Most people can’t tell the difference between a 320kbps mp3 and lossless, but hey if folks really want to waste their money on snake oil like gold-plated cables then I say let ‘em.
At that quality of MP3 you’d really need either a track that specifically pushes the limits of the codec on technicalities, or a one in a million hearing + high precision monitors.
Albeit FLAC is generally a better option still because it compresses things losslessly, reducing raw file size 50-70% (comparable to MP3 at 128kbps bitrate) and is a royalty-free, meaning it can be freely implemented as a hardware codec.
For example, a bunch of microcontrollers in the ESP32 family have built in FLAC codecs that outperform their MP3 counterparts, meaning a FLAC library can be directly streamed to them, and with the right DAC combo, one can build inexpensive, low power adapters to hook their existing AV systems up to Sonos-style streaming. And with many AV systems supporting bidirectional RS232 (or other serial) communications for controlling the system and querying it’s state, you can literally smartify them completely AND provide high quality audio streams to them.
128kbps files are roughly 90% compression from raw, so not comparable. I’ll admit that I haven’t bothered with FLAC much, but in my limited experience it generally is pretty rare to see much above 50-55% compression from raw.
Anything that requires remuxing multiple times pretty much requires lossless compression. Else it’d become like screenshots of memes because the compression adds up.
That being said, last time I was working with professional audio people, they still preferred WAW as their intermediary format.
Most people can’t tell the difference between a 320kbps mp3 and lossless
I’d be surprised if anyone could.
However, 128kbps vs. 192kpbs+ is like night and day, and it’s especially obvious with better equipment.
People who say 128kbps mp3 is fine, are full of shit. I’ve been to weddings where it’s been so obvious that whoever’s in charge of the music is just blasting 128kpbs mp3s and it’s brutal.
I did a blind test, and found it depends on the genre.
Slow, chill music is completely transparent when compressed, no matter how hard I “audio peep.” It’s not even a question.
But something “dense” like System of a Down has audible distortion. It loosely (not always) coincided with the bitrate of the flac files, which kind of makes sense, though even the extreme end is hard to notice unless you know the particular song very well.
Also… a lot of recordings kind of suck. It’s crazy to worry about tiny bits of distortion when a bit perfect master is already noisy and distorted.
Audio codecs like MP3 usually do a Fourier transform to move the sound into the frequency domain, discard any frequencies that you’re unlikely to notice, and encode ‘rate of change’ for the remaining ones. So the encoding problem is usually sound with fast changes in intensity or frequency, which is basically what percussion is.
System is quite percussion heavy, so will sound bad.
Recently moved from Spotify to Qobuz, because fuck Dan Ek, and the fact that they’ve got better bitrates across the board really makes the difference for jazz and jazzy stuff. Neglected, sounds crap on Spotify. Sounds great on Qobuz. But that’s the change from ‘bad’ to ‘quite good’ bitrates; additional bits are very much a case of diminishing returns.
Heh. Spotify used to stream 384K Vorbis, which should be sufficient. But now the web app is apparently AAC. And the app-apps are conspicuously listed with “equivalent to” bitrates, whatever that means:
Heavy classic music is a beast too, vivaldis energetic parts in the 4 seasons for example. Or Rimski Korsakoffs the flight of the bumble bee I’d wager.
Or painkiller/turbo lover/… by judas priest 😁
Depends on the song really, if it’s just a standard pop song it’s mixing will usually come through just fine on a shitty MP3. The more layers a song may have the muddier it gets at lower bit rates. Like I’ve found the noisier spectrum of punk always benefits from higher bit rates.
Most people don’t have proper home stereo setups any more either, and they prefer shitty overcompressed music through earbuds. They don’t know any better, sadly.
And Ive probably spent less than 400 dollars on my home setup. But it blows away anyone who hears it. Just takes some smarts in setting stuff up and getting good used equipment.
Just another part of the cheapening of everything in society , and why music isn’t appreciated as much anymore. No wonder everyone has depression.
Reminds me of the lengths people go with their peripheral purchases to save 1-2ms of input latency for playing games with like a 20 TPS tick rate on a wifi connection
I noticed something similar with video. Like, if I am paying attention, the difference between the highest quality encoding and the next level is usually visible.
However, I have a harder time telling the difference if I don’t do a side by side comparison.
And even when I can easily tell the difference, once I’m watching the thing, I get into the story and I don’t care anyways.
Obviously a slightly different criteria compared to music, but people do make a big deal out of stuff that even they don’t actually care about.
Most people can’t tell the difference between a 320kbps mp3 and lossless, but hey if folks really want to waste their money on snake oil like gold-plated cables then I say let ‘em.
At that quality of MP3 you’d really need either a track that specifically pushes the limits of the codec on technicalities, or a one in a million hearing + high precision monitors.
Albeit FLAC is generally a better option still because it compresses things losslessly, reducing raw file size 50-70% (comparable to MP3 at 128kbps bitrate) and is a royalty-free, meaning it can be freely implemented as a hardware codec.
For example, a bunch of microcontrollers in the ESP32 family have built in FLAC codecs that outperform their MP3 counterparts, meaning a FLAC library can be directly streamed to them, and with the right DAC combo, one can build inexpensive, low power adapters to hook their existing AV systems up to Sonos-style streaming. And with many AV systems supporting bidirectional RS232 (or other serial) communications for controlling the system and querying it’s state, you can literally smartify them completely AND provide high quality audio streams to them.
128kbps files are roughly 90% compression from raw, so not comparable. I’ll admit that I haven’t bothered with FLAC much, but in my limited experience it generally is pretty rare to see much above 50-55% compression from raw.
Thing is, storage isn’t at a premium anymore, so there’s no reason not to use lossless even if you can’t hear the difference.
Anything that requires remuxing multiple times pretty much requires lossless compression. Else it’d become like screenshots of memes because the compression adds up.
That being said, last time I was working with professional audio people, they still preferred WAW as their intermediary format.
I’d be surprised if anyone could.
However, 128kbps vs. 192kpbs+ is like night and day, and it’s especially obvious with better equipment.
People who say 128kbps mp3 is fine, are full of shit. I’ve been to weddings where it’s been so obvious that whoever’s in charge of the music is just blasting 128kpbs mp3s and it’s brutal.
I did a blind test, and found it depends on the genre.
Slow, chill music is completely transparent when compressed, no matter how hard I “audio peep.” It’s not even a question.
But something “dense” like System of a Down has audible distortion. It loosely (not always) coincided with the bitrate of the flac files, which kind of makes sense, though even the extreme end is hard to notice unless you know the particular song very well.
Also… a lot of recordings kind of suck. It’s crazy to worry about tiny bits of distortion when a bit perfect master is already noisy and distorted.
Audio codecs like MP3 usually do a Fourier transform to move the sound into the frequency domain, discard any frequencies that you’re unlikely to notice, and encode ‘rate of change’ for the remaining ones. So the encoding problem is usually sound with fast changes in intensity or frequency, which is basically what percussion is.
System is quite percussion heavy, so will sound bad.
Recently moved from Spotify to Qobuz, because fuck Dan Ek, and the fact that they’ve got better bitrates across the board really makes the difference for jazz and jazzy stuff. Neglected, sounds crap on Spotify. Sounds great on Qobuz. But that’s the change from ‘bad’ to ‘quite good’ bitrates; additional bits are very much a case of diminishing returns.
That makes sense.
Heh. Spotify used to stream 384K Vorbis, which should be sufficient. But now the web app is apparently AAC. And the app-apps are conspicuously listed with “equivalent to” bitrates, whatever that means:
https://support.spotify.com/us/article/audio-quality/
Heavy classic music is a beast too, vivaldis energetic parts in the 4 seasons for example. Or Rimski Korsakoffs the flight of the bumble bee I’d wager. Or painkiller/turbo lover/… by judas priest 😁
I found I can detect VBR but yeah at that bitrate I really can’t tell the difference between 320 and flac, always thought it was just my ears!
Depends on the song really, if it’s just a standard pop song it’s mixing will usually come through just fine on a shitty MP3. The more layers a song may have the muddier it gets at lower bit rates. Like I’ve found the noisier spectrum of punk always benefits from higher bit rates.
Most people don’t have proper home stereo setups any more either, and they prefer shitty overcompressed music through earbuds. They don’t know any better, sadly.
And Ive probably spent less than 400 dollars on my home setup. But it blows away anyone who hears it. Just takes some smarts in setting stuff up and getting good used equipment.
Just another part of the cheapening of everything in society , and why music isn’t appreciated as much anymore. No wonder everyone has depression.
Reminds me of the lengths people go with their peripheral purchases to save 1-2ms of input latency for playing games with like a 20 TPS tick rate on a wifi connection
I kinda want to start a snake oil audio cable company. It’s gotta be one of the easiest paths to retirement
I noticed something similar with video. Like, if I am paying attention, the difference between the highest quality encoding and the next level is usually visible.
However, I have a harder time telling the difference if I don’t do a side by side comparison.
And even when I can easily tell the difference, once I’m watching the thing, I get into the story and I don’t care anyways.
Obviously a slightly different criteria compared to music, but people do make a big deal out of stuff that even they don’t actually care about.
Yep, and an especially fun fact is that people with high-end equipment prefer MP3 over lossless.