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MP3 vs. AAC vs. FLAC vs. CD (2008)

146 points by thefilmore 3y ago

torrance 3y ago
2008.
AshamedCaptain 3y ago
Utterly useless. No listening tests except for a custom made sound file which is designed as an artificial worst case for the codecs. You might as well benchmark a text codec on /dev/random...
- kevincox 3y ago
  Yeah, this feels like someone arguing against no-one. They just showed that lossy codecs are indeed lossy. I don't think anyone was arguing that MP3 isn't actually lossy. (They did have a bit of interesting info about where the loss creeped in but that seemed to be a side node to the "argument".) The question is if humans can hear the difference in the lossy waveform and if that harms the listening experience.
drupe 3y ago
No, you can't hear the difference, let's collectively move on, please.
- mjlee 3y ago
  To be fair, that's true today, but not in 2008 when this article was written. MP3 encoders have come a long way and bitrates are typically much higher.
  - swagempire 3y ago
    I'm not sure its true even today. I've done lots of work in studios and can hear the difference between MP3 vs FLAC and CD -- even these days.
    - c0pium 3y ago
      No you can’t. Maybe it’s volume, maybe it’s the non-blinded nature of the testing, but you can’t hear it. They’re the same.
      - swagempire 3y ago
        Ah we will have to agree to disagree here :)
- amluto 3y ago
  …if competently encoded. You can absolutely hear the difference between a bad MP3 and the original. I used to amuse myself and friends by quite reliably identifying the difference, blinded, using a rather bad pair of speakers. Actual CD audio can also work quite differently than any encoding, as at least older CD drives had an entirely separate analog output cable that connected to the sound card and bypassed the ATAPI link entirely. Levels wouldn’t even be matched.
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  I can definitely hear the difference on some songs at some “CD quality” bit rates of MP3. Also some MP3 encoders (and decoders too, to be fair) are better than others. Particularly back when this article was written. That all said, these days encoders are much better, and there’s no excuse not to go for 320kbps (assuming you have to use MP3). What I find more interesting is that there was a period where some people who grew up listening to MP3s preferred the artefacting they introduced vs lossless. In much the same way how vinyl enthusiasts like the colouring of the sound that medium introduces. Which just goes to show that as much of this is down to psychology as it is technology.
throwaway167 3y ago
With a headline like that it felt like 2002 again. The article's byline has 2008. A 2023 update could be interesting comparing the streaming providers' choices, and persistence of choices, now that monthly subscriptions, rather than actually owning anything, are so dominant.
- deciduously 3y ago
  Citing his own past work from 1995, too.
- esafak 3y ago
  I'm glad it's an old article. It would be sad if those audiophiles were still debating this old chestnut.
  - Tsiklon 3y ago
    I’ve been involved in some heinous forum threads with people arguing the difference in sound of music streamed from different SD Cards. People will argue about all sorts of drivel
    - Godel_unicode 3y ago
      Plenty of those people are present in this thread.
    - esafak 3y ago
      Hydrogen Audio?
Waterluvian 3y ago
Maybe someone can make an online quiz of a bunch of formats and accumulate statistics on how well people can actually tell or if it’s just a bunch of random.
- jwatzman 3y ago
  There are a bunch of online tests that help you see if you, with your ears and equipment, can tell the difference. http://abx.digitalfeed.net/ http://abx.digitalfeed.net/ and http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.lame.html http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.lame.html was on HN some time ago, for example. I'm not sure if any of them collect stats though.
- conradfr 3y ago
  I have an abx website as a side project. Feel free to make one or take an existing one like https://abx.funkybits.fr/test/the-eagles-hell-freezes-over-hotel-california https://abx.funkybits.fr/test/the-eagles-hell-freezes-over-h...
mjlee 3y ago
> But what about when the codec is dealing not with a simple tone, but with music? One of the signals I put on Test CD 3 (track 25) simulates a musical signal by combining 43 discrete tones with frequencies spaced 500Hz apart. Yes, but what about with music?
kristofferR 3y ago
Compressed music had a place, but in 2023, with 5G, unlimited data and streaming services, there's really no reason not to go lossless. ALAC/FLAC files are pretty small, there's few downsides to going lossless. To be fair, there arent that many upsides either, but you at least skip one recompression step when sending the audio over BT.
- amluto 3y ago
  Have you contemplated what AWS charges to egress a music file in 2023? Gigabytes are expensive.
  - kristofferR 3y ago
    I don't see the relevance to AWS regarding people's music habits.
    - throwaway167 3y ago
      The problem with AWS is the temptation to use lambdas when streaming will keep your program running. Adding on egress costs, as parent points out, makes what could be a simple streaming server quite expensive. Better to avoid AWS for this reason. Personally I've had great success with my own streaming server I made a few years to learn Rust running on a raspberry pi that I leave plugged in at home.
  - tjoff 3y ago
    The bigger question is why people uses AWS for sending bulk data. Gigabytes are cheap.
- almatabata 3y ago
  Flac takes a lot of space on my drive. Most people will not want to have that much data on their drive just for music. If i look at my folder now: Yanni Rainmaker Flac -> 40 MB Yanni Rainmaker Mp3 -> 3MB More than a factor 10 for a single song. For 50 songs that would become 2Gb. I love flac as a format but i would never recommend it as a general format for my grandmother.
jrajav 3y ago
Let's go over this one more time: - Q: Can you hear the difference between CD-quality lossless audio and anything higher fidelity? A: No, no one even has the biological ability to. 44100khz, 16-bit audio can perfectly reproduce audio as far as we can physically tell. The only reason to store anything higher is for production or archiving (that is, for computers to listen to). - Q: Can you hear the difference between 320kbps MP3 or the equivalent, and CD-quality lossless? A: Yes, this is _theoretically_ possible. However, many well-controlled listening tests have been performed on this subject that all say no, so it's much more likely that you can't, and the burden is on you to prove otherwise with an abundance of evidence. e.g.: https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP384.pdf https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP384... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257068576_Subjective_Evaluation_of_MP3_Compression_for_Different_Musical_Genres https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257068576_Subjectiv... The listening test linked in the article leads nowhere, I would have liked to see their methodology.
- pkulak 3y ago
  I’ve personally ABX tested people who swore up and down that they could spot 128 AAC, even, and they couldn’t. Never found anyone who could. I know they exist, but they are rare, and probably not the folks who say they can.
  - Espressosaurus 3y ago
    There's probably an element of the quality of the DACs and speakers you're using too. If it's a subtle difference it's unlikely we're going to notice it being played through some low-end computer speakers.
    - c0pium 3y ago
      I have very good equipment and lots of people in my circle who are audio enthusiasts. None of them have ever been able to demonstrate in a blind test that they can tell the difference.
  - jerf 3y ago
gabereiser 3y ago
We all know the Vorbis is supreme. Get out of here with your 15 year old DRM compression riddled subpar listening formats. OGG is all that matters. Without it… we wouldn’t have Spotify. <leaves before shoe is thrown>.
mikeytown2 3y ago
Didn't use lame for mp3 so the conclusions are pointless in my opinion
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Lame is the most popular encoder so it is highly likely you have listened to its output.
ck45 3y ago
Let's assume there are people who are able to hear a difference. Why does it matter to a majority of people and the way they consume music? Maybe I'm from a spoiled generation, growing up listening to FM radio and tapes, even copying from tape to tape. A lot of rock music lives from the imperfection of audio equipment, people spend a considerable amount of time replicating the behavior of vacuum tubes. Even techo producers like Robert Babicz record to analogue tape machine to enhance the final result.
- blipvert 3y ago
  Quite literally the sound of rock music is the sound of distortion. The kinks didn’t razor blade their amps for no reason.
lifthrasiir 3y ago
> We recommend that, for serious listening, our readers use uncompressed audio file formats, such as WAV or AIF—or, if file size is an issue because of limited hard-drive space, use a lossless format such as FLAC or ALC. I recommend that, for serious listening (for some weird definition of "serious"), go to a music concert. PCM is also a lossy compression due to the quantization step, albeit its effect is much less pronounced for so many reasons that no one even thinks it as a "compression" method. If you can tolerate PCM, you should be also able to accept some good enough lossy codecs---I don't know if that includes MP3 or AAC or Vorbis or Opus or whatever, though.
- jraph 3y ago
  I think it depends on the style of music. I guess for orchestral / classical music it's good. But for other styles, I don't enjoy concerts for audio quality. It's usually way too loud, so you have to wear earplugs. I've heard some made for this don't skew audio too much, but they are still a filter. And then you have to like the balance that's chosen by the audio engineers and they are often not ideal. The voices can sometimes be not loud enough to the point you don't hear the words well, the bass too loud. Frequencies don't all travel the same way, so if you are too far away some things are missing or distorted, etc. And then there's the noises from other people, the claps, the screams, etc. And the audio still possibly went through some kind of non-analog equipment. Not saying that feeling the bass in your whole body and feeling the communicative / excited atmosphere from the crowd can't be enjoyable but for audio quality, I'd rather listen to music in a calm room with some good equipment, at a volume level comfortable to me, when audio engineering didn't have to be live and could be (even) more carefully managed. > If you can tolerate PCM Are there people who can't tolerate it? It must not be very convenient. (Huge caveat to this comment: I listen to music most of my awaken hours, but I'm not an audiophile. I never carefully listen to music, it's usually in the background.)
- akira2501 3y ago
  > PCM is also a lossy compression due to the quantization step, albeit its effect is much less pronounced for so many reasons that no one even thinks it as a "compression" method. 20 * log10(1.0 / 2**16) == -96db Much like sampling rate, it produces a range that's most likely outside of the ability for any human to appreciably detect. It's also a constant effect, whereas codecs actually analyze the audio to determine which components of the frequency spectrum it can eliminate. I don't think it's reasonable to compare PCM and lossy codecs this way.
marcodiego 3y ago
Beyond comparing formats, even subjectively, it is important to consider how the public got used to compression artifacts. I mean, the famous mp3 pre-echo was so common in early 90's that I think part of the listeners would prefer listening to it than to a cleaner sound. It is possible that mp3 influenced how music is composed, mastered and mixed. That being said and adding the fact that people are willing to listen to music using cheap auricular phones in the noisy environment of their cars and recompressed using Bluetooth, I'd say that the 128kbps mp3 is still a very hard to beat format.
- Isthatablackgsd 3y ago
  Not surprising about the MP3 pre-echo. I remember reading a comment while back, I think it was in Reddit. Someone posted a comment about how they bought a CD that have 50s/60s music for their grandparent and gave it them as Christmas gift. Their grandparent are graceful about the gift but they didn't use it very often. They inquired about why they are using the vinyl over a crystal clear CD. The grandparents said they loves the hissing and other sounds that are prevalent on the vinyl. They said it made it part of the music and they have strong memory of it during their era. The CD completely removed those sounds and felt it is unnatural sounds they are not used to. They felt it is too clean. People have strong relations with their musics that they are used to while growing up. Nostalgia are powerful memories and they don't want their music unsullied from something that they grew up with.
- thefilmore 3y ago
  MP3 smearing can be noticed even at 256kbps [1]. [1] https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/what-data-compression-does-your-music https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/what-data-compressio...
  - iggldiggl 3y ago
    Well, MP3 does have some fundamental limitations that were only fixed with subsequent codec generations, like AAC or Opus.
tamimio 3y ago
I’m not entirely into the audiophile stuff, but from personal experience, you can tell the difference, last thing I tried was when I switched from Spotify to Apple Music, where the later has “lossless” option (I think even Spotify has that) but the difference was clear between the two for a streaming service, Apple one is just more clear and alive, I even opened the same song and kept switching back and forth between the apps just to make sure I’m not imagining stuff. Was it because the lossless on apple is better than the lossless on Spotify? Or something else? I don’t know.
- masklinn 3y ago
  Even though they’ve been talking about it for 2 years AFAIK Spotify still does not have a lossless offer. And lossy bitrate is adaptive and middling (especially if not using premium). EQ-ing and mastering could also be different.
  - tamimio 3y ago
    > EQ-ing and mastering could also be different. Possible, although I didn’t change any default ones.
- teolandon 3y ago
  There is no lossless on Spotify.
  - tamimio 3y ago
    Well, than that’s definitely the reason why
- Scoring6931 3y ago
  It could be simply a difference in sound volume. Our brains tend to believe louder is better.
  - tamimio 3y ago
    In my humble unscientific test, I did have both at the same volume level (didn’t check the EQ though as what other commenter said), I even tried different speakers incl my car’s, nothing fancy or extremely measured, just as an average consumer perspective.
raphlinus 3y ago
Why is the standard considered to be CD quality? In that way, the article shows its age. Today you wouldn't be talking about 44.1kHz 16 bit, it would be all about 24 bit 192kHz. If you're looking at spectrum plots, CD is very much on the low quality side of the spectrum of what's possible. Maybe we should be considering megahertz sampling rates and 32 bits, surely we have enough bandwidth. Why not then? Because there is a ton of science and empirical evidence that humans cannot hear the difference[1]. Good engineering is about meeting the requirements with minimal cost. If the requirement is that it sounds good to humans, and the cost is number of bits to encode (and thus store and transmit) the signal, then modern codecs like Opus are clearly superior to uncompressed and losslessly compressed signals, much less higher sampling rates. If your goal is something other than good engineering, for example the aesthetic satisfaction that the bits are the same as what the mastering engineer put on the CD, or for some reason caring how clean spectrum plots of artificial signals look, then the arguments may have some merit. But let's be clear on the goals. [1]: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
- galleywest200 3y ago
  The point is to have all of the information stored in your archive. You can compress it for listening later, but you can never add information _back into_ the file. Store it in FLAC for archival purposes. An equivalent would be archiving works of visual art in JPEG and not something lossless.
  - raphlinus 3y ago
    Agreed, for archival purposes we should be using lossless codecs. Not because you can hear the difference but because it makes it easier to reason about whether there's any distortion introduced by the compression. And we can consider the original artifact, as created by the mastering engineer, an authoritative source of truth, even if it's an imperfect representation of what was performed by the musicians.
    - eviks 3y ago
20after4 3y ago
everyone should really watch https://xiph.org/video/vid1.shtml https://xiph.org/video/vid1.shtml and https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ptx 3y ago
Their recommendation doesn't make any sense. They first explain that lossless compression reproduces exactly the same data as when uncompressed: "Lossless compression is benign in its effect on the music. It is akin to LHA or WinZip computer data crunchers in packing the data more efficiently on the disk, but the data you read out are the same as went in." ...but then recommend uncompressed over lossless compression for "serious listening": "We recommend that, for serious listening, our readers use uncompressed audio file formats, such as WAV or AIF—or, if file size is an issue because of limited hard-drive space, use a lossless format such as FLAC or ALC."
- croes 3y ago
  Maybe decoding speed is an issue or decoder quality
  - ptx 3y ago
    The decoder either reproduces exactly the same bytes as the original or it's seriously broken. You can run "flac --verify file.wav" to test this, or compare the decoded bytes yourself if you don't trust the tool. I doubt such bugs are a common issue. I suppose decoding speed could matter in some situations, but they said "for serious listening", not "if your system is so slow that it fails to decode the file in real time".
    - hollandheese 3y ago
      >I suppose decoding speed could matter in some situations, but they said "for serious listening", not "if your system is so slow that it fails to decode the file in real time". Even decoding speed is doubtful, a 486-100 MHz can decode 44.1/16 FLAC in real time with CPU to spare.
- eric__cartman 3y ago
  Yeah, that doesn't make any sense at all. The only reason I can think of to use WAV instead of a losslessly compressed FLAC is if the player being used has a dog slow CPU or an incredibly old software stack that can't play FLAC files. But I doubt these guys are using a Pentium 1 machine to play their audio files so idk. The low end smartphone I had in 2013 could easily play FLAC files, at least in the real time uncompressing and decoding part of the equation. Now if the built in DAC and amplifier could take advantage of that extra data is another thing.
wesapien 3y ago
Why do you guys tell others what they can or can't hear? We need to have someone do head surgery on you and implant a device to detect signals between your eardrum and the brain to see what's heard. Even then the brain probably has a lot to do with how sound is interpreted or processed.
- tommek4077 3y ago
  You can easily create blind tests and they speak a very clear outcome.
swagempire 3y ago
Anything is better than YouTube-- which seems to be the common format everyone is listening to these days. I would LOVE to be able to regularly listen to CD quality music...
- derkades 3y ago
  YouTube is quite good with >128kbps opus audio
  - swagempire 3y ago
    It's acceptable for most people listening to it on tiny speakers on phones or even earphones. But there is no way it's high-fi.
    - criddell 3y ago
      This test seems to imply that it is hi-fi. https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm
    - oittaa 3y ago
      Not just acceptable. For most people it's basically indistinguishable from uncompressed CD audio.
      - swagempire 3y ago
        You can Google around and find lots of (these things of course will always be subjective) comparisons where people claim they can hear a difference. I think my point is that for people who have a hi end setup and are used to listening to music -- don't come under the classification of "most people". I agree with you for that for the average listener with $200 headphones or a club DJ, MP3-320k is fine.
flashback2199 3y ago
For mp3, for me, 192kbps and higher is where it sounds pretty good, 128kbps sounds bad
- mrob 3y ago
  Required bitrate depends on the music. With a modern version of LAME, 128kbps will be very difficult to ABX for solo vocals, but much easier in busy rock music (specifically, by listening to the decay of the cymbals). This is why variable bit rate was developed.
  - iggldiggl 3y ago
    > This is why variable bit rate was developed. A more modern codecs like AAC or Opus, that can e.g. better deal with the cymbals problem you mention.
  - flashback2199 3y ago
    oh no here come the audiophiles runs away
isykt 3y ago
What's really infuriating to me is that, at one point, Apple took a reasonable stand with their music streaming and said "256kbps AAC is CD quality" (it is). And now they've turned around and starting pushing this snake-oil, DRM'd "Hi-Res Lossless" nonsense. The only reason to have "Hi-Res Lossless" is if you're going to do something besides listening with it... and you can't with Apple's streaming.
RIMR 3y ago
OP forgot to put (2008) at the end of this. Today's standard isn't "CD Quality" anymore. There is literally no audible difference between MP3 320kbps, which covers the complete range of human hearing up to 22kHz and FLAC which covers all the way to 192kHz, which is lossless. At this point digital audio has surpassed what the human ear is capable of hearing, and any advancements to this is superfluous as far as music is concerned. The only advantage to raw or lossless formats for music is archiving, as FLAC can be converted into other formats without incurring additional quality loss. For listening, it is now more important to have good equipment rather than a lossless format, and for streaming it is generally preferable to keep bandwidth requirements down. The only reason I can imagine to continue expanding the capabilities of lossless audio is for scientific purposes and machine learning where the limits of human sensory perception isn't a limiting factor.
- iggldiggl 3y ago
  > There is literally no audible difference between MP3 320kbps, which covers the complete range of human hearing up to 22kHz Although MP3 does have some fundamental limitations that cannot be fixed no matter how much bitrate you throw at them (referring especially to the "Inoptimal window sizes" from https://web.archive.org/web/20120222124415/http://www.mp3-tech.org/content/?Mp3%20Limitations https://web.archive.org/web/20120222124415/http://www.mp3-te...). They're not dramatic issues, to be fair, but as long as you go for lossly compression, using a somewhat more modern codec like AAC or Opus would be preferable, unless you absolutely need the maximum compatibility afforded by MP3 (though these days at least AAC support should be pretty widespread, too, plus the patents on regular ["low complexity"] AAC have expired as well).
- snvzz 3y ago
  >The only reason I can imagine to continue expanding the capabilities of lossless audio is for scientific purposes and machine learning... Communications is the main reason. There's only so much bandwidth in 44.1KHz.
- oriolid 3y ago
  One of the benefits of lossless compression is that you don't have to put any effort into thinking about what level of compression is good enough and who can hear the difference. It just doesn't make any difference.
ksec 3y ago
1. This is an 2008 article. Per Guidelines you should put years in the Title. 2. MP3 has improved a lot over its lifetime. LAME was already used for default by year 2000. When people say MP3 was good enough, they refer to MP3 encoded with LAME. ( Rant: When we people learn the codec, encoder and the encoded results are different things? 2023 and I see this mistakes everywhere still ) 3. Even iTunes AAC has seen lots improvement since 2008. Especially in the 256Kbps+ Range. 4. And when AAC is mentioned. That is AAC-LC ( Or AAC Main Profile which isn't all that different ). AAC-LC ( Low Complexity ) has been declared as Patent free by RedHat. There is no reason to use MP3 today. 5. The definition of "CD-quality" alike went from MP3 128Kbps to now AAC 256Kbps. And arguably that is true for consumer market. Even Hydrogen audio has repeated these test multiple times. 6. I still prefer the codec MPC, Musepack (https://www.musepack.net https://www.musepack.net). Sorry I just had to write it out. Sadly it never gained any traction. 7. If we have to be picky about frequency range, may be CD itself isn't good enough and we could use SACD? 8. Lossless is making a come back. Storage and Bandwidth cost continues to fall. ( Arguably not true for NAND, but let's ignore that part for now ) 9. It is ironic when Lossless could gain and be used mainstream, Wireless earphones are replacing traditional earphones. Meaning your music will be re-encoded before it is sent to your earphone. And No. Most Android or iPhone dont have AAC pass through. i.e Your AAC encoded files will still be re-encoded before sending it your bluetooth earphone.
- taskforcegemini 3y ago
  some people encode their mp3s to FLAC
- f33d5173 3y ago
  I think its worth repeating that "cd quality" is a term of art being used here that does not necessarily mean the audio has the quality of a cd (and, as they emphasize, in fact does not). I would dispute that any new standard has taken the helm of "cd quality" - my experience is that such a phrase is never used in describing quality of lossy compression. Most music downloads are either described by their bitrate (so that the listener is left to figure out what these mean), or by labels like "low", "medium", and "high" quality (with the listener left to distinguish whether those are accurate descriptors).
thefilmore 3y ago
I came across this after listening to several 320kbps MP3 files and found that they sounded noticeably worse than 256kbps AAC versions. Support for AAC is widespread now and it should be preferred over MP3 [1]. [1] https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/consumer-electronics/mp3.html https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/consumer-electronics...
- prima-facie 3y ago
  MP3 does have an advantage though, being widespread and royalty-free since the Fraunhofer patents expired.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    OPUS is still better than AAC and MP3.
    - prima-facie 3y ago
      I don't disagree. But almost any electronic device released in the last 10 years can play mp3. Probably even your electric toothbrush.
    - CharlesW 3y ago
      Even if you set aside universality as a desirable property, according to the official site at 128kbps any Opus efficiency advantage disappears. https://opus-codec.org/comparison/ https://opus-codec.org/comparison/
      - brewdad 3y ago
        Which is why I use Opus128 on my iPhone, where storage is a limited, fixed commodity and my listening environment is rarely optimized. Everywhere else is FLAC or mp3-256. My ears aren’t golden enough anymore to justify 320 bit mp3.
      - deadbeeves 3y ago
        That graph does not describe codec efficiency. It's explaining how the various codecs preserve the frequencies of the raw signal at various bitrates: Some codecs only work at low bitrates and preserve only narrow bands of frequencies. Some codecs work only at mid bitrates and preserve wider bands. Some codes only work at high bitrates and preserve only the widest bands; you can't get then to drop more frequencies for better savings even if you wanted to. Opus works on all bitrates and gradually and dynamically removes frequency bands as the bitrate drops. Vorbis preserves more or less the same frequencies as Opus at the same bitrate, but loses frequencies a bit faster as the bitrate drops. MP3 drops even faster. AAC works very similarly to Opus, but can't output low bitrate streams. To compare codec efficiency you would need to do subjective comparisons to see how often each codec achieves transparency (when people can no longer tell if the sound has been compressed or not) at a given bitrate with various types of sounds. This has also been measured, and it's agreed that Opus is basically transparent at 128 kbps. MP3 needs twice as many bits to get the same quality, so Opus is twice as efficient.
olivierestsage 3y ago
While acknowledging that I don't know whether I can tell the difference in every case or not, I would summarize my own preference for lossless audio in the following terms. Choosing lossy audio, my best case scenario is that I save space or bandwidth because I can't tell the difference; my worst case scenario is that I'm missing some element of the music, whether it is consciously noticeable, something I'm unaware of entirely, or perhaps something that I may only be experiencing on a somatic level that doesn't reach the level of conscious thought (I know that the possibility of this last option will be contested by some, and that's fair enough). Choosing lossless audio, my best case scenario is that I'm hearing the music in a higher fidelity, and increasing the amount I'm capable of appreciating; my worst case scenario is that I'm wasting some space or bandwidth for the reassurance. Basically, Pascal's Wager, but for audio.
- willis936 3y ago
  There are measurably much larger effects from insufficient replication hardware. Are you using the same amp, speakers, room, listening position, and volume level as the person who mastered the recording? No? Then your difference in setup is adding much larger differences than -90 dB RMSE. It's all a painfully fruitless effort when you learn that most masters don't even consider the phasing of instrument microphones and none of it is at all a close approximation of what it would be like to be in a room listening to instruments. It's good enough, yeah, but there are much more important and difficult threads to tug than lowering noise in the signal chain.
denton-scratch 3y ago
I'm convinced that we can "hear" frequencies well above the reputed 20KHz limit of human hearing, as overtones, i.e. as tonal quality. I certainly don't have golden ears; I'm no audiophile, and I'm getting on in years. 44KHz FLAC is easily good enough for me. But I tire of listening to MP3 music, after a few tens of minutes; it seems to lack the presence and immediacy that keeps me interested.
- willis936 3y ago
  That's fine, but you should appreciate that you are lying to yourself until you perform a blind test to prove it.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    > you are lying to yourself until [...] Not really. I'm not proposing a hypothesis that needs testing; I'm just reporting subjective anecdata. I don't need to test it, because even if I'm deluded it costs me 300GB instead of 100GB. Pfft. "Lying to yourself" is silly talk; that implies that I'm knowingly telling myself a falsehood, which doesn't make sense. At worst, I'm mistaken.
    - willis936 3y ago
      >that implies that I'm knowingly telling myself a falsehood You are aware of a common fact backed up by mountains of empirical data, a strong physical explanation, and fundamentals of information theory, but tell yourself this lie: >I'm convinced that we can "hear" frequencies well above the reputed 20KHz limit of human hearing This is a lie. You tell it to yourself. You must see this.
- danbee 3y ago
  If frequencies abover 20Khz are causing audible differences in the audible frequency range then that's considered distortion and there's an issue in your playback chain somewhere. https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
mixmastamyk 3y ago
Interesting—have been tinkering in this area for decades now and always heard AAC was better than MP3. But until now have not seen how/why it was better. Thank you Stereophile. Yes as several have written, the piece is from 2008 and it doesn't matter any more. First, once LAME and VBR came about, I've never been able to tell the difference between my 192K MP3 and lossless files, even as a spring-chicken with expensive equipment. Been "good enough" for a very long time. Second, since storage and bandwidth exploded I've used FLAC exclusively. Why not? But, have found 24/96+ files on the internet occasionally and first thing I downsample them to 16/48khz and do a listening test. I sure as hell can't hear the difference between those. I do leave the last extra 3.9khz... why not? Incredibly cheap and maybe the kids can hear it. Playable on car stereo and more compact, one third the size. Finally, a big exception. Techies obsess about compression formats, but they don't matter as much as you think at the high-quality end. I've learned the source, i.e. master recording is more important. Example—rip "pristine" FLACs (or WAVs) directly from an iconic 80s CD. Do a listening test. Compare them with a modern remaster encoded with 192K Lame VBR MP3. The MP3 will sound a lot better and preserve the improved high end details. Yes, more noise but you'll struggle to hear it. (Caveat—this is assuming we're not talking about a shitty 2010-era "loudness war" remaster but a quality-oriented remaster.) Was mildly surprised by this after insisting on FLAC for almost two decades. A bit too early, in hindsight. Storage is so cheap now though, it again doesn't matter. FLAC it is, Opus from online sources.
kwanbix 3y ago
For a while, HydrongenAudio, arguably the best sound/music related forum, did plenty of listening tests. The last one sadly is from 2014: they tested Opus, AAC and Ogg Vorbis at 96 kbps against a classic MP3 128 kbps, and find out which codec produces the best sound quality. https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm https://listening-test.coresv.net/bytrack/index.htm https://listening-test.coresv.net/bytrack/index.htm Notice that it is almost 10 years old, and that MP3 was encoded at 128kbps.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fladd 3y ago
The intersection of not understanding digital audio and not understanding the neuroscience of hearing remains a place that never ceases to amaze me.
eqvinox 3y ago
The real issue nowadays is that you shouldn't record or master at 44.1kHz (or multiples) and go for 48kHz instead. But not because it sounds better. Simply because 48kHz is what your computer and phone natively clocks its audio codecs at. It's done because that's generally an integer fraction, but the why doesn't matter as much as the fact itself; PC "HD Audio" and phone codecs are 48kHz. Yes you can resample, and yes you can resample without it being audibly noticeable. But it's an extra step where you're at the mercy of whoever implements it to do it right. Doing it wrong may also include noticeable delay, breaking e.g. A-V / lipsync. Can you build HiFi systems that support 44.1kHz and maybe dynamically switch their clock source as needed? Sure. But what's the easiest way to build a HiFi system these days? You just stick an off-the-shelf embedded device in it, which likely uses standard PC/phone tech… So just ship 48kHz. (Similar argument for video recording in 50Hz countries btw - unless you are recording for TV/broadcast, you should always shoot at 60 / 59.94fps. Because that's what PC and phone screens run at…)
- rplst8 3y ago
  This used to be somewhat true, but modern digital often uses such high internal rates that converting between the two is near lossless. For instance, the least common multiple of 44.1k and 48k is in the 7MHz region. Realtime conversion between them is pretty doable today. We've been doing it by using decimation with much simpler hardware for a few decades before that.
  - eqvinox 3y ago
    That might be true for the hardware, but since mixing of multiple streams is a software function nowadays (… some older HW was multi-stream capable…), any 44.1kHz stream has a good chance of being resampled to 48kHz just to allow mixing it with other sounds. Even if it's the only stream and you could switch the codec to 44.1kHz mode, what do you do if the OS wants to play a random notification sound? Switching between 44.1kHz and 48kHz is not going to be hitless on a significant number of HW (not all, but most I'd guess), so whoever's writing your OS mixer code would reasonably make a call to always mix at 48kHz… (Yes this argument primarily applies to PCs and phones, hopefully on a HiFi system that just happens to use COTS embedded devices they'd write some code to switch the rate…)
8bitsrule 3y ago
>compressed ilk do not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening. Old old OLD argument here. Apart from -rare-, well-trained golden ears, very few humans can distinguish 192K or better, well-encoded MP3s without knowing -exactly- what to listen for. Or will need to 99% of the time. As dozens of studies have shown over several decades. The rest is either marketing or self-deception. https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php
RockRobotRock 3y ago
Wow, great tests! Now do a blind A/B with headphones on. :)
thefounder 3y ago
In the age of 4K,8K video streaming, free efficient lossless codecs and yearly $1000 phone upgrades why do we even bother to ask the question of lossy vs lossless audio for entertainment? It's not a matter of disc capacity anymore. You can have the best for "free". If we do ABX test you will find out that people can't even make the difference between the original artist and a cover artist let alone lossy vs lossless. Should we just use cover artists at concerts? The brain adapts quickly to lower quality be it visual, audio, olfaction or gustatory. Does it mean we should ingest the most we can tolerate because we get used to it so we can run on more efficient/cheap resources/content ?
- conradfr 3y ago
  The whole world does not have FTTH and unlimited 4G+ mobile data plans. And you would be surprised by the number of radios streaming at 96kbps.
ofslidingfeet 3y ago
There are people who can hear up to 22khz and beyond, so I've never understood why many of these arguments aren't easily resolvable on that basis alone.
dusted 3y ago
This can be humbling http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html just try flac vs 128kbit.. I swear I used to be able to distinguish 320kbit, now I struggle with 96k :s Age and loud music...

146 points by thefilmore 3y ago

2008.

Utterly useless. No listening tests except for a custom made sound file which is designed as an artificial worst case for the codecs. You might as well benchmark a text codec on /dev/random...

kevincox 3y ago
Yeah, this feels like someone arguing against no-one. They just showed that lossy codecs are indeed lossy. I don't think anyone was arguing that MP3 isn't actually lossy. (They did have a bit of interesting info about where the loss creeped in but that seemed to be a side node to the "argument".) The question is if humans can hear the difference in the lossy waveform and if that harms the listening experience.

drupe 3y ago

No, you can't hear the difference, let's collectively move on, please.

mjlee 3y ago
To be fair, that's true today, but not in 2008 when this article was written. MP3 encoders have come a long way and bitrates are typically much higher.
- swagempire 3y ago
  I'm not sure its true even today. I've done lots of work in studios and can hear the difference between MP3 vs FLAC and CD -- even these days.
  - c0pium 3y ago
    No you can’t. Maybe it’s volume, maybe it’s the non-blinded nature of the testing, but you can’t hear it. They’re the same.
    - swagempire 3y ago
      Ah we will have to agree to disagree here :)
amluto 3y ago
…if competently encoded. You can absolutely hear the difference between a bad MP3 and the original. I used to amuse myself and friends by quite reliably identifying the difference, blinded, using a rather bad pair of speakers. Actual CD audio can also work quite differently than any encoding, as at least older CD drives had an entirely separate analog output cable that connected to the sound card and bypassed the ATAPI link entirely. Levels wouldn’t even be matched.
hnlmorg 3y ago
I can definitely hear the difference on some songs at some “CD quality” bit rates of MP3. Also some MP3 encoders (and decoders too, to be fair) are better than others. Particularly back when this article was written. That all said, these days encoders are much better, and there’s no excuse not to go for 320kbps (assuming you have to use MP3). What I find more interesting is that there was a period where some people who grew up listening to MP3s preferred the artefacting they introduced vs lossless. In much the same way how vinyl enthusiasts like the colouring of the sound that medium introduces. Which just goes to show that as much of this is down to psychology as it is technology.

throwaway167 3y ago

With a headline like that it felt like 2002 again. The article's byline has 2008. A 2023 update could be interesting comparing the streaming providers' choices, and persistence of choices, now that monthly subscriptions, rather than actually owning anything, are so dominant.

deciduously 3y ago
Citing his own past work from 1995, too.
esafak 3y ago
I'm glad it's an old article. It would be sad if those audiophiles were still debating this old chestnut.
- Tsiklon 3y ago
  I’ve been involved in some heinous forum threads with people arguing the difference in sound of music streamed from different SD Cards. People will argue about all sorts of drivel
  - Godel_unicode 3y ago
    Plenty of those people are present in this thread.
  - esafak 3y ago
    Hydrogen Audio?

Waterluvian 3y ago

Maybe someone can make an online quiz of a bunch of formats and accumulate statistics on how well people can actually tell or if it’s just a bunch of random.

jwatzman 3y ago
There are a bunch of online tests that help you see if you, with your ears and equipment, can tell the difference. http://abx.digitalfeed.net/ http://abx.digitalfeed.net/ and http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.lame.html http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.lame.html was on HN some time ago, for example. I'm not sure if any of them collect stats though.
conradfr 3y ago
I have an abx website as a side project. Feel free to make one or take an existing one like https://abx.funkybits.fr/test/the-eagles-hell-freezes-over-hotel-california https://abx.funkybits.fr/test/the-eagles-hell-freezes-over-h...

mjlee 3y ago

> But what about when the codec is dealing not with a simple tone, but with music? One of the signals I put on Test CD 3 (track 25) simulates a musical signal by combining 43 discrete tones with frequencies spaced 500Hz apart. Yes, but what about with music?

kristofferR 3y ago

Compressed music had a place, but in 2023, with 5G, unlimited data and streaming services, there's really no reason not to go lossless. ALAC/FLAC files are pretty small, there's few downsides to going lossless. To be fair, there arent that many upsides either, but you at least skip one recompression step when sending the audio over BT.

amluto 3y ago
Have you contemplated what AWS charges to egress a music file in 2023? Gigabytes are expensive.
- kristofferR 3y ago
  I don't see the relevance to AWS regarding people's music habits.
  - throwaway167 3y ago
    The problem with AWS is the temptation to use lambdas when streaming will keep your program running. Adding on egress costs, as parent points out, makes what could be a simple streaming server quite expensive. Better to avoid AWS for this reason. Personally I've had great success with my own streaming server I made a few years to learn Rust running on a raspberry pi that I leave plugged in at home.
- tjoff 3y ago
  The bigger question is why people uses AWS for sending bulk data. Gigabytes are cheap.
almatabata 3y ago
Flac takes a lot of space on my drive. Most people will not want to have that much data on their drive just for music. If i look at my folder now: Yanni Rainmaker Flac -> 40 MB Yanni Rainmaker Mp3 -> 3MB More than a factor 10 for a single song. For 50 songs that would become 2Gb. I love flac as a format but i would never recommend it as a general format for my grandmother.

jrajav 3y ago

Let's go over this one more time: - Q: Can you hear the difference between CD-quality lossless audio and anything higher fidelity? A: No, no one even has the biological ability to. 44100khz, 16-bit audio can perfectly reproduce audio as far as we can physically tell. The only reason to store anything higher is for production or archiving (that is, for computers to listen to). - Q: Can you hear the difference between 320kbps MP3 or the equivalent, and CD-quality lossless? A: Yes, this is _theoretically_ possible. However, many well-controlled listening tests have been performed on this subject that all say no, so it's much more likely that you can't, and the burden is on you to prove otherwise with an abundance of evidence. e.g.: https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP384.pdf https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP384... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257068576_Subjective_Evaluation_of_MP3_Compression_for_Different_Musical_Genres https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257068576_Subjectiv... The listening test linked in the article leads nowhere, I would have liked to see their methodology.

pkulak 3y ago
I’ve personally ABX tested people who swore up and down that they could spot 128 AAC, even, and they couldn’t. Never found anyone who could. I know they exist, but they are rare, and probably not the folks who say they can.
- Espressosaurus 3y ago
  There's probably an element of the quality of the DACs and speakers you're using too. If it's a subtle difference it's unlikely we're going to notice it being played through some low-end computer speakers.
  - c0pium 3y ago
    I have very good equipment and lots of people in my circle who are audio enthusiasts. None of them have ever been able to demonstrate in a blind test that they can tell the difference.
- jerf 3y ago

gabereiser 3y ago

We all know the Vorbis is supreme. Get out of here with your 15 year old DRM compression riddled subpar listening formats. OGG is all that matters. Without it… we wouldn’t have Spotify. <leaves before shoe is thrown>.

mikeytown2 3y ago

Didn't use lame for mp3 so the conclusions are pointless in my opinion

thriftwy 3y ago
Lame is the most popular encoder so it is highly likely you have listened to its output.

ck45 3y ago

Let's assume there are people who are able to hear a difference. Why does it matter to a majority of people and the way they consume music? Maybe I'm from a spoiled generation, growing up listening to FM radio and tapes, even copying from tape to tape. A lot of rock music lives from the imperfection of audio equipment, people spend a considerable amount of time replicating the behavior of vacuum tubes. Even techo producers like Robert Babicz record to analogue tape machine to enhance the final result.

blipvert 3y ago
Quite literally the sound of rock music is the sound of distortion. The kinks didn’t razor blade their amps for no reason.

lifthrasiir 3y ago

> We recommend that, for serious listening, our readers use uncompressed audio file formats, such as WAV or AIF—or, if file size is an issue because of limited hard-drive space, use a lossless format such as FLAC or ALC. I recommend that, for serious listening (for some weird definition of "serious"), go to a music concert. PCM is also a lossy compression due to the quantization step, albeit its effect is much less pronounced for so many reasons that no one even thinks it as a "compression" method. If you can tolerate PCM, you should be also able to accept some good enough lossy codecs---I don't know if that includes MP3 or AAC or Vorbis or Opus or whatever, though.

jraph 3y ago
I think it depends on the style of music. I guess for orchestral / classical music it's good. But for other styles, I don't enjoy concerts for audio quality. It's usually way too loud, so you have to wear earplugs. I've heard some made for this don't skew audio too much, but they are still a filter. And then you have to like the balance that's chosen by the audio engineers and they are often not ideal. The voices can sometimes be not loud enough to the point you don't hear the words well, the bass too loud. Frequencies don't all travel the same way, so if you are too far away some things are missing or distorted, etc. And then there's the noises from other people, the claps, the screams, etc. And the audio still possibly went through some kind of non-analog equipment. Not saying that feeling the bass in your whole body and feeling the communicative / excited atmosphere from the crowd can't be enjoyable but for audio quality, I'd rather listen to music in a calm room with some good equipment, at a volume level comfortable to me, when audio engineering didn't have to be live and could be (even) more carefully managed. > If you can tolerate PCM Are there people who can't tolerate it? It must not be very convenient. (Huge caveat to this comment: I listen to music most of my awaken hours, but I'm not an audiophile. I never carefully listen to music, it's usually in the background.)
akira2501 3y ago
> PCM is also a lossy compression due to the quantization step, albeit its effect is much less pronounced for so many reasons that no one even thinks it as a "compression" method. 20 * log10(1.0 / 2**16) == -96db Much like sampling rate, it produces a range that's most likely outside of the ability for any human to appreciably detect. It's also a constant effect, whereas codecs actually analyze the audio to determine which components of the frequency spectrum it can eliminate. I don't think it's reasonable to compare PCM and lossy codecs this way.

marcodiego 3y ago

Beyond comparing formats, even subjectively, it is important to consider how the public got used to compression artifacts. I mean, the famous mp3 pre-echo was so common in early 90's that I think part of the listeners would prefer listening to it than to a cleaner sound. It is possible that mp3 influenced how music is composed, mastered and mixed. That being said and adding the fact that people are willing to listen to music using cheap auricular phones in the noisy environment of their cars and recompressed using Bluetooth, I'd say that the 128kbps mp3 is still a very hard to beat format.

Isthatablackgsd 3y ago
Not surprising about the MP3 pre-echo. I remember reading a comment while back, I think it was in Reddit. Someone posted a comment about how they bought a CD that have 50s/60s music for their grandparent and gave it them as Christmas gift. Their grandparent are graceful about the gift but they didn't use it very often. They inquired about why they are using the vinyl over a crystal clear CD. The grandparents said they loves the hissing and other sounds that are prevalent on the vinyl. They said it made it part of the music and they have strong memory of it during their era. The CD completely removed those sounds and felt it is unnatural sounds they are not used to. They felt it is too clean. People have strong relations with their musics that they are used to while growing up. Nostalgia are powerful memories and they don't want their music unsullied from something that they grew up with.
thefilmore 3y ago
MP3 smearing can be noticed even at 256kbps [1]. [1] https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/what-data-compression-does-your-music https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/what-data-compressio...
- iggldiggl 3y ago
  Well, MP3 does have some fundamental limitations that were only fixed with subsequent codec generations, like AAC or Opus.

tamimio 3y ago

I’m not entirely into the audiophile stuff, but from personal experience, you can tell the difference, last thing I tried was when I switched from Spotify to Apple Music, where the later has “lossless” option (I think even Spotify has that) but the difference was clear between the two for a streaming service, Apple one is just more clear and alive, I even opened the same song and kept switching back and forth between the apps just to make sure I’m not imagining stuff. Was it because the lossless on apple is better than the lossless on Spotify? Or something else? I don’t know.

masklinn 3y ago
Even though they’ve been talking about it for 2 years AFAIK Spotify still does not have a lossless offer. And lossy bitrate is adaptive and middling (especially if not using premium). EQ-ing and mastering could also be different.
- tamimio 3y ago
  > EQ-ing and mastering could also be different. Possible, although I didn’t change any default ones.
teolandon 3y ago
There is no lossless on Spotify.
- tamimio 3y ago
  Well, than that’s definitely the reason why
Scoring6931 3y ago
It could be simply a difference in sound volume. Our brains tend to believe louder is better.
- tamimio 3y ago
  In my humble unscientific test, I did have both at the same volume level (didn’t check the EQ though as what other commenter said), I even tried different speakers incl my car’s, nothing fancy or extremely measured, just as an average consumer perspective.

raphlinus 3y ago

Why is the standard considered to be CD quality? In that way, the article shows its age. Today you wouldn't be talking about 44.1kHz 16 bit, it would be all about 24 bit 192kHz. If you're looking at spectrum plots, CD is very much on the low quality side of the spectrum of what's possible. Maybe we should be considering megahertz sampling rates and 32 bits, surely we have enough bandwidth. Why not then? Because there is a ton of science and empirical evidence that humans cannot hear the difference[1]. Good engineering is about meeting the requirements with minimal cost. If the requirement is that it sounds good to humans, and the cost is number of bits to encode (and thus store and transmit) the signal, then modern codecs like Opus are clearly superior to uncompressed and losslessly compressed signals, much less higher sampling rates. If your goal is something other than good engineering, for example the aesthetic satisfaction that the bits are the same as what the mastering engineer put on the CD, or for some reason caring how clean spectrum plots of artificial signals look, then the arguments may have some merit. But let's be clear on the goals. [1]: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

galleywest200 3y ago
The point is to have all of the information stored in your archive. You can compress it for listening later, but you can never add information _back into_ the file. Store it in FLAC for archival purposes. An equivalent would be archiving works of visual art in JPEG and not something lossless.
- raphlinus 3y ago
  Agreed, for archival purposes we should be using lossless codecs. Not because you can hear the difference but because it makes it easier to reason about whether there's any distortion introduced by the compression. And we can consider the original artifact, as created by the mastering engineer, an authoritative source of truth, even if it's an imperfect representation of what was performed by the musicians.
  - eviks 3y ago

20after4 3y ago

everyone should really watch https://xiph.org/video/vid1.shtml https://xiph.org/video/vid1.shtml and https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ptx 3y ago

Their recommendation doesn't make any sense. They first explain that lossless compression reproduces exactly the same data as when uncompressed: "Lossless compression is benign in its effect on the music. It is akin to LHA or WinZip computer data crunchers in packing the data more efficiently on the disk, but the data you read out are the same as went in." ...but then recommend uncompressed over lossless compression for "serious listening": "We recommend that, for serious listening, our readers use uncompressed audio file formats, such as WAV or AIF—or, if file size is an issue because of limited hard-drive space, use a lossless format such as FLAC or ALC."

croes 3y ago
Maybe decoding speed is an issue or decoder quality
- ptx 3y ago
  The decoder either reproduces exactly the same bytes as the original or it's seriously broken. You can run "flac --verify file.wav" to test this, or compare the decoded bytes yourself if you don't trust the tool. I doubt such bugs are a common issue. I suppose decoding speed could matter in some situations, but they said "for serious listening", not "if your system is so slow that it fails to decode the file in real time".
  - hollandheese 3y ago
    >I suppose decoding speed could matter in some situations, but they said "for serious listening", not "if your system is so slow that it fails to decode the file in real time". Even decoding speed is doubtful, a 486-100 MHz can decode 44.1/16 FLAC in real time with CPU to spare.
eric__cartman 3y ago
Yeah, that doesn't make any sense at all. The only reason I can think of to use WAV instead of a losslessly compressed FLAC is if the player being used has a dog slow CPU or an incredibly old software stack that can't play FLAC files. But I doubt these guys are using a Pentium 1 machine to play their audio files so idk. The low end smartphone I had in 2013 could easily play FLAC files, at least in the real time uncompressing and decoding part of the equation. Now if the built in DAC and amplifier could take advantage of that extra data is another thing.

wesapien 3y ago

Why do you guys tell others what they can or can't hear? We need to have someone do head surgery on you and implant a device to detect signals between your eardrum and the brain to see what's heard. Even then the brain probably has a lot to do with how sound is interpreted or processed.

tommek4077 3y ago
You can easily create blind tests and they speak a very clear outcome.

swagempire 3y ago

Anything is better than YouTube-- which seems to be the common format everyone is listening to these days. I would LOVE to be able to regularly listen to CD quality music...

derkades 3y ago
YouTube is quite good with >128kbps opus audio
- swagempire 3y ago
  It's acceptable for most people listening to it on tiny speakers on phones or even earphones. But there is no way it's high-fi.
  - criddell 3y ago
    This test seems to imply that it is hi-fi. https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm
  - oittaa 3y ago
    Not just acceptable. For most people it's basically indistinguishable from uncompressed CD audio.
    - swagempire 3y ago
      You can Google around and find lots of (these things of course will always be subjective) comparisons where people claim they can hear a difference. I think my point is that for people who have a hi end setup and are used to listening to music -- don't come under the classification of "most people". I agree with you for that for the average listener with $200 headphones or a club DJ, MP3-320k is fine.

flashback2199 3y ago

For mp3, for me, 192kbps and higher is where it sounds pretty good, 128kbps sounds bad

mrob 3y ago
Required bitrate depends on the music. With a modern version of LAME, 128kbps will be very difficult to ABX for solo vocals, but much easier in busy rock music (specifically, by listening to the decay of the cymbals). This is why variable bit rate was developed.
- iggldiggl 3y ago
  > This is why variable bit rate was developed. A more modern codecs like AAC or Opus, that can e.g. better deal with the cymbals problem you mention.
- flashback2199 3y ago
  oh no here come the audiophiles runs away

isykt 3y ago

What's really infuriating to me is that, at one point, Apple took a reasonable stand with their music streaming and said "256kbps AAC is CD quality" (it is). And now they've turned around and starting pushing this snake-oil, DRM'd "Hi-Res Lossless" nonsense. The only reason to have "Hi-Res Lossless" is if you're going to do something besides listening with it... and you can't with Apple's streaming.

RIMR 3y ago

OP forgot to put (2008) at the end of this. Today's standard isn't "CD Quality" anymore. There is literally no audible difference between MP3 320kbps, which covers the complete range of human hearing up to 22kHz and FLAC which covers all the way to 192kHz, which is lossless. At this point digital audio has surpassed what the human ear is capable of hearing, and any advancements to this is superfluous as far as music is concerned. The only advantage to raw or lossless formats for music is archiving, as FLAC can be converted into other formats without incurring additional quality loss. For listening, it is now more important to have good equipment rather than a lossless format, and for streaming it is generally preferable to keep bandwidth requirements down. The only reason I can imagine to continue expanding the capabilities of lossless audio is for scientific purposes and machine learning where the limits of human sensory perception isn't a limiting factor.

iggldiggl 3y ago
> There is literally no audible difference between MP3 320kbps, which covers the complete range of human hearing up to 22kHz Although MP3 does have some fundamental limitations that cannot be fixed no matter how much bitrate you throw at them (referring especially to the "Inoptimal window sizes" from https://web.archive.org/web/20120222124415/http://www.mp3-tech.org/content/?Mp3%20Limitations https://web.archive.org/web/20120222124415/http://www.mp3-te...). They're not dramatic issues, to be fair, but as long as you go for lossly compression, using a somewhat more modern codec like AAC or Opus would be preferable, unless you absolutely need the maximum compatibility afforded by MP3 (though these days at least AAC support should be pretty widespread, too, plus the patents on regular ["low complexity"] AAC have expired as well).
snvzz 3y ago
>The only reason I can imagine to continue expanding the capabilities of lossless audio is for scientific purposes and machine learning... Communications is the main reason. There's only so much bandwidth in 44.1KHz.
oriolid 3y ago
One of the benefits of lossless compression is that you don't have to put any effort into thinking about what level of compression is good enough and who can hear the difference. It just doesn't make any difference.

ksec 3y ago

1. This is an 2008 article. Per Guidelines you should put years in the Title. 2. MP3 has improved a lot over its lifetime. LAME was already used for default by year 2000. When people say MP3 was good enough, they refer to MP3 encoded with LAME. ( Rant: When we people learn the codec, encoder and the encoded results are different things? 2023 and I see this mistakes everywhere still ) 3. Even iTunes AAC has seen lots improvement since 2008. Especially in the 256Kbps+ Range. 4. And when AAC is mentioned. That is AAC-LC ( Or AAC Main Profile which isn't all that different ). AAC-LC ( Low Complexity ) has been declared as Patent free by RedHat. There is no reason to use MP3 today. 5. The definition of "CD-quality" alike went from MP3 128Kbps to now AAC 256Kbps. And arguably that is true for consumer market. Even Hydrogen audio has repeated these test multiple times. 6. I still prefer the codec MPC, Musepack (https://www.musepack.net https://www.musepack.net). Sorry I just had to write it out. Sadly it never gained any traction. 7. If we have to be picky about frequency range, may be CD itself isn't good enough and we could use SACD? 8. Lossless is making a come back. Storage and Bandwidth cost continues to fall. ( Arguably not true for NAND, but let's ignore that part for now ) 9. It is ironic when Lossless could gain and be used mainstream, Wireless earphones are replacing traditional earphones. Meaning your music will be re-encoded before it is sent to your earphone. And No. Most Android or iPhone dont have AAC pass through. i.e Your AAC encoded files will still be re-encoded before sending it your bluetooth earphone.

taskforcegemini 3y ago
some people encode their mp3s to FLAC
f33d5173 3y ago
I think its worth repeating that "cd quality" is a term of art being used here that does not necessarily mean the audio has the quality of a cd (and, as they emphasize, in fact does not). I would dispute that any new standard has taken the helm of "cd quality" - my experience is that such a phrase is never used in describing quality of lossy compression. Most music downloads are either described by their bitrate (so that the listener is left to figure out what these mean), or by labels like "low", "medium", and "high" quality (with the listener left to distinguish whether those are accurate descriptors).

thefilmore 3y ago

I came across this after listening to several 320kbps MP3 files and found that they sounded noticeably worse than 256kbps AAC versions. Support for AAC is widespread now and it should be preferred over MP3 [1]. [1] https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/consumer-electronics/mp3.html https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/consumer-electronics...

prima-facie 3y ago
MP3 does have an advantage though, being widespread and royalty-free since the Fraunhofer patents expired.
- snvzz 3y ago
  OPUS is still better than AAC and MP3.
  - prima-facie 3y ago
    I don't disagree. But almost any electronic device released in the last 10 years can play mp3. Probably even your electric toothbrush.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    Even if you set aside universality as a desirable property, according to the official site at 128kbps any Opus efficiency advantage disappears. https://opus-codec.org/comparison/ https://opus-codec.org/comparison/
    - brewdad 3y ago
      Which is why I use Opus128 on my iPhone, where storage is a limited, fixed commodity and my listening environment is rarely optimized. Everywhere else is FLAC or mp3-256. My ears aren’t golden enough anymore to justify 320 bit mp3.
    - deadbeeves 3y ago
      That graph does not describe codec efficiency. It's explaining how the various codecs preserve the frequencies of the raw signal at various bitrates: Some codecs only work at low bitrates and preserve only narrow bands of frequencies. Some codecs work only at mid bitrates and preserve wider bands. Some codes only work at high bitrates and preserve only the widest bands; you can't get then to drop more frequencies for better savings even if you wanted to. Opus works on all bitrates and gradually and dynamically removes frequency bands as the bitrate drops. Vorbis preserves more or less the same frequencies as Opus at the same bitrate, but loses frequencies a bit faster as the bitrate drops. MP3 drops even faster. AAC works very similarly to Opus, but can't output low bitrate streams. To compare codec efficiency you would need to do subjective comparisons to see how often each codec achieves transparency (when people can no longer tell if the sound has been compressed or not) at a given bitrate with various types of sounds. This has also been measured, and it's agreed that Opus is basically transparent at 128 kbps. MP3 needs twice as many bits to get the same quality, so Opus is twice as efficient.

olivierestsage 3y ago

While acknowledging that I don't know whether I can tell the difference in every case or not, I would summarize my own preference for lossless audio in the following terms. Choosing lossy audio, my best case scenario is that I save space or bandwidth because I can't tell the difference; my worst case scenario is that I'm missing some element of the music, whether it is consciously noticeable, something I'm unaware of entirely, or perhaps something that I may only be experiencing on a somatic level that doesn't reach the level of conscious thought (I know that the possibility of this last option will be contested by some, and that's fair enough). Choosing lossless audio, my best case scenario is that I'm hearing the music in a higher fidelity, and increasing the amount I'm capable of appreciating; my worst case scenario is that I'm wasting some space or bandwidth for the reassurance. Basically, Pascal's Wager, but for audio.

willis936 3y ago
There are measurably much larger effects from insufficient replication hardware. Are you using the same amp, speakers, room, listening position, and volume level as the person who mastered the recording? No? Then your difference in setup is adding much larger differences than -90 dB RMSE. It's all a painfully fruitless effort when you learn that most masters don't even consider the phasing of instrument microphones and none of it is at all a close approximation of what it would be like to be in a room listening to instruments. It's good enough, yeah, but there are much more important and difficult threads to tug than lowering noise in the signal chain.

denton-scratch 3y ago

I'm convinced that we can "hear" frequencies well above the reputed 20KHz limit of human hearing, as overtones, i.e. as tonal quality. I certainly don't have golden ears; I'm no audiophile, and I'm getting on in years. 44KHz FLAC is easily good enough for me. But I tire of listening to MP3 music, after a few tens of minutes; it seems to lack the presence and immediacy that keeps me interested.

willis936 3y ago
That's fine, but you should appreciate that you are lying to yourself until you perform a blind test to prove it.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > you are lying to yourself until [...] Not really. I'm not proposing a hypothesis that needs testing; I'm just reporting subjective anecdata. I don't need to test it, because even if I'm deluded it costs me 300GB instead of 100GB. Pfft. "Lying to yourself" is silly talk; that implies that I'm knowingly telling myself a falsehood, which doesn't make sense. At worst, I'm mistaken.
  - willis936 3y ago
    >that implies that I'm knowingly telling myself a falsehood You are aware of a common fact backed up by mountains of empirical data, a strong physical explanation, and fundamentals of information theory, but tell yourself this lie: >I'm convinced that we can "hear" frequencies well above the reputed 20KHz limit of human hearing This is a lie. You tell it to yourself. You must see this.
danbee 3y ago
If frequencies abover 20Khz are causing audible differences in the audible frequency range then that's considered distortion and there's an issue in your playback chain somewhere. https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

mixmastamyk 3y ago

Interesting—have been tinkering in this area for decades now and always heard AAC was better than MP3. But until now have not seen how/why it was better. Thank you Stereophile. Yes as several have written, the piece is from 2008 and it doesn't matter any more. First, once LAME and VBR came about, I've never been able to tell the difference between my 192K MP3 and lossless files, even as a spring-chicken with expensive equipment. Been "good enough" for a very long time. Second, since storage and bandwidth exploded I've used FLAC exclusively. Why not? But, have found 24/96+ files on the internet occasionally and first thing I downsample them to 16/48khz and do a listening test. I sure as hell can't hear the difference between those. I do leave the last extra 3.9khz... why not? Incredibly cheap and maybe the kids can hear it. Playable on car stereo and more compact, one third the size. Finally, a big exception. Techies obsess about compression formats, but they don't matter as much as you think at the high-quality end. I've learned the source, i.e. master recording is more important. Example—rip "pristine" FLACs (or WAVs) directly from an iconic 80s CD. Do a listening test. Compare them with a modern remaster encoded with 192K Lame VBR MP3. The MP3 will sound a lot better and preserve the improved high end details. Yes, more noise but you'll struggle to hear it. (Caveat—this is assuming we're not talking about a shitty 2010-era "loudness war" remaster but a quality-oriented remaster.) Was mildly surprised by this after insisting on FLAC for almost two decades. A bit too early, in hindsight. Storage is so cheap now though, it again doesn't matter. FLAC it is, Opus from online sources.

kwanbix 3y ago

For a while, HydrongenAudio, arguably the best sound/music related forum, did plenty of listening tests. The last one sadly is from 2014: they tested Opus, AAC and Ogg Vorbis at 96 kbps against a classic MP3 128 kbps, and find out which codec produces the best sound quality. https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm https://listening-test.coresv.net/bytrack/index.htm https://listening-test.coresv.net/bytrack/index.htm Notice that it is almost 10 years old, and that MP3 was encoded at 128kbps.

deleted 3y ago

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fladd 3y ago

The intersection of not understanding digital audio and not understanding the neuroscience of hearing remains a place that never ceases to amaze me.

eqvinox 3y ago

The real issue nowadays is that you shouldn't record or master at 44.1kHz (or multiples) and go for 48kHz instead. But not because it sounds better. Simply because 48kHz is what your computer and phone natively clocks its audio codecs at. It's done because that's generally an integer fraction, but the why doesn't matter as much as the fact itself; PC "HD Audio" and phone codecs are 48kHz. Yes you can resample, and yes you can resample without it being audibly noticeable. But it's an extra step where you're at the mercy of whoever implements it to do it right. Doing it wrong may also include noticeable delay, breaking e.g. A-V / lipsync. Can you build HiFi systems that support 44.1kHz and maybe dynamically switch their clock source as needed? Sure. But what's the easiest way to build a HiFi system these days? You just stick an off-the-shelf embedded device in it, which likely uses standard PC/phone tech… So just ship 48kHz. (Similar argument for video recording in 50Hz countries btw - unless you are recording for TV/broadcast, you should always shoot at 60 / 59.94fps. Because that's what PC and phone screens run at…)

rplst8 3y ago
This used to be somewhat true, but modern digital often uses such high internal rates that converting between the two is near lossless. For instance, the least common multiple of 44.1k and 48k is in the 7MHz region. Realtime conversion between them is pretty doable today. We've been doing it by using decimation with much simpler hardware for a few decades before that.
- eqvinox 3y ago
  That might be true for the hardware, but since mixing of multiple streams is a software function nowadays (… some older HW was multi-stream capable…), any 44.1kHz stream has a good chance of being resampled to 48kHz just to allow mixing it with other sounds. Even if it's the only stream and you could switch the codec to 44.1kHz mode, what do you do if the OS wants to play a random notification sound? Switching between 44.1kHz and 48kHz is not going to be hitless on a significant number of HW (not all, but most I'd guess), so whoever's writing your OS mixer code would reasonably make a call to always mix at 48kHz… (Yes this argument primarily applies to PCs and phones, hopefully on a HiFi system that just happens to use COTS embedded devices they'd write some code to switch the rate…)

8bitsrule 3y ago

>compressed ilk do not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening. Old old OLD argument here. Apart from -rare-, well-trained golden ears, very few humans can distinguish 192K or better, well-encoded MP3s without knowing -exactly- what to listen for. Or will need to 99% of the time. As dozens of studies have shown over several decades. The rest is either marketing or self-deception. https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php

RockRobotRock 3y ago

Wow, great tests! Now do a blind A/B with headphones on. :)

thefounder 3y ago

In the age of 4K,8K video streaming, free efficient lossless codecs and yearly $1000 phone upgrades why do we even bother to ask the question of lossy vs lossless audio for entertainment? It's not a matter of disc capacity anymore. You can have the best for "free". If we do ABX test you will find out that people can't even make the difference between the original artist and a cover artist let alone lossy vs lossless. Should we just use cover artists at concerts? The brain adapts quickly to lower quality be it visual, audio, olfaction or gustatory. Does it mean we should ingest the most we can tolerate because we get used to it so we can run on more efficient/cheap resources/content ?

conradfr 3y ago
The whole world does not have FTTH and unlimited 4G+ mobile data plans. And you would be surprised by the number of radios streaming at 96kbps.

ofslidingfeet 3y ago

There are people who can hear up to 22khz and beyond, so I've never understood why many of these arguments aren't easily resolvable on that basis alone.

dusted 3y ago

This can be humbling http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html just try flac vs 128kbit.. I swear I used to be able to distinguish 320kbit, now I struggle with 96k :s Age and loud music...