3 ms·
Because at a certain bitrate it is impossible for listeners to distinguish it from the uncompressed audio. I think at 160kbit for mp3 damn near 99% of the popul
by KennyBlanken 5y ago
Because at a certain bitrate it is impossible for listeners to distinguish it from the uncompressed audio. I think at 160kbit for mp3 damn near 99% of the population couldn't tell even with a very high quality set of gear.
With AAC and other modern codecs it's probably closer to 128.
For me the biggest annoyance is that some bluetooth audio codecs are pretty trash (thankfully most everything supports the ones that are decent), you can't configure any of it or even tell what codec has been negotiated between your phone and stereo, and I don't think any car company publishes what codecs their radios support.
- klelatti 5y agoI used to agree with this but even with my (quite old) ears can hear the difference between high bitrate compressed audio and lossless on (eg) Apple Music - I wonder if other aspects of the audio have improved and no longer mask the differences?
- WalterBright 5y agoYou could write a program that did a double blind experiment on you to verify your perceptions.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoThere was a foobar2000 plugin that I used for this and I could tell a difference but it was not easy. I had to listen intensely to higher frequencies like hi-hats. If I did not know that I was being tested I would never know the difference. I collect/archive music in FLAC but convert down to mp3 when syncing to devices.
- klelatti 5y agoApple Music switches between lossless and compressed depending on bandwidth and tells you on the screen whether it's on lossless or not. I find myself feeling that audio quality mid track has worsened and look at the screen to have it confirmed that it isn't lossless any more. Of course I don't know what the compressed bitrate is - so it could be quite low in these scenarios - but subjectively the quality isn't awful, just a bit worse.