Does Portable Music Have to be Compressed?

FunkeyMonk writes "The Christian Science monitor has an article discussing the gap between music fans and audiophiles when it comes to portable music. Would you pay a few cents more to have lossless downloads from iTunes and other online music retailers? As a classical musician myself, I choose not to download most of my music, but rather rip it myself in lossless format."

Comments

Lossless is compressed

[nurhussein]

...just with no quality loss. Perhaps the question is "Does portable music have to be lossy?"

Re:Lossless is compressed

[albertost]

not if he uses PCM

Re:Lossless is compressed

[Yvan256]

Okay, show me non-lossy non-PCM digital audio. You can't? Well, too bad. Digital music is usually PCM and most of us refer to CD's as "lossless", being our only "source" to convert to other formats.

Re:Lossless is compressed

[timeOday]

Let's not perpetrate the myth that music can be recorded losslessly in the first place. All sampling is lossy. CDDA specifies a certain sample rate, beyond which you lose higher frequencies, and a fixed number of bits per sample, so you lose precision. For the same bitrate, you would get better results by starting with a high-resolution master and using lossy compression down to CDDA bitrate.

I'm not arguing that a lossy encoding of CDDA is as good as CDDA; it isn't. Just that there's no law of nature establishing CDDA as the gold standard in the first place.

Re:Lossless is compressed

[Yvan256]

Just that there's no law of nature establishing CDDA as the gold standard in the first place.

There is, however, a rule of market that establish the CD as the only source users can encode their music from.

Re:Lossless is compressed

[h2g2bob]

Ahem, http://flac.sf.net/

A used for Magnatune downloads (among others), and supported by decent media player software and a handful of MP3 players

Re:Lossless is compressed

[Yvan256]

FLAC and Apple Lossless are both PCM-encoded, which to some people equals with "lossy" (and they're technically right).

My original post did say "show me non-lossy, non-PCM".

Re:Lossless is compressed

[Yvan256]

I'm well aware of the existence of FLAC and Apple Lossless, thank you.

But last time I checked, all sampled music was PCM, and that's lossy by definition. You're limited in the sampling rate and the bit resolution, which makes is lossy when comparing with the original (i.e. "real-life") source.

Then again, like my original post says, audio CDs are what most of us have to use as the "original lossless" source.

So no, FLAC isn't "lossy" in the MP3/AAC/VQF/WMA sense, but it is PCM, which my original post clearly pointed out (I asked for "non-lossy non-PCM". FLAC is non-lossy but is PCM.

Re:Lossless is compressed

[ucblockhead]

You are confusing terms. "Lossy" and "Lossless" are terms that apply only to compression. They have very specific meanings that has nothing to do with recording accuracy.

You are correct that it is impossible (even theoretically) to record music perfectly accurately...but this doesn't have anything to do with "lossless". CDDA encoding uses lossless compression. That means that it is a perfectly accurate representation of what was recorded, though obviously the recording is not a perfectly accurate representation of the sound wave.

This is an important distinction in that you can perfectly accurately convert between anything compressed in a lossless manner, but you lose accuracy every time you convert between anything compressed in a lossy manner. That is, I can convert CDDA->FLAC->Apple Lossless->CDDA over and over ad infinitum and still get exactly the same CDDA file. On the other hand, if I were to try this CDDA->MP3->WMA->CDDA, I'd end up with crappier and crappier reproductions.

Re:Lossless is compressed

[h2g2bob]

How else could you encode audio other than PCM? I suppose you could use a Fourier series, but you'd end up with the same problems - even if you take the first grillion terms you'll still lose some sound data. Plus you'd need a computer to work it all out... and the computer (even the computer microphone) would probably use PCM.

I suppose you could use magnetic tape and use analogue recording (but even then magnetism is quantised :-)

I guess the moral is there's no such thing as a perfect recording.

Re:Lossless is compressed

[SQLGuru]

If the music is digital, it is by it's very nature lossy. To convert sound into a digital format, you must sample it. No matter how small your sample, there are gaps between them. The gaps are lost when you digitize the music.

But yeah, from a digital perspective, things can be compressed such that the original is reproducible ("lossless") or an approximation is reproducible ("lossy").

Layne

Re:Lossless is compressed

[arose]

If the music is recorded, it is by it's very nature lossy.

Re:Lossless is compressed

[jd]

I'd start by massively oversampling the data at initial recording time. 100 MHz, 26 bits per sample, 8 channels, etc. Something totally outrageous and utterly unusable for anything resembling sane. The next step is to split the sound up NOT according to source or frequency, but according to what groups together the best. Here's where the oversampling comes in - you don't NEED the actual data points to get lossless encoding, you only need to be able to recreate them. Thus, once we have grouped the compressable information, anything that is left over that can be reconstructed is of no further interest and we can ignore it. The same goes for any complete grouping that we have formed - if the complete group can be synthesized directly from one or more other groups, we don't need it. You then compress the groups - in isolation or as a simultaneous set of systems - either losslessly or using a lossy method. When you downsample, you eliminate the guesses that are wrong first and then eliminate duplicate guesses that are right between the groups.

What you will end up with is some set on N systems, which will be large amounts of noise with small amounts of useful sound in them, which when superimposed with each other AND a filter function produce the original sound and which when taken individually are highly compressable. (The noise is simply there to create fake patterns that we can compress. It won't be random noise, because that doesn't compress, but is noise in the sense that it has no meaning or purpose other than to produce nice mathematical functions. The filter is simply something that's used to extract this deliberately injected deluge, so that the output is valid.)

Is this a valid technique? Well, yes - it's not that unusual to add noise to simplify compression, then subtract the noise afterwards. That's fairly standard. Splitting the data up to simplify the noise is merely a variant on the idea, and is used in plenty of compression methods. Compressing individually seems to be the customary method, but computing power is more than adequate these days to use fancier techniques IF justified. (Since you can encode the decoding method at the start of any track, it should be wholly irrelevant as to what method is used, provided the computing power is there to run it in real-time.)

Re:Lossless is compressed

[Shelled]

Analogue recording is 'bit lossy' if you want to be 100% accurate about it. Tape is limited to the size of the magnetic domains on the backing, a function of particle size. If you really want to be finicky, sound travelling in air is 'digital' in that the carrier is discrete oxygen/nitrogen molecules and not a continuous 'ether' from source to ear. More finely grained than any conceivable recording media at this point mind you, but still 'digital'.

Re:Lossless is compressed

[elgatozorbas]

To convert sound into a digital format, you must sample it. No matter how small your sample, there are gaps between them. The gaps are lost when you digitize the music.

This is not entirely true. The Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem states that a band-limited signal can be reconstructed perfectly if you sample it at minimally twice the bandwidth. The intuitive understanding is that because of the limited frequency content, the signal cannot make very fast jumps in between the sampling points and is not just 'free to do as it wants', and can be reconstructed.
CD sampling is at 44100 Hz, meaning that signals upto 22500Hz can be perfectly reconstructed. In practice this is a bit lower due to non-ideal filters etc. A normal person's hearing goes only to say 16kHz, maybe 20kHz. When making a CD, everything above (which is not much to start from, and is inaudible anyway) is filtered away, and this filtered signal (limited to 20kHz) is than sampled and later on reconstructed.

In case the sampling resolution (16 bits for a CD) is lower than the noise on the signal, again this will not be perceptible.

In other words: it is possible to make a digital recording which is _completely_ indicernible from the original, at least to the human ear. This is not the case for perceptual coding such as mp3, even though it should be.

Re:Lossless is compressed

[TheMeuge]

"But last time I checked, all sampled music was PCM, and that's lossy by definition."

Your ears are pretty lossy too. Anything recorded using 192kHz/24bit has more dynamic range and a lower noise floor than your ears do... not to mention the fact that no equipment exists that can do better than ~100dB of dynamic range, and SNR of <0.1%

Re:Lossless is compressed

[toadlife]

And sounds they think are there but really aren't.

more for non-DRM

[yagu]

Actually I'd like to be able to get an "original" image a la the CDs you buy, but allow single CD tracks. Would I pay more for that? I don't know. I've never bought any of the DRM'ed crap because it's DRM'ed, so I don't know how badly (or well) compressed they are.

If there are audible compression artifacts anywhere in today's downloadable DRM'ed music I'd probably insist the compression be less or not at all, after all I'm paying for music, and a compression artifact (to me) is analogous to stuck pixels in a monitor or camera... my threshold of tolerance is zero for that.

(I had one of the very original SONY Mini-disk recorders, and remember a passage of a Doobie Brothers track where some high pitched bells instead of sounding like high pitched bells sounded like someone sneezing... unacceptable... completely altered my experience of MD (along with numerous other things about SONY).)

So, bottom line, DRM aside, I consider it the responsibility of the music industry to deliver what they claim they are delivering... music (usually). I'm willing to bet what they are delivering has artifacts... I wouldn't pay more to get rid of that, I'd demand they replace the defective product.

The nice thing about my CDs and my derivative mp3 collection (recorded at 320 VBR) is if I hear an artifact in my track, I have the unedited original, I rip it at higher quality until the artifact isn't there.

(As an aside, I think the article makes an exceptionally great point not directly related to the users:

That's important to sound engineers, too. "You spend a long time training your ears and striving to perfect your craft and put out a better product," says Jeff Willens, an audio-restoration specialist at Vidipax in Long Island City, N.Y. "When you finally discover that these things are being listened to on cellphones and through pea-size earphones, it's kind of disheartening."

So, in addition to short-shrifting consumers with less-than-perfect (to the ear) product, the movers of downloadable music thumb their noses at the collective profession of sound engineers and engineering... pretty rude.

Granted, a lot of the music out there is crap -- it's no justification for compromise on the medium.

Oh, and re the subject line of my post... I'd pay a little more for non-DRMed music, not uncompressed music.

Re:more for non-DRM

[CRCulver]

So, in addition to short-shrifting consumers with less-than-perfect (to the ear) product, the movers of downloadable music thumb their noses at the collective profession of sound engineers and engineering... pretty rude.

Not all sound engineers are as dedicated to the art as you suggest. Okay, sure, if one wants to listen to something recorded in a state-of-the-art lab by consummate lovers of both the music itself and clean audio in general, then one should invest in the right conditions.

From my own collection, I'll take the world premiere recording of Boulez's Repons as an example. It was recorded in the projection space at IRCAM, one of the world's foremost music and acoustics research laboratories, and I only listen to it from the CD on my home stereo system, which isn't the most whizbang, but the best I can afford.

Contrast this with Rush's 2002 album Vapor Trails , a musically strong release which was recorded in poor circumstances and remastered in worse. The clipping that plagues every track in the album has long been criticized by fans (see the Amazon reviews for further info). So, since the guys who engineered the album didn't aim for clear audio, I feel no shame in putting this in 160 kbps Ogg Vorbis and listening to it with merely average headphones on my portable MP3 player.

As has already been said in many places in the discussion, lossless is probably going to be a draw mostly for classical (or, in my case, modern-classical) fans.

Re:more for non-DRM

[ljw1004]

That sounds nice and well, but the fact is that your CD has already been distorted -- down to only two channels, only 44khz, only 16bit.

(if only they used a lossy compression scheme for CDs, instead of just truncating the audio to fit, then the same CDs that you have no could have held the same music but at much higher qualit -- maybe with more channels, or more than 16bit.)

Re:more for non-DRM

[jonom]

Probably because that is what the consumer want. Therefore, they are going to provide it.

What the consumer wants? More likely what the consumer is offered.

I don't recall being asked by anyone. ;)

it depends

[gEvil (beta)]

It depends on how you intend to listen to your music. If you're going to be listening to earbuds while you're outside or working out at the gym or whatever, then compressed files are fine. Enough ambient noise will be getting through that you'll barely notice any compression artifacts, if at all. However, if you intend to listen to music through a nice set of headphones or speakers in a quiet listening environment, then you'll want it to be as uncompressed as possible. The same generally applies for music with wide dynamic ranges, such as classical/orchestral music.

Re:it depends

[kfg]

If you have the original you can still always compress it yourself if you want; in whatever format you want.

Would I pay more? No. Downloads are already overpriced.

KFG

What's the point?

[Psionicist]

What's the point? The bottle neck on MP3 players is not the audio files but the decoding/playback hardware and even more important the headphones. You simply can't hear the difference after a certain MP3 bitrate like you can on real audio systems with proper equipment.

Whenever I buy a new MP3 player I spend a few minutes to find the sweet spot where I simply can't hear any difference with a higher bit rate let alone lossless audio. This is almost always 128 kbps, even with quite good head phones.

I would pay a few cents less

[CastrTroy]

I would personally pay a few cents less to get CD Quality music. Often when I buy CDs they are priced anywhere from 7.99 to 13.99. I think that if you average it out, the CD ends up being about the same price as iTunes, possibly a dollar or two more. But for that extra dollar, you get a physical copy, that's lossless, and doesn't contain any DRM. I try not to buy CDs with copy protection, and even for the few I do, I can still easily rip them, by disabling autorun. The only advantages of iTunes and other music services are, the ability to buy one track, and the ability to have it right away. I don't usually buy music from artists who can't fill up a whole CD with good music, and I'm not that impatient that I can't wait for the CD to arrive from Amazon, or wait until the next time I happen to be in the mall. Sometimes, if I know I won't be in the mall for a while, I'll download the cd in MP3 format and then buy it later. So, I could buy off iTunes, but i'd get music that was of inferior quality, and locked by Apple, which means that I couldn't play it on another MP3 player without degrading the quality even further.

GIGO -- Garbage In, Garbage Out

[eutychus_awakes]

Well, the poster of this article obviously doesn't consider CD quality to be "lossless." How far we've come from the OLD audiophiles who wouldn't touch anything that wasn't a meticulously cared for LP -- or better yet, reel-to-reel tape in your home rig.

How much longer before we consider 128-kpbs MP3's to be the "standard" for quality music, especially as we're moving to more and more of a "download on demand" compression crazed society?

Won't anyone think of the children!

Re:GIGO -- Garbage In, Garbage Out

[tomstdenis]

A properly mixed (re: not super compressed [range wise]) CD has 96dB of SNR in each channel. That's mighty fine given the sensitivity of human hearing isn't that super anyways. SA-CD and DVD-CD can offer a bit more range but honestly the difference is lost on most.

What you really should get all in a knot about is the continously low quality of shite music being promotoed. Payola's a bitch.

Tom

Re:GIGO -- Garbage In, Garbage Out

[Lumpy]

If the sales numbers are right for XM radio and Sirius radio, 64Kbps will become acceptable.

Both the sattelite radio services have incredibly horrid sound. anythign with high frequencies has twinkle and other nasty artifacts that are so prevalent it renders it unlistenable to most people who like clear music. I have went back to FM at times because Sirius and XM suck so bad.

Now we have robot radio stations around here that are mp3 based and LOW bitrate mp3 based at that. My daughter was listening to one of them and I asked, "when did you get a XM raio in your room?" she let me know she was listening to the new Rock FM station.

Current state of music is swirling the toilet. I havent heard a decently mastered CD in decades, radio and supposed "CD QUALITY" Digital FM and Sattelite all sounds worse than 128kbps mp3's on a $6.00 mp3 player.

All around the music quality stinks. Even if I could buy a uncompressed high bitrate version, the mastering at the studios is so sub par it wouldn matter.

Re:GIGO -- Garbage In, Garbage Out

[mushadv]

Who the hell uses 128 kbps MP3 anymore? If you use iTunes, like a sizeable group of mainstream consumers, then you're getting 128 kbps AAC, which is indistinguishable from the source when it comes to loud, over-compressed pop music. When it comes to something like classical, that's when you probably need to move up to 160 or 192 (which iTunes doesn't offer, unfortunately). I don't have a clear idea of wma's quality, which is the other mainstream consumer digital music format. My point is that you probably have nothing to worry about concerning MP3 becoming the standard format, at least through official means of distribution. After all, it's too hard to DRM it and lock your customers into one unshiftable format and player.

That said, I really like Bleep, which distributes music in non-DRM, high-quality VBR MP3 and sometimes FLAC, both of which create sample-perfect representations of whatever's encoded with it.

Re:GIGO -- Garbage In, Garbage Out

[Yvan256]

When it comes to something like classical, that's when you probably need to move up to 160 or 192 (which iTunes doesn't offer, unfortunately).

I guess you don't dig too deep into menus and options, because iTunes offers, in the preferences-advanced-importing menu, a custom setting which allows you to set the bitrate from 16kbps to 320kbps for both MP3 and AAC, along with other options such as sampling rates (8K to 48KHz for MP3, 44.1KHz and 48KHz for AAC), stereo/mono options, VBR and even normal/joint stereo mode for MP3.

The only thing iTunes doesn't offer is on-the-fly re-encoding for iPods (except the shuffles, fixed to AAC/128kbps). Such a feature would allow us to keep Apple Lossless on the computer and whatever we feel like for our iPods (per-iPod setting would be even better).

Doubt it will happen

[grimsweep]

I doubt any representative of the RIAA could keep their blood pressure down with the words 'losslessly reproduceable content' and 'internet' in the same sentence. Given the disputes over uniform music cost and how much they resisted distributing even lossy DRM'd audio in the first place, what are the odds we'll see this?

Re:Lossless audio file downloads? Hell no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ogg Vorbis is lossy, Ogg Flac isn't.

Re:FFS shut up already

[tomstdenis]

I disagree with what you say! Proof? NEVER!

I'm sure there is a contrived test out there that shows a difference. The trick is, to encode a track at 64, 96, 128, 160 and 192bkit/sec with the high quality setting in LAME. Then sit in front of your stereo, put a blindfold on and listen to the tracks [and the original] in a random order.

Chances are for 99% of your music you can easily tell 64 through 128 from the CD but can't tell the diff between 160 and 192 and the CD, and chances are most of the remaining 1% are indistinguishable from 192kbit.

Why shouldn't they offer lossless encodings at the same price as compressed encodings? Um, this thing called "bandwidth." You should have to pay a premium for your audiophile stupidity so the rest of us don't have to pay for your ignorance.

Tom

Why Wouldn't You Compress It?

[VaticDart]

A better question is why wouldn't you compress portable music? Audiophiles make up a very, very small portion of the population (Americans' idea of good sound seems to usually mean lots and lots of base), and the vast majority of the cans out there (earbud or bigger) don't yield any quality difference between an uncompressed or losslessly compressed CD track and a 192 kbps MP3 or AAC (I have no experience with WMA or Real Audio's format). I use Ety ER-6is with my Nano and AKG 240Ss at home, so one might say I'm a minor, minor audiophile, and I really have trouble hearing the difference with quality cans between a 192 kbps file and the original CD track. With any of the stock earbuds that come with various DMPs I have trouble hearing the difference between the original CD file and a 160 kbps file, and sometimes even lowly 128.

So yes, some people out there would pay extra for a digital file that is uncompressed or losslessly compressed, but as most people use crap cans or speakers, most of those people would be wasting their money. If you want maximum fidelity, stick with the physical CD or vinyl.

Re:Why Wouldn't You Compress It?

[Moth7]

If you're going down that avenue, then all analogue audio is compressed by the bandwidth of every component it passes through and then by the bit rate of every A/D / D/A converter it subsequently hits. Add to that the fact that no speakers or ears are perfect, then you've got abstract "compression" in that the musician can only act on what she hears from her instrument/amp and the engineer can only mix in relation to what he hears from his monitors. And of course there are the numerous artefacts introduced by even the best digital signal processors.

Given all of the above, I think it's safe to assume that in most cases "lossless" begins after the CD is pressed (or, if you take the "Loudness War" into consideration, before it hits the mastering house).

What is the quanta of sound?

[Anonymous Coward]

I though all digital formats were lossy!?! ;-)

Re:FFS shut up already

[__aaxwdb6741]

What you say is, indeed, true.

I categorize myself as an "audiophile", but not as one who believes in any of the audio-voodoo out there. I've done blind ABX testing to see how low my threshold is, and it really hurts to admit this - But when a track (Using music I normally listen to) is encoded with LAME, I cant hear the difference between 128kbps MP3 and a FLAC. That threshold is around the -V5 LAME preset with problem samples.

However, I firmly insist that music downloads should not only be provided free of DRM, but also losslessly to avoid codec-lock in. What if mp3 suddenly dies and SRGLC* is the new hot thing on portable players, such as iPod? What am I then to do with all my lossy files? Transcode them and lose quality? Yes, with decreasing storage prices, I hope that we will soon all have lossless audio files on our computers, portable media players and other multimedia storage hardware.

* Some Random Generic Lossy Codec.

Double blind test

[theLOUDroom]

The right way to answer this question is with double blind testing.
"Audiophiles" like to make all sorts or ridiculous claims that lead to things like $2000 speaker cables, gold CDs and just a general proliferation of nonsensical technobabble.

Psychology simply has too strong of an effect on questions like this to get an actual answer from a forum like this.

What you'd really find is that as the bitrate of an mp3 goes up, the number of people who can tell the difference goes down. At some point the number of people who can tell the difference becomes a statistically insignificant sample. This would be a good project for some grad student.

Re:Double blind test

[Alcari]

I recall a test at the university here. The local audiophile group set up their best of the best stuff, which measured up to about a Lexus worth of gear. Insert one CD holding original tracks, 128, 160, 192, 224, 256 kbit/s mp3s, all at 44.1khz. Most people could generally pick out 128kbit as 'not quite as good as the rest' but all the others sounded pretty similar. However, when the platina encrested CD player gest replaced by a generic mp3 player, it all sounds a lot worse.

Re:Double blind test

[Anonymous Coward]

No need for grad students. Hydrogenaudio regularly does double-blind listening test (there's a new one currently underway) and the results are damming for "audiophiles" everywhere.

Using up to date encoders, for the vast majority of people, for the vast majority of tracks, 128 kbps is indistinguishable from source.

Link.

Everyone should try to ABX at least once. You'll be shocked how much worse your ears are that you'd believe them to be... ABX Just Destroyed My Ego is a very informative read for any would be audiophiles:

I think the reason is in large due to the common misconception that audio compression heavily alters the sound. Less dynamics, weaker bass and all those other descriptions "audiophiles" like to throw around, and that in fact are nothing more than just placebo. But in reality, the artifacts are much more subtle, and often require actual training for an inexperienced user to be able to hear them.

Re:Double blind test

[SonicSpike]

I am an audio engineer, and the college I graduated from has a MFA program and they do this sort of thing all the time. Check it out:
http://mtsu.edu/~record/

Re:We need a new Hi-Def Audio format

[gEvil (beta)]

I remember talking about MP3s with an audio engineer friend about a decade ago. As an engineer, he said that he would prefer MP3s to be mastered for the format, which means any limitations of the MP3 and other compressed file formats would be taken into account to minimize/delete any perceivable quality loss. For instance, the cassette version of a recording is mastered differently from the CD version, since tape has different audio qualities (the same also applies for vinyl versions). They don't just stick the CD master onto cassette tapes. On this point, I fully agree with him. However, it seems that all of the AAC/MP3/WMA files that you can buy are sourced from CDs, rather than being mixed especially for the format.

Re:FFS shut up already

[purple_cobra]

Audiophiles, in my experience, are attributing differences in sound to the perceived quality of the components playing that sound. I'd like to see a bunch of them[1] involved in a blind test of audio gear to see how they'd rate different equipment without any visual indication as to its price (and therefore perceived quality). The amount of pseudo-science and meaningless jargon in the hi-fi world is amazing, showing the IT world to be rank amateurs. Flicking through 'What Hi-fi' always reminds me that there really is 'one born every minute'.

[1] No idea what the collective noun would be. A delusion of audiophiles, perhaps?

Mr. Goddard need to get with the program

[Overzeetop]

WAV? He uses WAV? Why on god's green earth would you bother using WAV to listed to your music when there are a plethora of lossless codecs out there? You can get roughtly 2:1 compression with any of the codecs - heck he could even use wavpack if he was so stuck on having wav in the name. Heck, most audiophiles worth their $3000 interconnects are appalled at the harsheness and "cold, digital" feel of that 44.1khz/16 bit crap that was forced on the public when we got CDs.

Lossless is coming soon to most of us. With the 5.5g iPod at 80GB and the Zune hackable to 80GB as well, all but the top 3-4% of all consumers can fit their entire (legal) collection on a single portable device in lossless compression. I've got about 6500 tracks, most as FLAC rips, and I'm right about 81GB (plus about 40GB in books, but those are all low-bitrate). If I jettisoned the extra downloded stuff I have that I didn't like (but didn't get around to deleting), I'd probably drop to 75GB or so. I suspect that my entire family (three of us) buys less than 5GB worth of content each year. There's no reason to expect that the size of the players, in capacity, will not continue to decrease. As for those with bigger collections...well, just get more portables, or learn to live with a smaller subset on your player (or a higher compression).

As long as the high-qualtiy masters are available, portables can become a calculated compromise. Since my threshhold for accuracy happens to be at about 256kb/s LAME, that's where I transcode my FLAC library for my portable. If I had a car player, it would probably be more like 160kb. Heck, it's practically impossible to hear artifacts at 128kb in my Pilot at 70mph at a normal volume. My wife's 8GB flash player will be encoded in the 160-192 range, becuase I know she doesn't have the gear to hear much more, and she's just not that picky. With good music managers, you can automagically sync and transcode at the same time (I use mediamonkey). Transodeing is a bit slow right now, but as PCs get faster, the sync/transcode process will get better and better.

I do agree that it is a travesty that the online services will not offer home-archival-quality tracks, but I'm probably a top-10% listening geek. I buy all my music on CD, and rip to FLAC. Okay, okay - I've bought some at AllOfMp3.com, too, but I can get lossless there. The key is that the studios will continue to have qualtiy masters - but will they be willing to sell that quality to the public?

Re:Getting there

[CastrTroy]

And I think this is the main reason we won't see lossless audio downloads for a while. Where are people supposed to store all their music? If you have to burn it all to CD to prevent it from clogging up your hard drive, then you might as well have bought the CD in the first place. People wouldn't buy from iTunes if it meant that they'd have to buy a large hard drive. Between 8 MPixel digital Cameras, and lossless audio, as well as Apple now offering video downloads, most people don't have the room to store lossless audio on their computer. Let alone on their MP3 player.

Intervieww is an ***HAT?

[BigBuckHunter]

From TFA

The sheer number of variations in compression technology. The array of audio file formats includes Apple's AAC and Dolby's AC3, as well as WMA, OGG, FLAC, AVI, and others.

AAC is not "Apple's". WMA is a container, not a compression codec. OGG is a container (usually used for Vorbis and FLAC), not a compression codec. FLAC is both a container and lossless compression codec. AVI is a container and not a compression codec. The man complains about audio quality, yet 4 out of 5 things that he discusses have "nothing" to do with audio quality.

For his own use, Mr. Goddard, like Willens, favors WAV, a "lossless" compression format that renders sound accurately but has some drawbacks - notably the tremendous amount of storage space it requires: some 50 to 60 megabytes per song, versus about two for an MP3.

Wav is not a lossless format. It is limited by in it's dynamic range (bits per sample) and sample rate. Compared to analog or a raw sound source, raw wav/pcm data loses a lot of the sound. FLAC and other lossless codecs produce identical byte-to-byte output when compared to wav/pcm.

I believe that this guys priorities are a little messed up. We should be focusing on lowering the noise floor, increasing the dynamic range, increasing the sampling rate, and getting the music industry to stop producing albums that are ultra compressed and "loud". You're not going to get decent fidelity out of an iPod when it is limited to 16 bit output and a 44.1/48khz sampling rate with a -90db noise floor. We need 24/96 players with a -110db noise floor, and a decent set of ear buds. Not that it would matter for consumers that listen to the typical tizz and boom being produced today.

BBH

Re:FFS shut up already

[tomstdenis]

It's elitism. It's the same folk who claim that anything less than 300FPS is "sore on their eyes" and that they can identify each pixel on a 1920x1600 screen at 85Hz, etc...

My friend who is the audiophile claims that "I have a lot of storage so who cares" except now his 2TiB RAID is getting more and more full. I imagine within a year he'll be hosed for space. He could cram ~5x more audio if he just compressed them but whatever, to each their own.

Oddly enough compressed videos (that he gets off P2P) is "just fine."

So maybe audiophiles are just kooky? hehehe...

Tom

I work with a radio station...

[jnelson4765]

and I've got to say - 128k mp3's are the absolute minimum we can play on the air. You run into some wierd problems playing compressed audio over FM - due to the way stereo channels are transmitted, you can get some bizzare stereo artifacts.

Biggest problem with lossless compressed codecs is that there's shit for support for 'em. Most semi-pro or pro audio software won't recognize anything but WAV and MP3, and AAC and WMA if you're lucky. Most of 'em won't support OGG, either...

And please don't get me started on Audacity - it's great for quick editing, but the interfaces are probably 5 years behind pro software. I truly wish it was better - I'd love to not have to support Windows audio production machines, but until we have a piece of pro-quality OSS audio editing software that beats at least entry-level proprietary Windows stuff, we're stuck paying hundreds of dollars per seat for the basic stuff. For mastering live CDs and doing 5.1 mixdowns, software can easily run into the thousands of dollars.

To sum it up, I'd love to have lossless audio be better supported - we've got a several thousand disk collection that I'd rather have sitting on a fileserver for easy access, and be able to download a song and play it on the air without someone's shit encoder make the song go futzy, but it'll take a hell of a fight to get FLAC supported on players. OTOH, with the impressive size increases in flash memory these days, maybe it's time to start looking at it...

Re:FFS shut up already

[denoir]

Audiophiles have consistently been failing double blind tests when it comes to lossy vs lossless audio compression.

Now, if you wish to sell stuff to audiophiles, then players supporting lossless compression are excellent - they will buy it (along with anything you claim, on whatever grounds, will improve the playback quality).

If you however want to bring better music quality to the general population - make them get better headphones.

Re:FFS shut up already

[dragon8x4x]

I've tried it, altough only with the higher (128+) bitrate samples.
What I found is that it all depends on the system your playing it through.

On my computer speakers it all sopunded the same after about 128, on headphone it was more nociteable (around 198). But if hooked it up to my home stereo I could easily tell the difference even at 256 to 320.

So it all dipends on your equipment (and your listening environment of course).

Needless to say the CD's played on my home stereo also sounded better than CD's played on my computer.

This is a fairly ridiculous argument

[DbZeroOne]

Working in the consumer electronics industry, I've met a few audiophiles over the years. The ones that are truly anal about sound quality can all be collected together in a single hotel. In fact, they are! Go to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January and hop on over to the Venetian hotel where the high end audio guys congregate. They get their own special show where they can show off their $200,000 pairs of speakers. (To be fair, I did see those speakers for $185,000 as a show special). You'll know you're in the right place because it'll be crowded with grey beards and tweed jackets. MP3 audio is NOT FOR these guys. Who cares if they refuse to buy it?! Download lossless audio, like WAV files, for a "few cents more"? Ya right! Those files are something like 20x the size! Just like Audio Note has no plans to make an $80,000 tube amp with iPod interface for a teenagers bedroom, Apple, emusic and whomever else need not make any plans to satisfy the 100 or so people in the world who are REALLY into hi fidelity.

Re:We need a new Hi-Def Audio format

[gEvil (beta)]

Something else to keep in mind about lossiness and source files: If a recording is made and mastered in the studio at 96kHz/24-bit, the step to your 44.1kHz/16-bit CD is considered "lossy" since information is being discarded along the way. However, again, this is taken into account when mastering for the CD format. The DVD-A/SACD masters will be done differently. So in a sense, many CDs that people consider to be "perfect" source files have already been through a round or two of degradation. Is it something that they'll ever notice? Not likely, especially if they aren't aware of it.

Re:FFS shut up already

[markov_chain]

I'm with you on this one. Even CDs are inferior to studio tape when I listen to them on my magnetically levitated speakers hooked up to the stereo with gold-plated cables. The tape heads are gold-plated too. The whole setup sits atop a few tons of sand bags and is located in an underground chamber enclosed in a steel Faraday cage.

Re:FFS shut up already

[dizzoug]

There was a time when I couldn't hear a bit difference between a redbook CD track and the same song ripped as an MP3 at 192k. Then I went to school to get my BS in audio production. It is amazing how much more detail you can hear in music when you are trained to do so for four years. I would have never believed for a second that my advisor could hear things in music that I couldn't, until two years later when I 'saw the light'. Over time I began to pick out subtleties in music, even if I was hearing the piece for the first time. All of the high end audio products generally have no benifit for the average consumer, but in a studio setting, when trained ears are listening, that expensive gear tends to be more valued. There is an inherent problem with this situation, though. Is it reason enough to justify buying equipment that is significantly more expensive because my collegues and I find it more pleasing to listen to, while the average consumer of the product can tell no difference? I don't have an answer to this, but I know that there is actually a growing market for DVD audio (with 5.1 mixes as well). On a DVD disk we can store music at such high qualities that it rivals the best master analog tape s out there. The bottome line is that your ears are trainable. Listening to music is a learned process, much like wine tasting. At first pass, you may think is all tastes like sour grapes, but over time, with effort, you will discover flavors you never knew existed. For the record, I have been a part of quite a few 'blind' tests juxtaposing certain audio formats, and I can certainly tell the difference between an mp3 at 192/16 and a redbook track. Step than mp3 up to super high quality vbr, and I have some difficulties, unless the music is of the classical genre. Doug

Re:FFS shut up already[FORMATTED]

[dizzoug]

Sorry, I didn't format my previous reply:

There was a time when I couldn't hear a bit difference between a redbook CD track and the same song ripped as an MP3 at 192k. Then I went to school to get my BS in audio production. It is amazing how much more detail you can hear in music when you are trained to do so for four years. I would have never believed for a second that my advisor could hear things in music that I couldn't, until two years later when I 'saw the light'. Over time I began to pick out subtleties in music, even if I was hearing the piece for the first time.

All of the high end audio products generally have no benifit for the average consumer, but in a studio setting, when trained ears are listening, that expensive gear tends to be more valued. There is an inherent problem with this situation, though. Is it reason enough to justify buying equipment that is significantly more expensive because my collegues and I find it more pleasing to listen to, while the average consumer of the product can tell no difference? I don't have an answer to this, but I know that there is actually a growing market for DVD audio (with 5.1 mixes as well). On a DVD disk we can store music at such high qualities that it rivals the best master analog tape s out there.

The bottome line is that your ears are trainable. Listening to music is a learned process, much like wine tasting. At first pass, you may think is all tastes like sour grapes, but over time, with effort, you will discover flavors you never knew existed. For the record, I have been a part of quite a few 'blind' tests juxtaposing certain audio formats, and I can certainly tell the difference between an mp3 at 192/16 and a redbook track. Step than mp3 up to super high quality vbr, and I have some difficulties, unless the music is of the classical genre.

Doug

Lossless vs. Good Lossy -- We've Tested It

[hedronist]

A while ago I ripped our entire CD collection (about 1200 discs) to FLAC, a lossless codec. Each minute of audio takes approximately 5.5MB, so it lives on a 750GB drive (x 2 because I mirrored that sucker -- don't want to have to go through *that* again). I then did a batch down-convert to OGG/Vorbis to go onto my iRiver player (no, not all of it). I ripped to FLAC so that if/when better lossy codecs come along, I can simply do batch down-convert without reripping. Note: you do *not* want to convert one lossy codec to another lossy codec; all you will get is the worst of both codecs in one file.

I became curious about just how the various compressions stacked up against each other. I knew Vorbis was better than "normal" MP3 by a long shot, but newer MP3 variations have definitely gotten better. Here are the formats tested: WAV (straight from the CD), FLAC, Vorbis, and about 15 different MP3 variations (VBR, CBR/ABR, 32k to 320K). I tried both down-convert from FLAC and ripped-direct-from-CD (there should be no difference, and I certainly couldn't hear any). This was done on a variety of material, choosing particularly demanding/revealing passages from acoustic guitar, cafe jazz trios, brass ensembles, Beethoven's 6th, piano (jazz and classical), rock and vocalists (Streisand, Baez, Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody).

I did a few tests and verified that I could not distinguish between WAV and FLAC -- no surprise there -- so for convenience the other formats were compared to FLAC as the baseline.

I did extensive A-B, B-C, A-C, etc., etc. comparisons using my main system (Marantz A/V amp with Magneplanar MG-IIIa speakers) and also with Sennheiser HD595 headphones. Below 128k, MP3 is complete crap. Starting at 128-CBR, it got more difficult to hear the difference. At CBR/192 or VBR/medium, I could rarely distinguish MP3 from FLAC, although sometimes the high-hat cymbals sounded like they lost a little bit of brilliance.

Although I'm a fairly discerning listener, I do have high-frequency hearing damage in my right ear. So I brought in a friend who is a serious audiophile. We did a lot of listening and comparing (many hours over several days because your ears get "tired"), both on my system and back at his house.

The Verdict: Vorbis is good, really good. But MP3's produced by Lame at VBR/Medium to VBR/High are also really, really good, maybe even better. MP3/VBR/Medium is approximately the same size as Vorbis/Normal (-q 4.99) at about 1MB/minute -- 1/5 the size of the FLAC files. Although there are players out there that can handle Vorbis, there are many more that don't.

Ps. We're not going to throw out the FLACs, because something better *will* come along. By that I mean 'smaller than' MP3/VBR/HIGH.

Does Portable Music Have to be Compressed?

[yoprst]

Does Portable Music Have to be Compressed?
Yes

Main problem with lossless is battery life.

[DdJ]

I put lossless content on my iPod sometimes. The main problem is battery life.

Yeah, lossless content can be compressed, but it's not compressed as well as it would be with lossy compression. So, on my iPod, the hard drive spends a lot more time working when I listen to lossless content. The result is a significantly lowered battery life. Go ahead and test this yourself if you have an iPod, or other drive-based MP3 player.

It's not as bad as it is with completely uncompressed content, but it's a good deal worse than it is with AAC and MP3 content.

IMO, lossless is the right choice for media centers and other applications that are able to draw power externally, and lossy is the right choice for battery-powered playback.

Re:FFS shut up already

[hankwang]

Yes, there will be a quality diff between #4 and #1, but it'll be the same miniscule PSNR loss as from #1 to #2. So unless you transcode a dozen times or something it won't really hurt you.

Every encoder will generate ringing and other artifacts. Every good encoder tries to put those artifacts just a bit below the hearing threshold according to an algorithm that has been tested extensively with normal music. However, encoders are generally not fine-tuned to deal with the unnatural type of noise that results from another encoding process, resulting in the noise ending up above the hearing threshold after the second time.

You might wish to check some double-blind test results on HydrogenAudio. Short version: reencoding 256 kbps MP3 to 128 kbps MP3 sounds horrible compared to 128 kbps MP3 straight from the lossless source.

Re:FFS shut up already

[Superfarstucker]

I have to disagree. Anyone who really cares to know the truth can see the difference for themselves. Foobar2k is packaged with a plugin called ABX Comparator. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test You don't need special equipment. Anyone can do it if they actually own a cd.

Re:FFS shut up already

[maxume]

"elitism"..."The shows I watch don't have a laugh track."...???

Speaking without detail is useless.

[Inoshiro]

Since it seems you fooled your mods with handwaving, I'm going to explain what you mean and why you're wrong.

Taking an analog signal and representing it digitally is an application of Nyquist-Shannon sampling. The important bit to understand (for those of you who've never heard of it), is that the Nyquist rate is twice that of the sampling rate you want to record.

A 44.1Khz sampling rate perfectly records a 22.05Khz signal, 48 Khz does 24Khz, etc. Human hearing peaks out at 20Khz for most people, and many people spend a good chunk of their life destroying their upper hearing range with various tools (rock concerts, overly loud headphones, etc) anyway. 48Khz is marginally better, but 44Khz is more than enough to sample anything most people can hear perfectly.

"Let's not perpetrate the myth that music can be recorded losslessly in the first place. All sampling is lossy." -- so, since we're directly sampling (sector-by-sector) the raw bit values, or sampling a perfect reconstruction of a 22Khz signal, there is no loss either way (although the 2nd one has to deal with cables and other noise in the electrical system, since you pass through DAC -- analog -- ADC). At least, not loss humans can hear.

Re:Speaking without detail is useless.

[Bluesman]

You're right, but again we have to consider what people are able to hear. The number of quantization levels that are used insures that the human ear can't tell the difference between two intermediate levels.

It's funny, I have an audiophile acquaintance who swears that records are superior in every way to "digital," and for the same reasons described above. The funny thing is, because of the large number of quantization levels used in a CD, the CD's dynamic range far surpasses that of any record player. More info here

Theoretically, yes, analog would always be superior. But in reality, physical limitations of the stylus on a record player limit that medium far more than quantization limits the CD. Those same physical limits exist in the human ear, too.

So, while digital might not be "perfect" theoretically, it's "perfect enough" allowing for the limitations of the human ear.

Re:Speaking without detail is useless.

[gwait]

And what's more - almost all records were mastered (two generations!) from analog tape, where the magnetic particles and the tape speed physics interact to give you quantized audio with random thermal noise inserted - in short - a fairly lumpy recording environment that in many cases can not reproduce frequencies anywhere near as well as a redbook audio CD, yet the fanatics seem to assume that the resulting vinyl record has infinite bandwidth. Only the direct recording to record disk avoids tape, (but the direct to disk crowd already knew that).

Having said that - it was fun to dig out some old records and play some of the less scratched ones for my teenagers last year - they were very surprised at how good they sound (and I have a cheap consumer grade turnable). They totally expected records to completely suck! :)

One of the main problems with the "how many bits and what sampling frequency is good enough" debate is that so many people do not understand the point of a Double Blind AB test,
so they blow $800 on new speaker cables with ceramic floor stands and they are very emotionally motivated to prove that they haven't been suckered. The mind is a very poor scientific instrument.

All of this is slightly off topic - the point is the online market (itunes etc) only sells you lossy compressed audio, converted from redbook CD's, so it's of no interest to someone who prefers the best quality source they can get, be it a plain CD audio, or the newer DVD-Audio and SACD formats.

Storage is no longer an issue, but download bandwidth is the problem.

Re:Speaking without detail is useless.

[jrockway]

> since almost anyone can hear the differences between different digital formats

He's not talking about formats, he's talking about the way samples are recorded. Each sample is a number from 0 to 2^16-1. He's saying that human ears can't hear the difference between 2^16-1 and 2^16-2 (and so on, down to 0). This means that there's no point in adding more bits to each sample, since you can't hear the difference anyway. (The only reason to add more bits is if you have a really small signal and you're going to amplify it. Try listening to music through an amp fed by a digital amp, but with your music player digitally reducing the volume. Sounds really weird, because you're reducing the number of bits.)

> Red Book audio, the standard for CDs, is not the highest quality humans can hear

Any proof here? I don't have anything to test with personally, but considering that CDDA can sample any sound that your ears can, and that each level is represents is indistinguishable from other levels by your ears, it's probably pretty close to perfect. The output of a CD and a live performance will look different on an oscilloscope, but they'll probably sound the same through your ears.

Re:Speaking without detail is useless.

[tepples]

I am very interested in the theoretical basis of your assertion that the quantisation errors in a CD are small enough to be unnoticable by the human ear

One step of CD mastering involves quantizing a signal to linear PCM at 16-bit. This process introduces quantization error, which shows up in the reconstructed signal as a noise floor at roughly 93 decibels below full scale (-93 dBFS). This means if a recording is played with volume set such that full scale = 100 decibels sound pressure (100 dB SPL), quantization noise will be about 7 dB SPL. The human ear cannot hear sounds below the absolute threshold of hearing, and this threshold is much higher above 8000 Hz than it is in the region of peak sensitivity (1000 to 6000 Hz). Noise shaping algorithms have been developed that move most of the quantization noise above 10000 Hz. Therefore, at comfortable listening levels, a properly mastered CD moves all quantization noise out of range of the human auditory system.

Re:Speaking without detail is useless.

[PyrotekNX]

Even though a CD has a large dynamic range window, most new CDs are mastered too hot and there is significant loss due to over normalization and clipping. Older CDs were mastered for Hi-Fi systems and have a great deal of dynamic range. Newer CDs are mastered to be heard on the radio or a portable CD player. Records on the other hand are still mastered to have more dynamic range and therefore are superior recordings.

Analog recordings have a soft window so there isn't hard clipping like there is in the hard window of digtial.

Re:FFS shut up already

[hankwang]

It does mask (cut off) but it's based on the psychoacoustic modelling

Yes, they are based on psychoacoustic modelling. But I believe that it is mostly a few curves that define the hearing threshold for certain frequencies in the presence of a loud masking tone. The rest is trial and error, with lots of fine-tuning of a zillion parameters in the algorithm while listening to compressed music and asking the golden ears at hydrogenaudio to compare different versions of a codec (at least for the OSS ones). There is no algorithm that will give you the degree of transparency of an encoding as a number that realiably matches the results of double-blind trials.

Regarding generative losses of enoding: masking can for example be done by using the fact that a listener doesn't hear pre-echoes before sharp attacks as long as they don't come earlier than X milliseconds before. The encoder uses this fact to get the bitrate of sharp attacks down. But on the second encoding, the pre-echo might become 2X milliseconds rather than X milliseconds, and be audible.

I've seen reports on hydrogenaudio that codecs such as LAME that use complex psya modelling extensively do a worse job as a source for transcoding than fast high-bitrate codecs that have much simpler algorithms for throwing away information.

So it's entirely possible to make a lossy codec which loses NO information through further encodings (though what would be the purpose?).

I suppose you are talking about transcoding to the same bitrate MP3 with the same psychoacoustic model. That could be useful if you want to get rid of DRM by burning to CD and then re-ripping. But the question is whether transcoding to a lower bitrate or even different codec will give audibly different results from encoding directly from the source.

Observation on music quality

[spineboy]

I'm a musician in my spare time, and pretty much have noticed that other musicians really don't care much as to the Quality of the recording that they listen to. Recording songs in a studio is an exception, but what I've noticed is that many of my friends just listen to their music on crappy boom boxes, etc. Is it a function of being poor - nope haven't seen that. But what I have noticed is that a majority of "audiophiles" are not musicians. Yes, of course we'll see the few exceptions, to prove a point, but generally musicians are interested in the chord progression, melody, rhythm, instrumentation, etc. The recording quality is the last thing we care about when listening to a song.

Hmmm

[tkrotchko]

"Using up to date encoders, for the vast majority of people, for the vast majority of tracks, 128 kbps is indistinguishable from source."

Particularly when listening on cheap speakers that are connected to a PC.

I mean, I wish I could listen to 64kb/s encoded music and say "sounds just like source" because it would be cheaper all around and I would be happy.

A perfect example (to me) is Sirius satellite. I like their programming. But their bit rates are so low that it sounds like shortwave radio. I have their service in the car, and if not for the talk stations I'd drop them. You certainly can't listen to music that poorly rendered and enjoy it. On the other hand, I hear people telling me "it's CD quality", so I suspect there are some people who really can't hear the difference. God bless them, they're much happier overall than I am.

Re:FFS shut up already

[Blakey Rat]

I'm working on a product right now called a Sound Squid. Through years of intensive research (unsupported by double-blind tests of course! People who aren't audiophiles are human trash and shouldn't be allowed to touch my $5000 headphones!) I've discovered that the common squid, by using its various air pouches, tentacle positioning, and movements of its staring eye can enhance any listening experience.

Your Sound Squid kit comes with:
1 (One) 10 gallon aquarium
1 (One) squid, family Loliginidae
8 (Eight) water-proofed high quality tentacle clips
1 (One) computer-controlled Sound Squid->digital interface
1 (One) instruction manual in English, Japanese and French

All for the low, low price of only $7,500!

You may also be interested in the following accessories:
Gold-plated Monster brand tentacle clips ($1500)
1 week worth of squid food ($350)

Can you afford NOT to buy a Sound Squid?

Re:FFS shut up already[FORMATTED]

[Knuckles]

Finally someone who makes some sense in this discussion. I agree with most points you made (I will disagree with one a bit further down). "One cannot hear a difference" is one of the most annoying /. memes to me, regardless of whether it is applied to lossy codecs or good audio equipment in general.

About lossyness:
I agree with you that ears can be trained, and that you won't miss stuff if you don't know it should be there in the first place, or don't care whether it is. When I decided how I want to encode my music I did a quite extensive test and I found that to me even high-bitrate mp3 encodings made by lame can sound noticeably different from the CD. For example, I encoded the first track of Mike Watt's Contemplating the Engine Room CD. It starts with an e-bass solo, and using reasonable lame presets there were no artifacts and I certainly could hear the notes played. Somebody expecting nothing more will probably be happy with the compressed sound. However when you know how a bass can sound and listen to the CD, you realize that there is so much more in Watt's bass sound: it is full of harmonics that make the bass come alive and turn it into the recognizable Watt bass in the first place. And these harmonics are gone even in the highest lame preset. (And oggenc adds a nasty hiss which makes the song completely unlistenable.)

About equipment:
You said "All of the high end audio products generally have no benifit for the average consumer, but in a studio setting, when trained ears are listening, that expensive gear tends to be more valued", and that's where I disagree a bit because you make it sound as if only a professional sound person could appreciate good gear. I's agree that someone who is not particularly interested in music has no need for good gear. That's pretty obvious. If you're going to listen to music only as background noise while cooking, go with the cheap stuff by all means.
However I would argue that everyone who likes music and spends time actually listening to it will profit from good gear. To everyone who doubts that I can just recommend to grab a few favorite CDs and make an appointment at a good hifi shop for a listening session. "Good" means "a shop that has solid equipment from the lower to very high price ranges, but that will not rip you off by trying to sell you air conditioners."

Not directed at you, but I need to say this once on /. because it has been bugging me a long time:
To those discussion contributors who lose all ability to differentiate when they hear the word "audiophile": one cannot deny that wackos exist in this field. On the other hand, since when is being an analog geek not allowed on /. anymore? Sound recording and reproduction (that is, turning a complex air vibration into an electric current, storing it in some form, and later turning it back into an air vibration again that sounds as close to the original as possible despite this happening in a completely different room situation) is an extremely complex topic. And, like it or not, there is still a significant analogue part to this, and will be for the foreseeable future. This means that you have to live with the difficulty of interacting with the real world in a less deterministic way. Only recently has it become possible to simulate microphones, amps, and speakers digitally, and sound reproduction has benefited tremendously, especially by making good gear much cheaper. But until then the only way to become better was to design analogue gear and try it out, relying on basic measuring equipment and your ears to assess the sound quality. This IMHO is hardcore geekdom worthy of honorable mention on /. and not ridicule. There were and are serious practitioners out there like Nelson Pass or the naim guys who have dedicated d

common Nyquist fallacy

[baffled]

The Nyquist rate, or twice the highest frequency, is adequate for a signal that doesn't change. However, audio consists of a set of frequencies that are constantly changing, and this reduces the highest frequency that is accurately represented at a given sampling rate.

While I don't have any reference to give you, I find it a matter of common sense. If you sample a 1hz signal @ 2hz, you'll see consistent peaks & valleys, and the signal can be assumed almost immediately, after 3 samples (ignoring issues of quantized amplitude sensitivity over time). If you sample a 0.9hz signal @ 2hz, you'll see peaks & valleys alternating as before, but their amplitudes are both approaching zero, then cross zero, approach peak, and repeat. After analyzing this signal for a duration, you could assume it was a 0.9hz signal because of the relationship between the rate of amplitude change and the rate at which those amplitudes cross zero.. although this also assumes that you'd never see a 1hz signal simply increasing and decreasing amplitude at that same rate - considering this condition places stipulations on both frequency AND amplitude over time, whereas a 0.9hz signal only stipulates the frequency over time, we can only make a definitive assumption if we know the frequency doesn't change over time.

Hence, considering the frequencies are changing over time, we can't possibly accurately reconstruct an audio signal using a sample rate at twice the highest frequency, unless you get very lucky. As we consider a lower and lower highest frequency, our chosen sampling rate becomes more and more accurate, though I don't believe you ever reach perfect 100% reconstruction because of the irrational nature of true time-varying frequencies. One could, theoretically, calculate the accuracy of a given sampling rate for a given maximum frequency - I'm sure someone has at some point.

In fact you could analyze the typical audio signals that are digitized today, and develop some rough statistical analysis of how often a given frequency changes at a rate that could be interpreted as another frequency. This would likely vary depending on the individual frequency, the relative location within a song, and the musical genre. You could use these numbers to select an appropriate sampling rate to achieve N% accuracy of frequencies up to a X-hz maximum.

Re:common Nyquist fallacy

[spindizzy]

Though they cannot hear them they can sense their lack. The US army did testing in the late 1980s and 90s that determined that the range of harmonic overtones up to 90+kHz can be sensed though not directly heard by people. A lack of these can lead to sounds 'feeling' artificial. This is one of the reasons why there was a push to 96kHz (40+ kHz effective playback top frequency) when the DVD-A standard was being devised.
Personally even nearing 40 I can still hear frequencies in the 20kHz+ range and also at the low end of the range as well with a great degree of sensitivity.

Do we have to have this discussion *again*?!?

[sootman]

A typical MP3 is better than the next most common format--FM radio--but I don't remember hearing people bitching about FM radio for the last few decades.

A better question: are audiophiles *ever* happy? I think the answer is "no." Gamers are never happy with how fast their rigs are, hot rodders want better cars, horny teens want more sex, hippies want more wood chips in their granola, etc etc etc. Basically, most people are never happy with what's most important to them.

And this particular question is as dumb as they come. A 6-GB MP3 player held a certain number of 128k MP3s. A 60 GB player today holds the same number of WAVs or AIFFs. So the answer, OBVIOUSLY, is "Yes, you can carry around perfect CD-quality songs." The only question is how many. Not enough? Wait a couple years.

Next?

Re:Intervieww is an ***HAT? (-1 Pedantic)

[evilviper]

AAC is not "Apple's".

No it isn't, but perhaps he is SPECIFICALLY talking about Apple's implimentation.

WMA is a container, not a compression codec.

Completely wrong. ASF is the container used by WMA and WMV files.

WMA is indeed the name of the audio codec, and WMV is a video codec.

AVI is a container and not a compression codec.

He didn't say these were codecs. Included in your own quotation, he said: "audio file formats."

Wav is not a lossless format. It is limited by in it's dynamic range (bits per sample) and sample rate. Compared to analog or a raw sound source, raw wav/pcm data loses a lot of the sound.

Yes it is. You'll get exactly the bits out that you put in. Your complaints are about DIGITAL SAMPLING OF ANALOG AUDIO AND HAVE NO SPECIFIC RELEVANCE TO WAV.

FLAC and other lossless codecs produce identical byte-to-byte output when compared to wav/pcm.

FLAC is not a lossless format. It is limited by in it's dynamic range (bits per sample) and sample rate. Compared to analog or a raw sound source, FLAC loses a lot of the sound.

A paean to lossy compression

[DrHyde]

Being a classical musician doesn't mean anything. I'm a classical musician, as well as being an ex-sound recordist, and I can assure you that I compress all my music using lossy algorithms. I need to do that so that I can conveniently play music back on my iPod.

Yes, I know there are other players available, and I know that the iPod supports lossless AIFF and with third-party hacks it can even be made to support stuff like FLAC, but that's a pain in the arse, which is the whole point. Firmware hacks and other players are inconvenient, and MP3 files are conveniently small so I can carry my entire library on the device. I normally compress music to 160kbps, as that's a good trade-off between quality and size. I certainly can't tell the difference between that and uncompressed music when I'm using earphones on the bus.

If I ever want them in a lossless format, I can easily re-rip the files from the original CDs.