5 ms·

> mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac I did a blind test between 128-mp3, 320-mp3 and flac hearing classical music. While it's true

by Kaiyou 8y ago

> mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac I did a blind test between 128-mp3, 320-mp3 and flac hearing classical music. While it's true that the 128-mp3 is obvious to find, it also isn't too difficult to find the 320-mp3. Flac just sounds better. Described as a feeling, flac is more voluminous and doesn't feel cut short. For fun, I also let my parents take this test and they could tell, too. That's why I converted all our CDs to FLAC. Storage is cheap anyway.

widerporst 8y ago
Interesting. Are you sure you were using the right settings and a recent version of LAME for this? The only artifact I can reliably hear in 320 kbps MP3s is pre-echo, for instance with castanets, and only in a few very specific situations. Apart from this, V2 and above sounds completely indistinguishable from the original to me.
- jrace 8y ago
  Which is great ...for you... but what if in the future you could hear the differences? And now your entire collection is in MP3 V2 - now what? No reason to not rip everything in uncompressed FLAC these days. But if your happy with your audio now, great!
  - em500 8y ago
    The reverse is overwhelmingly more likely. For 8khz+ frequencies (where most compression takes place) your hearing declines pretty quickly once you hit 30 years. Whatever real compression differences you're hearing at 20 will be largely gone 10 years later, and almost certainly 20 years later.
    - jmulho 8y ago
      But in 20 years there will be new 20-year-olds. And one day there may be 40-year-olds that didn't damage their hearing with leaf blowers and rock concerts. And there may be a future compression algorithm so good that no one can tell, but you need a lossless original to take advantage of it.
    - jrace 8y ago
      Not quite 30 -> 55+ is where we would expect to see presbycusis, And even though you may have diminished hearing you still have awareness of frequencies above 8Khz.
      - em500 8y ago
        At 30 we're looking at typically 5db loss over 8khz, at 40 more than 10db. Sure, we're not talking about total hearing loss, but the reduced sensitivity is going to overwhelm any real artifacts from 16/44 that one might have genuinely detected at 20. Imagined artifacts will probably remain or might even increase though, since people typically have much higher spending power at 40. :)
        jrace 8y ago
        Any evidence of this? I worked in audiology for my entire 30's and tested my own hearing (biocalibration) once a week. Never once saw a reduction in my hearing thresholds (250Hz - 8kHz) Nor have I read any supporting documentation that agrees with a reduction of 8kHz thresholds before the age of 55.
        em500 8y ago
        http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/staff/alexh/teaching/auditoryTute_2014/ http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/staff/alexh/teaching/auditoryTu... http://www.roger-russell.com/hearing/hearing.htm http://www.roger-russell.com/hearing/hearing.htm http://personal.cityu.edu.hk/~bsapplec/frequenc.htm http://personal.cityu.edu.hk/~bsapplec/frequenc.htm https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261767650_Extended_high-frequency_9-20_kHz_audiometry_reference_thresholds_in_645_healthy_subjects https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261767650_Extended_... (table 2)
    - aaaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
      Notch Inhibition Induces Cochlear Hair Cell Regeneration and Recovery of Hearing after Acoustic Trauma https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627312009531 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662731... Stick to FLAC and keep your fingers crossed for cochlear regeneration tech ;)
  - ZoomZoomZoom 8y ago
    There was never a reason to rip in anything less than lossless codecs! Lossy codecs are only for consumption in technically restricted conditions, lossless are for storing and listening.
nitrogen 8y ago
There is some definite perceptible loss in accuracy in the treble even at V0 or 320. There's a song with a synthesized treble effect that sounds quite different on MP3 vs. FLAC by Planet Funk, I think it was "Who Said? (Stuck in the UK)". Other than that MP3 (or Vorbis or Opus, which would probably do better on that song) is great for portability, but I'd still use FLAC for storage.
grawprog 8y ago
You also lose some of the fullness on the extreme low end, it's noticeable even with a fairly low end subwoofer. Something also ends up missing in the midranges. I was working on a track once where all I had was 320 mp3 version of the vocals. At some point I replaced it with a flac copy of the same vocal recording, from the same original wav source and the difference was noticeable right away without changing any of my equalizer settings or anything. It just punched through more and the clarity improved.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  The low end thing just isn't true at all, and I don't know where that myth comes from. I have a room-corrected setup with two properly adjusted subs, and MP3 does just fine on deep bass content. Regarding solo vocals, the history of the MP3 format says: "The song "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega was the first song used by Karlheinz Brandenburg to develop the MP3. Brandenburg adopted the song for testing purposes, listening to it again and again each time refining the scheme, making sure it did not adversely affect the subtlety of Vega's voice". That's not to say that they did a perfect job, but human voice was a very high priority. And the encoders have continued to improve. So an earlier encoders may have messed with the voices, but a reasonably recent version of LAME would do so much better. MP3's real weakness is fast sharp transients, such as castanets and harpsichord in sparse recordings, where no other sounds can mask them. It's a fundamental weakness in the format, and cannot be completely solved. Newer formats such as Ogg Vorbis, Opus and AAC do not suffer from this weakness.
  - grawprog 8y ago
    >The low end thing just isn't true at all, and I don't know where that myth comes from. Well for me it came from running multiple copies of the same bass heavy tracks encoded in different formats through spectrum analysers. But I guess those lie? >Regarding solo vocals, the history of the MP3 format says: "The song "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega was the first song used by Karlheinz Brandenburg to develop the MP3. Brandenburg adopted the song for testing purposes, listening to it again and again each time refining the scheme, making sure it did not adversely affect the subtlety of Vega's voice". Human voices come in a wide range of tones and frequencies. Optimizing something for one voice doesn't mean all voices will benefit from the same optimizations. The specific track I was referring to had a lot of variation in high and low notes. You can tell me all you want what I did and didn't hear.

by Kaiyou 8y ago

widerporst 8y ago

Interesting. Are you sure you were using the right settings and a recent version of LAME for this? The only artifact I can reliably hear in 320 kbps MP3s is pre-echo, for instance with castanets, and only in a few very specific situations. Apart from this, V2 and above sounds completely indistinguishable from the original to me.

jrace 8y ago
Which is great ...for you... but what if in the future you could hear the differences? And now your entire collection is in MP3 V2 - now what? No reason to not rip everything in uncompressed FLAC these days. But if your happy with your audio now, great!
- em500 8y ago
  The reverse is overwhelmingly more likely. For 8khz+ frequencies (where most compression takes place) your hearing declines pretty quickly once you hit 30 years. Whatever real compression differences you're hearing at 20 will be largely gone 10 years later, and almost certainly 20 years later.
  - jmulho 8y ago
    But in 20 years there will be new 20-year-olds. And one day there may be 40-year-olds that didn't damage their hearing with leaf blowers and rock concerts. And there may be a future compression algorithm so good that no one can tell, but you need a lossless original to take advantage of it.
  - jrace 8y ago
    Not quite 30 -> 55+ is where we would expect to see presbycusis, And even though you may have diminished hearing you still have awareness of frequencies above 8Khz.
    - em500 8y ago
      At 30 we're looking at typically 5db loss over 8khz, at 40 more than 10db. Sure, we're not talking about total hearing loss, but the reduced sensitivity is going to overwhelm any real artifacts from 16/44 that one might have genuinely detected at 20. Imagined artifacts will probably remain or might even increase though, since people typically have much higher spending power at 40. :)
      - jrace 8y ago
        Any evidence of this? I worked in audiology for my entire 30's and tested my own hearing (biocalibration) once a week. Never once saw a reduction in my hearing thresholds (250Hz - 8kHz) Nor have I read any supporting documentation that agrees with a reduction of 8kHz thresholds before the age of 55.
        em500 8y ago
        http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/staff/alexh/teaching/auditoryTute_2014/ http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/staff/alexh/teaching/auditoryTu... http://www.roger-russell.com/hearing/hearing.htm http://www.roger-russell.com/hearing/hearing.htm http://personal.cityu.edu.hk/~bsapplec/frequenc.htm http://personal.cityu.edu.hk/~bsapplec/frequenc.htm https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261767650_Extended_high-frequency_9-20_kHz_audiometry_reference_thresholds_in_645_healthy_subjects https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261767650_Extended_... (table 2)
  - aaaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
    Notch Inhibition Induces Cochlear Hair Cell Regeneration and Recovery of Hearing after Acoustic Trauma https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627312009531 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662731... Stick to FLAC and keep your fingers crossed for cochlear regeneration tech ;)
- ZoomZoomZoom 8y ago
  There was never a reason to rip in anything less than lossless codecs! Lossy codecs are only for consumption in technically restricted conditions, lossless are for storing and listening.

nitrogen 8y ago

There is some definite perceptible loss in accuracy in the treble even at V0 or 320. There's a song with a synthesized treble effect that sounds quite different on MP3 vs. FLAC by Planet Funk, I think it was "Who Said? (Stuck in the UK)". Other than that MP3 (or Vorbis or Opus, which would probably do better on that song) is great for portability, but I'd still use FLAC for storage.

grawprog 8y ago

You also lose some of the fullness on the extreme low end, it's noticeable even with a fairly low end subwoofer. Something also ends up missing in the midranges. I was working on a track once where all I had was 320 mp3 version of the vocals. At some point I replaced it with a flac copy of the same vocal recording, from the same original wav source and the difference was noticeable right away without changing any of my equalizer settings or anything. It just punched through more and the clarity improved.

KozmoNau7 8y ago
The low end thing just isn't true at all, and I don't know where that myth comes from. I have a room-corrected setup with two properly adjusted subs, and MP3 does just fine on deep bass content. Regarding solo vocals, the history of the MP3 format says: "The song "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega was the first song used by Karlheinz Brandenburg to develop the MP3. Brandenburg adopted the song for testing purposes, listening to it again and again each time refining the scheme, making sure it did not adversely affect the subtlety of Vega's voice". That's not to say that they did a perfect job, but human voice was a very high priority. And the encoders have continued to improve. So an earlier encoders may have messed with the voices, but a reasonably recent version of LAME would do so much better. MP3's real weakness is fast sharp transients, such as castanets and harpsichord in sparse recordings, where no other sounds can mask them. It's a fundamental weakness in the format, and cannot be completely solved. Newer formats such as Ogg Vorbis, Opus and AAC do not suffer from this weakness.
- grawprog 8y ago
  >The low end thing just isn't true at all, and I don't know where that myth comes from. Well for me it came from running multiple copies of the same bass heavy tracks encoded in different formats through spectrum analysers. But I guess those lie? >Regarding solo vocals, the history of the MP3 format says: "The song "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega was the first song used by Karlheinz Brandenburg to develop the MP3. Brandenburg adopted the song for testing purposes, listening to it again and again each time refining the scheme, making sure it did not adversely affect the subtlety of Vega's voice". Human voices come in a wide range of tones and frequencies. Optimizing something for one voice doesn't mean all voices will benefit from the same optimizations. The specific track I was referring to had a lot of variation in high and low notes. You can tell me all you want what I did and didn't hear.