Slashdot Mirror
Can We Really Tell Lossless From MP3?
EddieSpinola writes "Everyone knows that lossless codecs like FLAC produce better sounding music than lossy codecs like MP3. Well that's the theory anyway. The reality is that most of us can't tell the difference between MP3 and FLAC. In this quick and dirty test, a worrying preponderance of subjects rated the MP3 encodes higher than the FLAC files. Very interesting, if slightly disturbing reading!" Visiting with adblock and flashblock is highly recommended, lest you be blinded. The article is spread over 6 pages and there is no print version.
and certainly not in a typical house room, car, bus, or bike.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
128bps is certainly not enjoyable for certain classical pieces. By the time you've hit 192, it's fine. At 320kbps I can't tell the difference. If that means I have "tin ears" I'm thankful for them. They save me thousands of dollars in high end equipment and they save me using obscure poorly supported lossless formats and then having to convert to mp3 half the time anyway.
Apart from a new survey of an old topic is there anything new here?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Oh, absolutely. There is no doubt that the biggest problem, by far, is the upfront engineering, not the file format. I have plenty of DDD CDs and other items where the digitization of the data involves essentially no loss - but are still terrible recordings that are painful to listen to. Only when everything else it darn near ideal does the compression method/bit rate even become detectable. And the vast, vast majority of cases, and as far as I know never for any portable device, are the conditions ideal. A crappy 128K MP3 of a good performance with good engineering can be a joy.
The results are not at all surprising to me. And of course the "audiophile" community is "stuck on stupid" in some cases. ANYONE who thinks information recorded in tiny wiggles in groves and played through a bunch of springs (stylus, cartridge coils, tonearm, not to mention the non-trivial compliance of the record itself) and then amplified by two-three orders of magnitude is a more accurate representation than a full digital string (almost independent of bit rate) is deluding themselves.
Brett
Hey, I get that it's not the most visually appealing thing on the Internet :). I'm just really tired of the culture of bitching about ads wherein people honestly expect to get stuff completely free of charge or ads when producing said stuff costs money.
Operating a site with good content costs money. Most good sites are run for profit. If you visit a site and don't like the content, don't visit that site again.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
A good part of the reason that people use FLAC et al is NOT to listen to, but to avoid re-ripping CDs or transcoding when switching lossy formats.
The small size of lossy audio was an important factor when storage capacity was limited. This is no longer an issue, so there's not much reason to bother with lossy music when dealing with the storage capacity of current devices. 100GB of music would be an absolutely massive collection, yet that would only occupy less than 10% of a US$100 1TB drive. The 16GB common is portable devices is enough for more FLAC than you would listen to for even a fairly lengthy journey. It's certainly still of use in streaming media, but the bar for quality isn't usually set very high in that area. Full CD quality FLAC streams should be usable on home broadband within 5 years, I would hope...
The reasons to argue against FLAC just aren't that relevant anymore. Bits are cheap, who cares if you save a few?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Audiophiles have known for decades that most listeners cannot discern excellent from mediocre music. Most people think that if there is lots of bass and the music is loud without obvious distortion, their system is great.
Most people have known for decades that audiophiles are full of crap. Every single time I've seen a double-blind test to see if they can hear the difference on what they claim they can hear, turns out they can't. Hey, good for the people selling them $1,000 audio cables.
That said, there's a good reason to go with FLAC. Want to re-encode a lower quality version for your storage-space-limited device? You can do that without additional quality loss, just like re-ripping from the cd. Want to change your collection to ogg because it sounds better at lower bitrates? Again, go ahead.
Basically, it's nice having a hard drive copy that is lossless, because you can re-encode it into the lossless codec of your choice for whatever device you want without introducing further artifacts.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
This could also have something to do with the way a lot of albums are mixed these days. Unfortunately, it seems that many studios are compressing the hell out of the music; I guess it has more to do with music industry execs thinking that their acts need to be louder to keep from being drowned out on the radio by the competition (who are also compressing their music into oblivion). I'm no audiophile but I abhor the practice; it has the effect of making the music come out of the speakers like a 747 on full throttle.
The bandwidth "ceiling" also has the deplorable effect of not giving the tracks room to "breath"; certain otherwise audible higher frequencies can get "lost in the sauce" (listen to an older recording and you'll hear the difference). The result is often akin to the difference between quietly closing a door and slamming it.
This space for rent!
This sort of comment is a bit frustrating to me. Some can tell the difference between even the most minute differences in lossy vs lossless. They may be a dramatic minority, but all the same, they are entitled to spend 3 month salary on their equipment to enjoy music as they see fit. Similarly, I can't enjoy a $1000 bottle of wine any more than a $100 bottle; but that's no reason to say that a $100 bottle of wine is just as good as the $1000 wine because the vast majority can't tell the difference. I recognize the validity of you're point, in that most can't tell the difference, but would like to pretend they can.
You mean, digital will be able to introduce the flaws and errors that were part of the tape process?
Sometimes flaws improve art, like in the case of a film grain or desaturation can improving a particular photo. But you need to be sure that you're not just recreating a flaw because you're USED to it.
In the attached article, if people could distinguish between an MP3 and FLAC, it was because the MP3 was good enough no flaws could be detected. That's fine; people can't distinguish good compression from the real thing. However, if they COULD distinguish an MP3, but preferred to the flac, it was because they found the error pleasing... just like you and tapes.
I don't recall any hiss or static in mp3s. Maybe you're thinking of the hiss and static that is inherent in analog recordings?
Likewise there's no reason to say that a $100 bottle of wine isn't better than a $1000 bottle just because someone is willing to pay for it. Frankly anything over $30 is a waste of money. All your paying for is rarity, not quality.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Ah ah ah!!!
From the story:
The reality is that most of us can't tell the difference between MP3 and FLAC. In this quick and dirty test, a worrying preponderance of subjects rated the MP3 encodes higher than the FLAC files.
Rarely if ever you can find such a contradiction right in the summary. If most of us can't tell the difference, how come subjects rated the two encodes differently?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
A $70 pair of SHURE earbuds has made all the difference in how I listen to music
Sorry, but no earbuds are worth $70. They are simply evil and will destroy your hearing. Get yourself some proper earphones, something that cups the ear and ventilates.
Citation needed.
I haven't seen any convincing evidence that earbuds damage your ears any more or less than any other style headphones. It's all about how loud the music is and how long you listen to it. Maybe the trick is that the big headphones are too clunky to take with you everywhere so you don't use them as often.
My Shure buds came with a little guide for how loud you should let your volume get for different listening durations. Of course, it's hard to tell how many decibels are coming out of your headphones.
The present study suffers from that methodological malady known in scientific circles as being "fucked". Please bear with me as I explain this technical term.
The question posed in the text is 'can we tell the difference'. One assumes from this that the answer is yes or no. Testing this question would require playing two versions and asking whether they're the same (can't tell the difference) or different (can etc.).
But that's not what gets asked. The subjects get asked to tell which version sounds better. The question assumes they can tell the difference. Even if they can't tell the difference they are forced by the design to choose one over the other as if they can.
Since they are forced to say which sounds better even if they can't tell the difference (something impossible to determine from this design) then they are simply guessing or picking one arbitrarily, and there is no way to determine if or when this occurred. Thus, the results are not only unable to answer the original question, they are unable to answer anything because the data do not even necessarily represent answers.
The design is so fatally flawed that there is nothing that can be pulled out of it. It's complete garbage.
As an aside, I'm not familiar with the musical pieces used, but I'm betting they're fairly new. For years now recordings have been increasingly compressed by the engineers. Most popular works produced in this decade are already so compressed that you can't tell much difference between the original and a recording of it having been compressed yet again, no matter by what method.
To tell the difference between compressed versions one should start with an uncompressed source. And for a person to be able to hear a difference in two versions, they should already be familiar with the original in uncompressed form so they can try to say whether one sounds more like the original than the other (the alternative being both sound worse or both sound like it). If they have no clue what it's supposed to sound like, any attempt to say which sounds better is badly broken due to having no reference with which to compare them.
No attempt was made to determine whether the subjects even had normal hearing. And I don't mean just asked (though that should be done) but tested. People can have frequency drop outs that they're unaware of and that would affect the results.
There are so many problems with the study that it is completely useless. The problems were of the authors' making. Thus, they did not know what they were doing. This is what we mean by "fucked".
I want to know who determined that 'trusted' was a good name for the magazine/blog/honey wagon in which the article appears. I wouldn't trust them to test light bulbs to see if they're burnt out.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Sure. Anybody that pretends a '60s British roadster can hold a candle in maneuverability, acceleration, or top speed against a modern-day fuel injected Honda Accord (!) is deluding themselves.
No, seriously. Heck, if you really want to blow your mind, consider the fact that a Honda Odyssey - yes, a minivan! - handles objectively "sportier" (i.e. has more grip, more acceleration, more top speed, etc.) than roadsters from the era of vinyl. Of course, it's not as much "fun" to drive a dependable minivan as it is to drive a two-seater with tiny tires and an engine that overheats after ten minutes, but, then again, it's not as much "fun" to listen to digitally reproduced music compared to the nostalgic experience of picking up a piece of vinyl and gently placing it on a record player.
Does that help?