Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

For all you music lovers: an essential read.

http://stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/

 

Oh no, here we go.
Interesting to see actual spectrographs.

 

This discussion is entirely ancient. The facts in the article are also ancient and do not say anything about perceptual concepts in designing codecs. It rather shows some impressive looking graphs with some big numbers regardless of the fact that no human ear can resolute a loudness jump of more than 60dB at the same time. Many seriously conducted blind ABX tests have proven "full transparency" for MP3 bitrates above 192kBps. Thanks for the interesting link though.

 

Beat me to it. I'd have more respect for the author if he'd done a blind test.

 

I've done my own ABX test on my own PA and I can't hear a difference. And, to me, that's all that matters. For others, if they hear a difference on their system and it bothers them, it makes sense to go loseless.

Who's up for a Mac vs PC thread? Crunchy vs smooth peanut butter? Thong or G-string?

 

1+ g-string

 

Hee Guys, chill out.

Not trying to start any x vs y thread. Just thought it was an interesting article.

Personaly, I had the impression MP3 just made the waveform less smooth.
I had no idea it also decreases the dynamic range and has artifacts over the whole spectrum.

If you cant hear that on your system, great.
But, when playing on a big PA, this could make a big difference.

So, for all other people that did not realize, it might be an interesting read.

Do we really need to polarize upon every piece of information?

 

No, you're right. It's just been a polarizing subject in the past.
I have wanted to see objective stats to go with subjective information I've heard in the past.

 

Why is vinyl not in the article?

 

Thanks Marc , i read the article and i found it very interesting. I wasnt aware of all the things mentioned in the article so i learnt a little.

One thing i also learnt (indirectly) is that id rather spend my time picking my nose than giving a rats-ass about using MP3s.

My old 80gig iPod is full of 1000s of mp3s and my Macbook Pro sounded great when i played to 1600 people the other day so as for these 'Stereophiles' i think they just pull their fingers out of their asses and enjoy the music.

The human ear is far less sophisticated at reproducing sound than the stoopid expensive stereos these people have.

Who cares.

oh btw - Mac , Smooth (Skippy) , Thong.

 

Propably because vinyl is not natively a digital media and any comparison would actually be mostly a comparison of the quality of the used soundcard.

 

First I'm a 100% scientific person so a AxB test is a standard for me.

I think mp3 sound ok and most of the time you wouldn't hear a difference. I was never satisfied with the answer mp3 vs wav, so I did my own hearing tests (320 mp3 vs wav).

One problem with this hearing test is that you could hear certain things only at really loud volume - because otherwise they are under the hearing threshold.
So I did my test on really loud volume with my (quality AKG) headphones. Equal RMS level is also important, otherwise louder is better in 99% cases.


- It wasn't possible for me to hear a difference everytime, but it was not uncommon that I could hear a difference in a blind test at loud volume. At normal or low volume I couldn't hear a difference most of the time.

- It was impossible for me to hear if it's a mp3 or not if I don't had a reference file.

- But especially if you know the week points (transient smearing ringing etc.) form the mp3 codec (or compressed audio in general) I often could hear a difference (a friend switched the sources noiseless)

One example:
A full spectrum kick with a sharp attack. The mp3 smears the transient, it sounds a bit like time stretching. The wav has a sharper "click". Again, I only notice this at really loud volume.

I guess most PAs don't have the quality (they distort too much, bad room, etc.) to hear this, but I really don't like to buy mp3s anymore with this knowledge.

And there is NO reason to buy mp3 (disc space isn't a problem), besides that these online stores want an absurd extra charge for a wav (1 €... space and traffic aren't so costly)

I really don't get it why music lovers (and I guess most only stores for club music are hosted by such a person) don't care about that. Just sell flac instead of 320 mp3 and the world would be much better.

 

I can only tell the difference between a song from cd and the same song on mp3 if I a/b them and compare.

If you listen carefully for parts of the song that has reverb you'll notice the difference by comparing how long and how clear the tail end of the reverb is.

I also noticed the difference in the bass also. The mp3 sounds and feels less clear.

But at the end it's all relative because they sound really close.