7 ms·
While I despise the loudness war and the loss of dynamic range, it's worth recognizing that where and how people listen to music has changed drastically in the
by blunte 7y ago
While I despise the loudness war and the loss of dynamic range, it's worth recognizing that where and how people listen to music has changed drastically in the last 20 years.
Moreso than ever in the past, people listen to music in public or otherwise noisy environments. (worse yet) They listen with generally low quality headphones/earbuds.
Basically, if the music isn't compressed, they won't hear most of it.
Of course, this plus the crappy earbuds and the noisy surroundings means they listen at higher volumes and suffer more hearing damage, which leads to less human sensitivity to sound levels (and more desire for compressed, high volume music).
It's very rare for most of us to get to sit in a good room with a good system and listen without interference... but it's really, really nice to do when you can.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoMusic in cars sounds absolutely terrible and the only stuff that sounds any good is generic pop music.
- Wistar 7y agoNot all cars. The optional B&O high-end systems found in higher-end Audi, Mercedes and BMW are quite amazing, especially if fed a FLAC, Apt-X HD or other quality signal. These systems are expensive options, ranging from $3500 to $7000.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoIts not just the speakers, its the loud rumble from the car moving. Maybe some cars have perfect sound insulation but I would say thats not very safe to be driving if you can't hear the outside.
- blunte 7y agoThe quality of the sound system in the car is possibly secondary to the amount/quality of sound deadening in the car. Road noise is a nasty thing unless there is a lot of well engineered sound deadening material and acoustic design. Once that's taken care of, then the audio can be appreciated. When I last owned a car, it was an enormous Lexus. The audio experience was sublime just with the premium factory system. But with the audio off, the cocoon was still so much better than what I've experienced in "regular" cars. Unless you're in a Rolls Royce or Maybach while driving, I seriously doubt you'll tell the difference between FLAC and MP3. There's just too much external interference to compete with the subtleties that a high end audio signal can offer compared to a more typical system.
- melq 7y agoRegardless of what car you’re in, you’re not going to be able to reliably tell the difference between a flac file and an mp3 with a reasonable bit rate (256+).
- PaulBGD_ 7y agoI disagree. I have a stock sound system that I can easily tell the difference between a 320kbps MP3 and a CD flac in a blind test. I don't believe I have any special hearing as pretty much anyone I'm with can tell the difference.
- amaranth 7y agoOn some songs with some setups I do believe you can still hear a difference but it's unlikely you'll have those songs and/or those setups. The vast majority of the time, unless the encoder for the MP3 is garbage, you won't be able to tell them apart. https://www.head-fi.org/threads/abx-test-of-320kbps-vs-flac-results.431522/ https://www.head-fi.org/threads/abx-test-of-320kbps-vs-flac-... https://blog.codinghorror.com/concluding-the-great-mp3-bitrate-experiment/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/concluding-the-great-mp3-bitra...
- lb1lf 7y ago-It does, of course, also depend on which MP3 encoder and settings you use; I did a most interesting (to me, anyway!) series of ABX trials on my own ears a few years ago. From a 24/96 PCM master I prepared lots of transcodings - 16/44.1, 12/44.1, 8/44.1, 16/22, 12/22, 8/22, 320, 256, 192, 160, 128kbps mp3 with various options for encoding, ditto AAC - etc, etc. I then used the (brilliant!) ABX plugin for Foobar and an excellent set of headphones, and after a few days I had a fair idea of how good my ears really were. Or, as it turns out, weren't. In most cases, 256kbps mp3 and red book were impossible to tell apart; 320kbps being indistinguishable in all but one case, if memory serves. However, at both 256 and 320kbps I had to listen hard for encoding artifacts rather than just enjoying the music. Most tracks were eminently listenable at 192kbps mp3, but I could then reliably tell whether I listened to an mp3 or PCM without much effort. Hard disk cost being what it is, I still ripped all my CDs lossless, though. 128kbps? I shudder at the thought of my 20-year-old-self telling myself and others that it was just about as good as uncompressed audio... Oh, and you'd be surprised at how little dynamic range is actually utilized; on most tracks, telling 16/44.1 from 8/44.1 was next to impossible.
- Hamuko 7y ago>especially if fed a FLAC, Apt-X HD or other quality signal. How many cars actually support FLAC or Apt-X HD?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Wistar 7y agoAll those with an analog or USB input?
- leetcrew 7y agonitpick: apt-x hd is a lossy audio codec and is almost never the source encoding of the music. most people are streaming aac, vorbis, or mp3, which is transcoded on the fly to apt-x hd. this is a lossy-to-lossy transcode which is basically never going to be transparent. apt-x hd is not a "quality signal" unless you happen to have a bunch of flacs on your phone.
- Wistar 7y agoI meant apt-x HD as the transmission codec for a Bluetooth connection rather than as a compression format for the audio files themselves.
- leetcrew 7y agoI understand. what I'm saying is, nine times out of ten, the audio files themselves are already going to be in a lossy format. it's not really practical to have lossless content on your phone or stream it over a mobile connection. the lossy-to-lossy transcode is going to sound bad enough that most people would notice in a double blind test. this isn't some mp3 v0 vs flac audiophile nonsense; lossy-to-lossy transcodes sound noticeably bad. from your other comment, I see that you are using a pretty good DAC in your car. kudos to you, sir.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoClassical sounded great in my 2011 Honda Fit Sport. Maybe I have low standards though.
- soylentcola 7y agoHey, that's what I drive as well. It's surely not "audiophile quality" but it's got just enough range that most music I listen to sounds surprisingly good for a stock sound system (as long as the source file is high quality).
- degenerate 7y agoI disagree with this completely. Many midrange to high-end car sound systems are the perfect listening environment for many types of music, and come standard with excellent sound systems.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoI guess if you listen to the top 40, any sound system is perfect.
- Kiro 7y agoWhat do you listen to?
- neallindsay 7y ago"Nobody listens to top 40 music - it's too popular." - Yogi Berra, probably
- p1necone 7y agoI don't see why this needs to be done at the track mastering level though. If audio device manufacturers know their users are primarily going to be listening in noisy environments with cheap headphones they can compress the track at playtime.
- oskenso 7y agoAs a person studying music production, this can't be done easily without having to mix and then master again. Certainly there could be varying edits of a track, though this is already common practice. The music you hear o the radio, or even Spotify, will usually be mastered differently than what you'll hear on a CD or DVD
- sjwright 7y agoThis could still be solved. Streaming services and digital music stores like Spotify and Apple Music could simply allow labels/artists to supply multiple masterings of the same tracks. One would be the default offering; the other would be a 24 bit file mastered with all loudness-optimising compression disabled. Popular music also routinely uses track level compression for artistic reasons and to balance the mix; it would be up to the artist whether or not to pare back any of that. Obviously the artist’s intent should take precedence here. Then, as an end user, we could choose which we preferred. By default there would be no change in behaviour. Where software updates are available, an the option could be provided to swap between versions at will. For older devices, the streaming service could let the end user choose the high dynamic range version as an account-level default. Personally I’d want ready access to both versions. When listening to music is the singular activity in a quiet environment, full dynamic range is great. But as soon as I’m not solely focused on music, multitasking or in a noisy environment, I’d actually prefer the compressed version.
- KozmoNau7 7y ago24-bit for playback is a waste of space and bandwidth, 16-bit audio has plenty of dynamic range for any kind of music enjoyed by human beings. In the old days, the recommendation for digital audio was to master for -20 dBFS average, use no compression (or very little) and let any peaks fall where they may in the 20 dB headroom. And nobody complained about the noise floor at ~76 dB below the average level. I wish everyone would go back to mastering to that spec, instead of slamming everything to 0 dBFS with loads of compression and often clipping on top. Obviously still allowing use of compression for artistic reasons.
- Causality1 7y agoWe also fail to protect ourselves from non-music hearing damage. Vacuums, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, traffic, etc will all degrade your hearing over time. I always wear ear protection whenever the sound level is even slightly uncomfortable. I'd rather spend my hearing on music than on noise.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- forgotmypw38 7y agoThis is a great point. When I'm listening on laptop speakers, every little bit of extra loudness helps.
- telesilla 7y agoI used an app called Boom for years to boost the volume, when I only had my laptop around and want to boost the volume. I haven't used it in a while however as my recent Macbook has much better speakers so I'm not sure if the v2 update is as good as v1. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/boom2-volume-boost-equalizer/id948176063?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/boom2-volume-boost-equalizer/i...