Convince me that compressed music sounds GREAT!!!

[jrhymeammo]

Here is what I used to think without truly experiencing them.

I used to think Vinyl sounded just god awful. Not anymore.

I used to think Tube amps were for idiots who doesn't know crap. Now I'm one of those idiots who cannot live without it.

I used to think Monster Cable was the Don King of all cables. Well............ONLY IN AMERICA!!!!

Help me out here guys. I wanna be able to say, "I used to think compressed music files was musical constapation." Is it possible?

-Jaira

[Dusty Chalk]

Well, at worst it will sound equal to uncompressed music. I.E. you won't get the joy of listening to analog vinyl or tubes (and what do you mean, 'Don King' -- it had bad hair?). There is no "euphony" associated with compression.

But, you will be able to get a lot more of it on your player or computer. So there's that.

[Feanor]

Here is what I used to think without truly experiencing them.

I used to think Vinyl sounded just god awful. Not anymore.

I used to think Tube amps were for idiots who doesn't know crap. Now I'm one of those idiots who cannot live without it.

I used to think Monster Cable was the Don King of all cables. Well............ONLY IN AMERICA!!!!

Help me out here guys. I wanna be able to say, "I used to think compressed music files was musical constapation." Is it possible?

-Jaira

I ripped a very good sounding CD to both MP3 and Apple Lossless, than compared the results:

MP3 sound pretty good until I compared it with the others;
Apple Lossless was virtually identical to the CD;
The CD and Apple Lossless had more spatial information and detail than MP3;
Tonally there were no differences amongst the three.I am not a "golden ear": the differences were fairly obvious but not huge.

[Dusty Chalk]

At what compression rate were you able to hear obvious differences?

[basite]

mp3, that would depend, when you rip your cd carfully they will only drop in at 128kb/s when you do it to fast, or wrong, it will be noticable at whatever bitrate you try it. although, with very very trained and good ears, you will always notice a difference, in fact, when you hear very very carefully, everyone (with a bit of interest) can hear a difference.

96kb/s (and below) would be the thing you'll try to avoid. it will sound very mettalic and like there was a little hall effect putten there, also everything else will start to sound very very bad, the outher frequencies will be very blurry to unhearable.

that said, i try to avoid mp3's, i generally only use them for 'previewin' a cd, you download a song or a full cd, you will either say: yes, it rocks, you go out and buy the cd, and after that you'll delete the mp3's or you'll say that it was good, but not worth buying, you keep the mp3's, or you'll say the cd is bad, you don't buy the cd, and you delete the mp3's.

so far for convincing you.

if you want a *HUGE* difference, try encoding your cd's at a 32kb/s bitrate,
but on the other hand, no,
forget what i said, just don't do that.

[JoeE SP9]

I have tried encoding MP3's at 256K. They are only good for background listening even at 256K. With MP3's the bass is very woolly and the highs loose definition. Sometimes it sounds like the midrange was recorded underwater.:ihih:
How can you expect to be convinced when I can't convince myself.:cornut:

[basite]

general conclusion so far: MP3 sucks. one of the reasons it sucks is that is was made for pc use, that means that 85% of the pc-owning people, will play music (in mp3 format) on regular (crap) or medium (a little better (like mine)) pc speaker sets, and it needed to be small, because, who'd want a 2 gig file for 3 minutes of music, so... why bother making the format really really good (better than cd's, dvd's, sacd's and vinyl records) if no one plays them at such a quality. for example, i'm the only one of the class (27 man) that haves a decent stereo, economically seen, it wouldn't be a good idea to make a better format.

[ericl]

i encode my rock&hip hop cd's in 256 AAC or MP3 VBR (variable bit rate), but more "audiophile" types of music (jazz, acoustic, world, etc) i encode in lossless.

the difference generally depends on a few factors, such as the resolving ability of the stereo you are listening on - for example, if your only use for computer music is for the ipod at the gym on stock earbuds, you have no need for lossless. but if you're listening at home on a good system, you will hear the weakness of mp3 easily, especially if you compare to the original/lossless file.

Doesn't mean that it can't be enjoyable though. I have a lot of music on mp3/aac. never go lower than 192k, use VBR encoding when possible. If i really am looking for a song, i will occasionally settle for 128k.

[jrhymeammo]

and what do you mean, 'Don King'

It means the greatest thing ever to surfaced on Earth.

I agree with almost everything stated here. I was waiting on someone to bring up some latest techonolgy to validate their statement.

I rip mine around 256-320 on my Ipoo. I've tried AppleLossless and thought it sounded pretty good, but wasnt worth it just for walking around downtown. Maybe I'll get that TubeIPoo.......SCAM!!!!!!!!

JRA

[Feanor]

At what compression rate were you able to hear obvious differences?

It was 192 kps, but in any case was it no worse than 128.

[noddin0ff]

The good test is to encode the same song at several bit rates, load them up, and hit shuffle. See which ones annoy you, double blind if you can. You're impression will vary with the resolution of your speakers/headphones, the noise in your environment, your familiarity with the music, and your learned ability to hear where the resolution is lost in compressing. For me most portable listening maxes out at 256. Can't say I notice much improvement going to higher resolution...except for something that I am very familiar with like, say Kind of Blue that I've heard zillions of times. But for 2-channel focused listening on my mains system, 256 doesn't quite cut it. I do lossless because 320 is still pretty big for a file, might as well just do lossless. But I think at 320 I'd be hard pressed to consistently pick out the compressed file.

[jrhymeammo]

I dont think it has to do with how revealing the system is at all. If I can tell the difference on my $10 KOSS, everyone should be able to tell the difference between 128 and 256. I think it all depends on how you listen to it too. I can't remember the last time I listened to hiphop in one position thinking "Man, that beat had alot of emotion behind it." The way MCees flow is different, but I can hear it fine as backgtround music. It all way too mechanical (beats anyways). Same goes for classical music. Musicians are slaved to sheet music. Sure soloist can play with their own rhythm at predictable moments, but still has to follow the standarized format.

I think I really got off the track here and forgot what I was going to write.

-JRA

[jrhymeammo]

Oh I remembered, I was saying


I dont think it has to do with how revealing the system is at all

All depends on how people listen to it. I'm just saying for Jazz, I really love listening to their emotion. I have no idea how I can say I hear their emotion, but sometimes it makes me feel like I'm playing the instrument. Compressed format doesnt do that for me. Hiphop can on lyrics, but it sounds alot better on higher Rez formats.

[HAVIC]

MP3 sucks. one of the reasons it sucks is that is was made for pc use, that means that 85% of the pc-owning people, will play music (in mp3 format) on regular (crap) or medium (a little better (like mine)) pc speaker sets, and it needed to be small, because, who'd want a 2 gig file for 3 minutes of music,

Basite that statement is completely wrong. MP3 or Mpeg-1 Audio layer 3 was invented by a team of German engineers who worked in the framework of the EUREKA 147 DAB digital radio research program, and it became an ISO/IEC standard in 1991. ISO is a standards organization that sets standards and has nothing to do with PC, MAC, or Linux. The ISO organization has set many standards MP3 and the iso 9660 standard with is the standard formating of a CD disk being 2 examples.

While I agree MP3 is the worst. Ogg Vorbis is commonly considered the best lossy format. AAC which is really MP4 is a much better format than MP3 and probably right up their with Ogg Vorbis. I have not done a direct comparison, but have heard them both and they both sound much much better than MP3.

As far as your second part of the statement above, I am a pc user and have most of my music in Ogg Vorbis or FLAC (a lossless format) I listen to my digital music on my system listed below.

People are sheep and when one sheep moves the rest follows and that is why mp3 is the #1 format. MP3 came out in the media as this great new technology and that is what everyone ran too.

[jrhymeammo]

Hey Bastie you wrote,


who'd want a 2 gig file for 3 minutes of music

I'm not putting you down at all, but I'm pretty sure I would considered that, as long as I dont come across 24" vinyl spun at 100rpm or higher. I think it'll weigh 3000grams. Now, that's what I want!!!!! But I'm not sure if I can afford a 28" Rega RB999SE tonearm.

[noddin0ff]

I dont think it has to do with how revealing the system is at all. If I can tell the difference on my $10 KOSS, everyone should be able to tell the difference between 128 and 256. I think it all depends on how you listen to it too. I can't remember the last time I listened to hiphop in one position thinking "Man, that beat had alot of emotion behind it." The way MCees flow is different, but I can hear it fine as backgtround music. It all way too mechanical (beats anyways). Same goes for classical music. Musicians are slaved to sheet music. Sure soloist can play with their own rhythm at predictable moments, but still has to follow the standarized format.

I think I really got off the track here and forgot what I was going to write.

-JRA

128 vs 256 is a no brainer; it's an obvious difference. 192 vs 256 is harder to discriminate on a poor system. 256 vs 320 I'd say is getting more difficult on a good system and impossible to distinguish on a poor system. 320 vs lossless I think you'd need a real accurate system first...to have a chance of hearing the difference. If you want to be able to say "I used to think compressed music files was musical constapation." you need to be listening above 256.

[Dusty Chalk]

It was 192 kps, but in any case was it no worse than 128.You didn't mention whether or not you used VBR or not. Encoding makes all the world of difference. I use lame --preset-standard, and I can only tell the difference if I'm a/b-ing, but it's perfectly acceptable for every day listening.

[jrhymeammo]

If you want to be able to say "I used to think compressed music files was musical constapation." you need to be listening above 256.

That may work for others, but that just doesnt do it for me. Music just doesnt have that energy/soul behind it. Emotion is very hard for me to describe so I dont want to get into it.

I do have alot of Bootlegs from wornout tapes by Pink Floyd, MMW, SoundTribeSector9, TOOL, King Crimson(Fripp would be OUTRAGOUS!!!), and others. SQ is just horrible, but I CAN capture some of the "LIVE" experience. But obviously if it was good/authorized recording, it would be magical. I think the difference in enjoyement is all based on my expectation.

JRA

[Feanor]

You didn't mention whether or not you used VBR or not. Encoding makes all the world of difference. I use lame --preset-standard, and I can only tell the difference if I'm a/b-ing, but it's perfectly acceptable for every day listening.

I recently downloaded some chamber music from iTunes in AAC format, the Emerson Quartet's complete Schostakovich's String Quartets on DG, I was really very impressed with the sound. Does this prove that compressed is good enough??

I would say No! What it proves is what I've know for a long, long time: that better-produced recordings sound better regardless of the medium. You might say, "Garbage in, garbage out". I think most of the vinyl vs. CD debate is, in actuality, that early CDs were produced in a way that was suboptimal for the new medium and gave it a bad rep.

Sometime I'd like to do my earlier experiment using AAC 320kbps for the comparison, and maybe the difference would be much less obvious. Personally I can't really tell the difference between the CD layer and the SACD stereo layer, at least not on recent recordings where the CD and SACD versions were made at the same time by the same producer.

[audio_dude]

heyy, very nice debate here on compression. now, here's my two cents...

i use an iPod... and most of my music is in 320kbps AAC, or AppleLossless...

a little trick i've learned with the iPod... if you slowly pull out the headphone plug, and keep it in, just pull out slowly, it'll slip into a spot that'll let you hear all the compression artifacts, i've done it many times, quite interesting to hear the difference, even AAC has a ton of compression...

(all tests were done with my Grado SR-60 headphones and an 5G apple iPod 30gig)

[jrhymeammo]

Dear Dude,

I just tried it with my Pink Mini 6G with my Grado SR60. Are you sure it's not just disrupted signal when you are slowly pulling it out?

-JRA