not just music itself. For me "good" sound quality helps me to be more engaged in the music. My wife could care less. She's just interested music itself. This is neither good or bad, just different approaches to "listening" to music.
In fact I can hear the sound quality difference in my Ford factory car stereo between XMRadio, MP3 files, and apple lossless files. XMRadio has the lowest sound qaulity. I would described the sound as an unnatural "plastic" sound. MP3s and apple lossless files played through my ipod touch via the usb port both sound better than XMRadio and the apple lossless files sound the best. Do I notice on the highway? Not as much as I'm more focused on the road, but I do notice when I'm waiting for my kids. The XMRadio sound will drive me crazy.
If there's no perceptible difference in sound quality than why do recording companies and artists spend any money any recording equipment that's better than a 16bit/44khz. You can buy a Tascam DP-008 Digital 8-Track Recorder for a $200. What more do you need?
Getting "better" sounding quality music doesn't have to break the bank either. You can use your beloved mac to "power" it.
On the "low" end for $350 you can get the HRT Streamer II and a pair of Audio Engine A2 speakers. This will improve the sound quality of any mp3/aac/flac file played through your Mac with iTunes. I don't use any fancy cables, but you might want to experiment with the USB cable from the mac to the DAC.
On the "high" end for $750 you can move up to the HRT Streamer II+ and a pair of Audio Engine A5 speakers. And if you want to listen to the Hi-Res files you can use Songbird (no charge) and buy those Hi-Res music files from HDTracks, Linn Records or subscribe to B & W Society of Sound (I'm sure there are other sites I don't know about).
I have this set up running on a 3 year old MacBook Pro and I think the "sound" is quite engaging. Good transients, sound stage spcing, music pacing, air around the instruments, etc. The sound is especially good with Hi-Res audio 24bit/96khz (I haven't tried 24bit/192khz), and I think the sound is pretty darn good with mp3s bought from the iTunes store, Amazon, or eMusic and with apple lossless files I create from my CDs. Much better than I would've imagined they could be.
I'm sure there are other USB DACs and powered speaker combinations that sound great are in the same general price range.
No need to wait for Neil or Apple to get better sound today.
All you are asserting in effect is that all music recorded in a perceptual format sounds the same as your MP3 files, no matter what bit rate you used and no matter what bit rate is used for the other perceptual encoding. In fact, you are in effect arguing that MP3 at an extremely low bit rate sounds entirely the same as an MP3 at an extremely high bit rate.
But do not feel alone. Roughly half of the posts here have in effect argued the same thing.
(Full disclosure: I'm also Canadian, but never measured my IQ.)
Like Mr. Young, CD or MP3-quality audio makes me edgy and physically uncomfortable. Do I have the neurological, biological and technological savvy to be able to convincingly explain it? No, but the problem is still there. Analogue and high-def audio just simply sound better to my ears.
My guess is that Mr. Young likely chose file size as the largest barrier in that conversation; I haven't heard him focus on it before but neither has he discussed Apple directly. Perhaps file size IS the problem for Apple, as it could notionally conflict with their push for iCloud, who knows.
But Mr. Young is rightly frustrated that music isn't readily available in the quality it should be. He can hear the difference, I can, and many other music-lovers do too.
Studios have recorded at least in 24/96 for 10 years (though not many engineers properly mix for it). A venue such as iTunes would help open things up.
Throw yourself right in with all the other people who came here and wrote a post that said in effect that all MP3 sounds the same no matter the bit rate.