How would you fare on a WAV to MP3 blindfold test?

[Scott Dolan]

BTW, if I didn't make it clear before, here is the theoretical order of "worst to best":

MP3

AAC

ALAC/WAV/AIFF

[Jim Alfredson]

As I said, I'll buy that people can hear it when they present proof.

Either way, if you have to listen that hard to hear it, what's the point? Sounds more like straining than it does listening, IMO.

Not at all. It's akin to learning about color theory in painting. If you don't know theory then you really don't know what you're looking at. Notice this has nothing to do with appreciation of the artwork in question, but rather understanding the analytical side of it. Likewise, there are cues to listen for in lossy compression formats; it's not about straining but about knowing where to 'look'. For example, lossless 16bit and 24bit sound remarkably similar but for some reason 16bit digital tends to solidify the bass in a certain way. But you don't really notice it unless you compare the two side by side. For lossy compression, it's really about the high-end. There's an 'air' and shimmer in the high end that is often times lost during conversion. But it depends on the quality of the algorithm. That said, for all intents and purposes 320kbps is very very good and damn near indistinguishable from 16bit wav.

Check this plug-in out: http://www.sonnoxplugins.com/pub/plugins/products/codec/codectoolbox.html

It allows the mix engineer to audition different codecs in real-time and then make mix decisions based on the results. It's a very handy tool that theoretically can be used to optimize the audio for the intended format.

[Scott Dolan]

I suppose, but as I've stated many times before, 256 is my threshold. I can hear differences below that, but hear no difference between that/320/lossless/whatever.

Perhaps you could "teach" me what to listen for, but why would I want to, you know?

[Hardbopjazz]

The review of the Pono Player.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html

[mjzee]

Interesting article in the Journal that may serve to "square the circle" on some of these audio arguments we've been having. Includes a conversation with Don Was about Blue Note.

Hi-Res Audio Hijinx: Why Only Some Albums Truly Rock - WSJ

[GA Russell]

Twenty years ago I visited a shop that sold Linn equipment. At one point the Linn rep who was in town gave me an A-B comparison.

I could hear a difference, but I wasn't sure which of the two I preferred.

[Scott Dolan]

Interesting article in the Journal that may serve to "square the circle" on some of these audio arguments we've been having. Includes a conversation with Don Was about Blue Note.

Hi-Res Audio Hijinx: Why Only Some Albums Truly Rock - WSJ

This may help even more.

http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

[bogdan101]

People like to throw around terms like "lossless" and "lossy", which are meaningless in a discussion about audio quality. If you're not "there" as it happens, it's all "lossy".

[Scott Dolan]

Existential nihilism at its best, bogdan.

[CJ Shearn]

The majority of my collection which I've uploaded to my laptop, everything is ripped as a WAV file. There are a few instances where I ripped MP3's all at 320 but the difference (especially in Audio Technica ATHM 40 FS headphones) is hard to hear, there is not a waviness to the high end annd cymbals. Now, all the Steve Coleman albums he offers for free at the M-Base website are all encoded at 128. Some of the albums like "The Tao of Mad Phat" sounds great, while others there's a bit of the high end thing going on but it's so slight. The wash of the cymbals sound ok and decays normally.

[Scott Dolan]

Yeah, I think many of the opinions concerning the supposedly bad sound from digital files is still based on what folks heard from old, crappy codecs from a decade ago or longer.

Not to mention we're now 36 posts into this thread and have yet to see a single Foobar2000 ABX result posted.

[CJ Shearn]

Scott I agree with you I read through the comments in that article, all of them, and the discussion was hardly constructive, just people stating their preferences as fact and really immature "my system is better than yours" type stuff. No real unity amongst people who appreciate good sound but a lot of disagreements. That's why I only lurk at the Steve Hoffman forums and never post there, no interest.

I think someone here who has an amazing system like Lon, I would have no doubt that there would be marked improvements in different sources, but I think, between a well mastered CD and a well mastered high res file is pretty small. in my experience. For example, before I bought the high res download of Kenny Garrett's "Pushing the World Away", I had heard the album several times on Rhapsody. Since the album is mastered better than Garrett's past several records, the difference is extremely minimal. The other HDtracks downloads I have, of a few Herbie Columbia's "Sunlight", "VSOP: The Quintet", "Mr Hands" and "An Evening with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea in Concert", they sound great but it isn't jaw droppingly like "wow!". A recording like "VSOP: The Quintet" quality wise isn't that great to begin with, but it definitely sounds better than the old 80's original Columbia CD release. I suspect with recordings like "Headhunters" (never had an issue with the 1997 Legacy disc) and "Sextant" the results might be a little more drastic. I already know and love that music quite well so I'm not going to buy it again, I will use HDTracks to grab the rest of Wayne's Blue Notes I don't have on CD though, for example. Because my laptop has a 1TB harddrive it's allowed me to rip more than 800 CD's to it like I said in WAV and 320 MP3.

Edited March 26, 2015 by CJ Shearn

[Scott Dolan]

That's cool, CJ.

I won't pay the extra bucks for HDTracks because I hear no difference between them and the same tracks on iTunes. Even if the HDTracks have been remastered I'm just not interested in buying the same music over again, as you said.

[CJ Shearn]

I think HDTracks is cool for what they do, but I do think it is overpriced especially because the albums (those 4 I bought as I mentioned) do not come with liners, back cover art, etc....... Apparently some of the BN's do, from what the descriptions say, plus the bonus tracks and alternates from previous CD reissues are not included. I love that they have Tzadik releases, but they are no different than CD, Tzadik packaging is awesome anyway.

Edited March 26, 2015 by CJ Shearn

[Scott Dolan]

I figure now that iTunes is starting to offer digitized booklets with several releases, other digital vendors will have to eventually follow suit. Plus, as physical media continues down the road to virtual extinction, I think there will be more of a demand for it.

Maybe... Most folks don't seem ovely concerned with liner notes these days...

[CJ Shearn]

It's so important for jazz albums though because so many albums that come out now have so many different bands on one album.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I switched my mp3 rips to VBR Q1 and I really can't distinguish between the source CD and the resulting mp3 file. 256 CBR mp3 files, sure. Even some 320 CBR files have swooshy cymbals.

[Clunky]

I switched my mp3 rips to VBR Q1 and I really can't distinguish between the source CD and the resulting mp3 file. 256 CBR mp3 files, sure. Even some 320 CBR files have swooshy cymbals.

What is VBR Q1 ?

I'm not sure I have choices other than bit rate when ripping with iTunes. I have explore other ripping programs that verified rips but these too a very long time to do their thing.

[mjzee]

I switched my mp3 rips to VBR Q1 and I really can't distinguish between the source CD and the resulting mp3 file. 256 CBR mp3 files, sure. Even some 320 CBR files have swooshy cymbals.

What is VBR Q1 ?

I'm not sure I have choices other than bit rate when ripping with iTunes. I have explore other ripping programs that verified rips but these too a very long time to do their thing.

From the Amadeus manual:

Saving Mp3 files is achieved through the tool lame. (See

also Section 16 below.) It supports a variety of settings

(the meaning of the most important one, the bitrate, was

explained above). In order to achieve a given file size, it is

recommended to use the ABR (Average Bit Rate – simple

parts of the sound will be compressed more than complex

parts, achieving a better overall quality) setting, rather than

CBR (Constant Bit Rate – all parts of the sound have the

same compression rate) in order to achieve maximum qual-

ity, but note that some Mp3 players may not support ABR

files. The VBR (Variable Bit Rate) setting is more flexible

and allows you to specify a target quality rather than a tar-

get file size. This usually results in better sounding files, but

you have less control over the resulting file size (‘complex’

sounds will produce larger files than ‘simple’ sounds for a given quality). Note also that as with ABR files, not every Mp3 player supports VBR files. The screenshot next to this paragraph shows a popular setting that represents a good trade-off between file size and sound quality. Note that the use of id3v2.4 tags is discouraged since their support is broken in iTunes (this is true as of iTunes 7).

Note: the screenshot showed CBR, encoding quality 2. When I rip using Amadeus, I've been using VBR, encoding quality 2. But lately I've been ripping using Apple Lossless.

But as for iTunes, if you choose the following settings, I believe they're equal to VBR 2: When you click on Import CD, in the box Import Settings, click on Setting: Custom... In the MP3 Encoder box that follows, underneath Stereo Bit Rate, check the box Use Variable Bit Rate Encoding (VBR), and choose Quality: Highest.

[Scott Dolan]

Yeah, never use CBR. Might as well go ALAC/FLAC at that point.