Additionally, somebody who has no idea what good audio is like may well have trouble discerning it when they hear it.
I used to be a salesman and then project engineer for a high-end A/V outfit. There were so many people who claimed that they couldn't hear a difference. Then we'd do an A/B comparison for them (trying to be as fair as possible with volume levels, etc.) and many would acknowledge that there was a difference. Not sure if this was the power of suggestion or some reality distortion field, but it sure helped sell some higher-end gear.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ConradJoe
Indeed, IMO, few people care much about quality. Other factors, such as convenience, are more important to them.
So true. That's why Bose sells so many speakers. They cater to the masses who want "good enough".
Apple needs to start offering iTunes downloads in Alac. I'm not going to spend my money on an Mp3 or AAC file. I want the best quality that you can get. And yes, I can hear the difference. Anybody who can't doesn't have very good ears.
Apple needs to start offering iTunes downloads in Alac. I'm not going to spend my money on an Mp3 or AAC file. I want the best quality that you can get. And yes, I can hear the difference. Anybody who can't doesn't have very good ears.
The people who can accept "good enough" are the lucky ones. Thank God I'm one of them.
For me it's about the music. The instrumentation, vocals and performance. The arrangement, composition and lyrics.
We're lucky that we can happily keep out library at 128AAC and save space and sync times.
We're especially lucky that we're every bit as happy with a $500 system as we are with a $5000 or $10000 system.
I pity the audiophile, really. Their aural snobbery is misguided. It shouldn't be regarded as some kind of superiority. It should be regarded as a curse.
This is the codec I used a few years ago to rip all my CDs before throwing them out (got sick of carting them from apartment to apartment).
The resultant files are quite big (25-35MB for a single track) but I didn't want to lose any quality (well CDs aren't perfect to begin with, but any *more* quality I mean).
I started out with IMA ADPCM 4:1
Ah, good times... Old skool.
Edit: Sadly, it was a lossy encoding. Still, kinda fun before mp3s hit big time.
The true benefit of compressing audio in like manner as any other data is compressed, i.e., without using perceptual encoding that produces a bit stream from which the original bit stream cannot be recovered, is with archiving. For any large-scale archiving endeavor, the required amount of storage is reduced significantly relative to non-compressed audio encoding. But for playback purposes on portable devices, or even for at-home playback, it is silly. Of course there are always people who claim that they can hear things that they cannot actually hear, just as there are people who claim that they see flying saucers and bigfoot that they did not actually see. You do not have to experiment with audio encoding very long at all to realize that with perceptual encoding such as AAC, that the bit rate at which the sound is perceptually identical to the original is but a small fraction of the original bit rate. When you encode and listen carefully as you increase the bit rate one step at a time, you reach a point where there is almost not perceptual difference between the two bit rates. Then go a step or two higher, to where you cannot hear any difference whatsoever. Then for good measure, go one step higher. At that point you are using a higher bit rate than what is needed in order for the sound you hear to be perceptually identical to the original, and that bit rate is still a small fraction of the bit rate using any non-perceptual encoding scheme. It is also a well-established fact that when encoding AAC at a bit rate way below the bit rate that you get with non-perceptual encoding, the measurable distortion that results is quite small in comparison to the distortion present in any loudspeaker or headphone. The situation here is much the same as it is with people who claim that they can hear differences in amplifiers, when the fact is that for any decent high fidelity amplifier, the degradation of the signal is orders of magnitude less than it is with even the very finest loudspeakers and headphones. Since the beginning of audio transmission people have claimed that they can hear things that they cannot actually hear. Non-perceptual encoding techniques for audio have a place in professional archiving of music, but for anyone not in that business, and who only has the need to encode audio for personal and home use, non-perceptual encoding of audio has no relevance. It makes about as much sense as it would make to use a high-end supercomputer to browse the web.
You are just plain wrong. Not for all people, but for many. Not for all music, but for a lot of it. Not in all listening situations, but in many.
If you can't ever hear a difference, that's you. Don't try to speak for the rest of us.
The people who can accept "good enough" are the lucky ones. Thank God I'm one of them.
For me it's about the music. The instrumentation, vocals and performance. The arrangement, composition and lyrics.
We're lucky that we can happily keep out library at 128AAC and save space and sync times.
We're especially lucky that we're every bit as happy with a $500 system as we are with a $5000 or $10000 system.
I pity the audiophile, really. Their aural snobbery is misguided. It shouldn't be regarded as some kind of superiority. It should be regarded as a curse.
There's no snobbery involved (exept in your mind - you're actually being the snob by dismissing people with different taste than you). It's an enjoyment issue - uncompressed music is noticeably more enjoyable to me than lossy music. And good headphones are noticeably more enjoyable to me than Apple's stock earphones.
Why is that so threatening to you, that you have to criticize others? Just look at your comments - condescending and superior sounding. You are exactly what you accuse others of being.
...uncompressed music is noticeably more enjoyable to me than lossy music.
And compressed music is no doubt less enjoyable to you than it is to me, because you're focusing on the sound instead of the music.
Seriously? There's no snobbery involved?
How many times have we seen the comment, "if you can't tell the difference between 256kbps and lossless audio, then there's something wrong with your ears."
If that's not a snobbish statement that we've heard a million times, then I guess we have different definitions of snobbery.
You are just plain wrong. Not for all people, but for many. Not for all music, but for a lot of it. Not in all listening situations, but in many.
If you can't ever hear a difference, that's you. Don't try to speak for the rest of us.
I posted a link to a file containing a mixture of compressed and uncompressed music. No one on this thread who has made a claim they can clearly hear a difference between the two has been able to demonstrate that they can. In fact their silence is deafening. If you can hear a difference, it is easy enough to prove. Just listen and report back.
A lot of very knowledgeable people on the above site have been testing codecs at various rates of compression for years. They have been using double blind testing using software like Foobar. This has been going on for years so the body of evidence that has been accumulated is substantial. That evidence points to there being only incredibly rare instances of samples that when compressed, can be audibly differentiated from the original. Differences between choice of headphones/earphones/speakers used would be many orders of magnitude more relevant to perceived audio quality than whether the source was uncompressed or compressed at a a highish bit rate.
Things I don't think people can not hear a difference between:
Speaker cables
Interconnects
Highish bit rate compression / source
16bit 44khz / 24bit 96khz
D/A converters (well implemented)
Amplifiers (of same power output and adequately engineered)
I think the fact that people refer to compressed and uncompressed, lossy and lossless is a sign of the misunderstanding of what is lower and higher quality audio. I can take 16kbps mono MP3 and convert to ALAC or FLAC. It's bone fide lossless but it's still not crap quality.
Where does Apple get there iTS content from? I assume they are encoded from a master source not a standard audio CD.
Comments
Additionally, somebody who has no idea what good audio is like may well have trouble discerning it when they hear it.
I used to be a salesman and then project engineer for a high-end A/V outfit. There were so many people who claimed that they couldn't hear a difference. Then we'd do an A/B comparison for them (trying to be as fair as possible with volume levels, etc.) and many would acknowledge that there was a difference. Not sure if this was the power of suggestion or some reality distortion field, but it sure helped sell some higher-end gear.
Indeed, IMO, few people care much about quality. Other factors, such as convenience, are more important to them.
So true. That's why Bose sells so many speakers. They cater to the masses who want "good enough".
So true. That's why Bose sells so many speakers. They cater to the masses who want "good enough".
Apple and Bose are alike in many respects.
Apple needs to start offering iTunes downloads in Alac. I'm not going to spend my money on an Mp3 or AAC file. I want the best quality that you can get. And yes, I can hear the difference. Anybody who can't doesn't have very good ears.
Here is the file: http://hotfile.com/dl/106252620/faa0...23aac.rar.html
If you can tell me which bits are 223 kbps AAC and which are uncompressed original source, I will believe you can hear the difference, otherwise . . .
For me it's about the music. The instrumentation, vocals and performance. The arrangement, composition and lyrics.
We're lucky that we can happily keep out library at 128AAC and save space and sync times.
We're especially lucky that we're every bit as happy with a $500 system as we are with a $5000 or $10000 system.
I pity the audiophile, really. Their aural snobbery is misguided. It shouldn't be regarded as some kind of superiority. It should be regarded as a curse.
This is the codec I used a few years ago to rip all my CDs before throwing them out (got sick of carting them from apartment to apartment).
The resultant files are quite big (25-35MB for a single track) but I didn't want to lose any quality (well CDs aren't perfect to begin with, but any *more* quality I mean).
I started out with IMA ADPCM 4:1
Ah, good times... Old skool.
Edit: Sadly, it was a lossy encoding. Still, kinda fun before mp3s hit big time.
The true benefit of compressing audio in like manner as any other data is compressed, i.e., without using perceptual encoding that produces a bit stream from which the original bit stream cannot be recovered, is with archiving. For any large-scale archiving endeavor, the required amount of storage is reduced significantly relative to non-compressed audio encoding. But for playback purposes on portable devices, or even for at-home playback, it is silly. Of course there are always people who claim that they can hear things that they cannot actually hear, just as there are people who claim that they see flying saucers and bigfoot that they did not actually see. You do not have to experiment with audio encoding very long at all to realize that with perceptual encoding such as AAC, that the bit rate at which the sound is perceptually identical to the original is but a small fraction of the original bit rate. When you encode and listen carefully as you increase the bit rate one step at a time, you reach a point where there is almost not perceptual difference between the two bit rates. Then go a step or two higher, to where you cannot hear any difference whatsoever. Then for good measure, go one step higher. At that point you are using a higher bit rate than what is needed in order for the sound you hear to be perceptually identical to the original, and that bit rate is still a small fraction of the bit rate using any non-perceptual encoding scheme. It is also a well-established fact that when encoding AAC at a bit rate way below the bit rate that you get with non-perceptual encoding, the measurable distortion that results is quite small in comparison to the distortion present in any loudspeaker or headphone. The situation here is much the same as it is with people who claim that they can hear differences in amplifiers, when the fact is that for any decent high fidelity amplifier, the degradation of the signal is orders of magnitude less than it is with even the very finest loudspeakers and headphones. Since the beginning of audio transmission people have claimed that they can hear things that they cannot actually hear. Non-perceptual encoding techniques for audio have a place in professional archiving of music, but for anyone not in that business, and who only has the need to encode audio for personal and home use, non-perceptual encoding of audio has no relevance. It makes about as much sense as it would make to use a high-end supercomputer to browse the web.
You are just plain wrong. Not for all people, but for many. Not for all music, but for a lot of it. Not in all listening situations, but in many.
If you can't ever hear a difference, that's you. Don't try to speak for the rest of us.
The people who can accept "good enough" are the lucky ones. Thank God I'm one of them.
For me it's about the music. The instrumentation, vocals and performance. The arrangement, composition and lyrics.
We're lucky that we can happily keep out library at 128AAC and save space and sync times.
We're especially lucky that we're every bit as happy with a $500 system as we are with a $5000 or $10000 system.
I pity the audiophile, really. Their aural snobbery is misguided. It shouldn't be regarded as some kind of superiority. It should be regarded as a curse.
There's no snobbery involved (exept in your mind - you're actually being the snob by dismissing people with different taste than you). It's an enjoyment issue - uncompressed music is noticeably more enjoyable to me than lossy music. And good headphones are noticeably more enjoyable to me than Apple's stock earphones.
Why is that so threatening to you, that you have to criticize others? Just look at your comments - condescending and superior sounding. You are exactly what you accuse others of being.
...uncompressed music is noticeably more enjoyable to me than lossy music.
And compressed music is no doubt less enjoyable to you than it is to me, because you're focusing on the sound instead of the music.
Seriously? There's no snobbery involved?
How many times have we seen the comment, "if you can't tell the difference between 256kbps and lossless audio, then there's something wrong with your ears."
If that's not a snobbish statement that we've heard a million times, then I guess we have different definitions of snobbery.
You are just plain wrong. Not for all people, but for many. Not for all music, but for a lot of it. Not in all listening situations, but in many.
If you can't ever hear a difference, that's you. Don't try to speak for the rest of us.
I posted a link to a file containing a mixture of compressed and uncompressed music. No one on this thread who has made a claim they can clearly hear a difference between the two has been able to demonstrate that they can. In fact their silence is deafening. If you can hear a difference, it is easy enough to prove. Just listen and report back.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...p?showforum=40
A lot of very knowledgeable people on the above site have been testing codecs at various rates of compression for years. They have been using double blind testing using software like Foobar. This has been going on for years so the body of evidence that has been accumulated is substantial. That evidence points to there being only incredibly rare instances of samples that when compressed, can be audibly differentiated from the original. Differences between choice of headphones/earphones/speakers used would be many orders of magnitude more relevant to perceived audio quality than whether the source was uncompressed or compressed at a a highish bit rate.
Things I don't think people can not hear a difference between:
Speaker cables
Interconnects
Highish bit rate compression / source
16bit 44khz / 24bit 96khz
D/A converters (well implemented)
Amplifiers (of same power output and adequately engineered)
One hand clapping / silence
Where does Apple get there iTS content from? I assume they are encoded from a master source not a standard audio CD.