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I’m an audiophile skeptic too, 320 kbps ogg is great for most casual listening. But as a DJ and audio/video artist, I absolutely can tell the difference using

I’m an audiophile skeptic too, 320 kbps ogg is great for most casual listening. But as a DJ and audio/video artist, I absolutely can tell the difference using lossless sources vs lossy in some contexts. Again Bandcamp is great because you can get FLAC or Wav and take those to the club sound system or remix them in Ableton or Final Cut. Then record the output and compress it for SoundCloud or YouTube. Recompressing compressed files is the main place I notice differences.

Workaccount2 3y ago
I felt this same way until I did a mixed blind listening test: https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx (Take a high quality lossless track, re-encode a copy as whatever lossy format, load both into the tester.) Hurt my ego, but at least made me understand that I am just wasting money paying extra for lossless stuff. This was with a high quality DAQ and a range of high-end headphones too. But perhaps the results would be different on a full blown high end stereo system.
- skydhash 3y ago
  I did the best test possible. I transcoded the Flac version to AAC VBR, load both inside audacity, invert one of them and play the mix. I also made sure to align the samples. The result was some high frequency sound from the instruments, and the vocals sounded like the artist was whispering. I don't keep lossless just for listening, but storage is cheap, and I like the fact that I can switch transcoding profiles as I want to.
  - speedgoose 3y ago
    I don't know if you are testing for the same thing. Your test consist of highlighting the losses with some audio processing. But could you do the difference in a blind test? Take your lossless files, convert them to lossy audio, and back to lossless. Mix the new files and the original files randomly with a script or by asking someone else, don't look at the sizes or spectrograms, play the couples and see if you are significantly better than guessing correctly which one has been loosely compressed 50% of the time.
    - skydhash 3y ago
      It does not really matter to me, I enjoyed the songs either way. I even have a few 128kbps mp3 albums. Storage is cheap and my collection is only around 500gb. I still keep lossless just I have perfect rips of my favorite movies. Because lossy is lossy and I prefer to have something as close as possible of the original release. I still remember being happy about radio quality song and vhs, now not so much. Maybe they’ll discover a way to repair and enhance hearing, and we’ll look at lossy codec the same way we now look at 360p videos.

Workaccount2 3y ago

I felt this same way until I did a mixed blind listening test: https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx (Take a high quality lossless track, re-encode a copy as whatever lossy format, load both into the tester.) Hurt my ego, but at least made me understand that I am just wasting money paying extra for lossless stuff. This was with a high quality DAQ and a range of high-end headphones too. But perhaps the results would be different on a full blown high end stereo system.

skydhash 3y ago
I did the best test possible. I transcoded the Flac version to AAC VBR, load both inside audacity, invert one of them and play the mix. I also made sure to align the samples. The result was some high frequency sound from the instruments, and the vocals sounded like the artist was whispering. I don't keep lossless just for listening, but storage is cheap, and I like the fact that I can switch transcoding profiles as I want to.
- speedgoose 3y ago
  I don't know if you are testing for the same thing. Your test consist of highlighting the losses with some audio processing. But could you do the difference in a blind test? Take your lossless files, convert them to lossy audio, and back to lossless. Mix the new files and the original files randomly with a script or by asking someone else, don't look at the sizes or spectrograms, play the couples and see if you are significantly better than guessing correctly which one has been loosely compressed 50% of the time.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    It does not really matter to me, I enjoyed the songs either way. I even have a few 128kbps mp3 albums. Storage is cheap and my collection is only around 500gb. I still keep lossless just I have perfect rips of my favorite movies. Because lossy is lossy and I prefer to have something as close as possible of the original release. I still remember being happy about radio quality song and vhs, now not so much. Maybe they’ll discover a way to repair and enhance hearing, and we’ll look at lossy codec the same way we now look at 360p videos.