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Audio Compression Primer

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the do-you-hear-what-i-hear dept.

Hack Jandy writes "For those of you with a little extra time this afternoon, check out Sudhian's primer to all things concerning audio compression. The article details everything from DRM to CRC matrixes (with a healthy dosage of Ogg)."

5 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Is FLAC worth it? by stratjakt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most of us aren't exactly audiophiles.

    I'll go stereo to mono and reencode at 22khz for my tv captures. It sounds the same to me.

    As for mp3s, etc, the only time I ever listen to it in the car, and there's so much ambient noise, it's not worth bothering. Hell, 128k joint stereo sounds like the CD to me, I don't know any better.

    I don't listen to much music anymore. All the bullshit and RIAA and this is legal and blah blah blah, it's all killed music as an artform for me. I used to play guitar in bands, and love playing music. It's just dead to me now. White noise.

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  2. Re:Is FLAC worth it? by itp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I keep my entire CD collection on disk as FLAC, and then transcode to the lossy format(s) most useful to me at the time (currently Vorbis to play in my Rio Karma). If I ever need a new format I can go back to the FLAC and reencode without transcoding from another lossy format.

  3. Re:I still hear MDCT distortions by radish · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not wanting to get some award for pedantry, but all music recording is "lossy". If you listen to a CD, you're not hearing the exact same sound you'd here in the studio, those cymbals sound diffrent due to sampling, quantization etc. So when it comes to "lossy compression" causing "artifacts" - it's only creating different artifiacts, there already were some.

    Of course this doesn't go against what you're saying at all, other than calling FLAC "perfect" is wrong. It might be the same as the CD, but that has it's own problems.

    --

    ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

  4. FLAC is often worth it. by Venner · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I personally think 256kbps or even 192kbps is good. But it depends on your output (speakers, headphones) and more importantly your ears. Some people don't mind 92kbps while others won't settle for anything less than vinyl (usually people with $30k+ wrapped up in their setups...)
    I have a decent mid-range receiver & set of speakers*. I had a friend of mine administer a blind listening test on me. I could pick out the FLAC encode vs. the Ogg "higher quality" (I think it was -q7 or -q8) encode about 75% of the time.

    Most of the time I am content with a good Ogg encode (I mean, hell, I'd never have heard the difference if the samples weren't played back to back!) I generally only use FLAC for a) my favorite albums and b) classical music. Size wouldn't be an issue... but for the fact that I keep an oft-updated mirror of the data on a second computer. As drive space is become rather inexpensive, I forsee a time when lossless will be the way to go, except for portables.

    *Ascend Acoustics CBM-300 stereo pair, HSU sub, and a HK AVR-325 receiver.
    --
    A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
  5. Re:AAC by Skuto · · Score: 4, Interesting

    AAC is *much LESS* expensive than MP3. Just compare the licensing costs from Vialicensing (AAC) vs Thomson (MP3).

    The parent is plain wrong. ("Don't believe all you read on the internet, kids")