4 ms·

MP3 sound quality: Good enough

11 points by yan 17y ago

puredemo 17y ago
Well, if CD sound quality is good enough..
DarkShikari 17y ago
The problem isn't that $format doesn't sound good, the problem is that when you convert $format to $otherformat for playback on $system, you lose far more quality than if you converted from the original audio file.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Two words: repeat sales. Those who care about audio quality won't abandon their hardware playback platform for exactly this reason. Even those who don't understand the technicalities are vaguely aware of the problem. The solution is FLAC, but since it's free, lossless, and (typically) 2-3x larger, it has had fairly slow growth. Still: http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html
- jrschulz 17y ago
  ACK. Additionally, FLAC is perfect for future-proof archiving. MP3 is already declining (thanks to Apple) and while you will probably still be able to play MP3 files in twenty years, it will hopefully not be the format of choice. Other formats are superior to MP3 even today -- not only in sound quality, but in other areas like gapless playback and metadata capabilities as well. But hey, Jonny is still one of my heroes. :)
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    "MP3 is already declining (thanks to Apple) " How do you know that? And what format is supposed to be replacing mp3? It's the only audio format I run into on the Web (but then I don't use Apple products to play music).
    - jrschulz 17y ago
      I don't use Apple products either but I know that they sell tracks AAC encoded. And that's exactly why I see MP3 declining: before iTunes, there was no serious competitor for it.[1] But now the biggest online retailer of music uses an alternative. MP3's "market share" may only have gone down by a few percent. But thanks to iTunes, AAC songs can now be played almost anywhere. Since most people couldn't care less about the format of theit digital music collection, as long as they can play it, MP3 has lost a lot of its relevance. It will probably survive as a household term for digital music, irrespective of the actual encoder, though. [1] Yes, I do know Ogg Vorbis. It is even my lossy format of choice. But it's never been a threat to MP3.
rphillips 17y ago
I was just talking to friends about this the other day. MP3s are convenient, but the fidelity isn't the same as a CD (or the nuisances of a record). Are we lowering our standards as a society, because we don't have time for Xbox, TV, Music, and Family. For the most part music is timeless. Will we get to the point where MP3s will be the only distribution medium and we lose the timelessness of Music? Perhaps we already have.
- gort 17y ago
  "the fidelity isn't the same as a CD" At what bitrate? I don't think I can tell the difference by 256...
  - Edinburger 17y ago
    What are you listening on? I expect that most people could tell the difference if they listened on a reasonable quality separate CD player, amp and speakers and compared that with an MP3 player plugged into the same amp and speakers. Unfortunately I don't have an experiment I can cite but having tried it myself, I can say the difference is substantial.
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      You're probably experiencing the placebo effect. If you care there's software that will let you double-blind test yourself to see what bitrate is transparent for you. LAME above 165 should be transparent (i.e. sound the same as the source) for most people even with good equipment.
      - magnade 17y ago
        well I think rphillips has proven his point with these replys I've done ABX testing with cd and mp3s and I always choose cds correctly those that can't tell the difference i suggest you stop using your ipod earbuds and get something better
      - zokier 17y ago
MikeCapone 17y ago
"MP3" can mean a lot of things (to some people it just means "digital music"). Quality depends on the bitrate, on CBR vs VBR, on the encoder used, on the playback device, etc. Personally, I ripped most of my CDs in 256kbs VBR AAC (no DRM), and that's fine for me. But I wouldn't go back to 128kbps MP3s (especially if encoded with something else than LAME). I'd love to use more OGG Vorbis, but iTunes just plays better with AAC (even if you install the quicktime codec, you can't have the artwork inside the files).
- masklinn 17y ago
  > "MP3" can mean a lot of things (to some people it just means "digital music"). Quality depends on the bitrate, on CBR vs VBR, on the encoder used, on the playback device, etc. Yeah but every time you need to transcode your music to the next format of the day, you're going to lose a bit of quality. And the losses multiply too, they don't just add from one lossy format to one another. If you store your music in a lossless format, you just have to come back to your lossless copy to create each lossily-generated copy, and you'll only ever have the losses of this transcoding.
kwantam 17y ago
This guy takes the "anti-audiophile" sentiment a bit too far. If you know what a FLAC is, you must also have more money than sense and want oxygen-free copper cables? FLAC is a good means of conveying audio losslessly. Monster Cables are snake oil. These things are not the same. (And I'm on the older cusp of the "MP3 generation," so this isn't somehow an age thing.)
- headShrinker 17y ago
  Hmmm... Well I agree with you about him taking it to far. I know monster cables are bull, but true audiophiles ($25000 and up per system) will use non-monster oxygen-free cables, and they swear by them. I will give it to them, some of those systems really sound great. I don't know if it's due to the lack of oxygen in the lines though.
  - robotrout 17y ago
    I promise you, it's not. There's a lot of articles floating around recently about the placebo effect in medicine. I'll be kind to these people, and let them off with the excuse that placebo effect, which is still not understood, is the reason their $500 cables make them think their audio sounds better. Audio is something we understand pretty well. We can measure it's delay and phase and amplitude and distortion. We can measure these things, and we can see when they change, and we can see when they don't change. We can see these changes to levels that the human ear can't detect, but even if you believe that an audiophile can detect things that others can't, we can see these changes on our instruments. I'm not certain how far to beat this horse. It's a little like arguing that gold doesn't fall faster than lead, even though gold is heavier. At the end of the day, you either believe in measurable science, or you don't. As somebody who has spent countless hours in front of an audio analyzer, tracking down actual audio effects all the way down into the noise floor of the system, I am confident on this issue. Still, the guys selling those cables are richer than I am, so who's the idiot? Certainly not the salesmen.
    - ars 17y ago
      I agree with you about the cables, but this: > It's a little like arguing that gold doesn't fall faster than lead, even though gold is heavier. is a bad example, because heavier items do fall faster. If the difference in masses between them is very large (like a box vs the earth), the difference is not measurable, but it's there. It's off topic, but if you want me to show you the math I can.
davepeck 17y ago
He started this series by saying that he thinks vinyl is "the best available method for reproducing recorded music." I believe that anyone who thinks this has never bothered to learn how audio reproduction works in theory or in practice. (I say this as someone who loves vinyl for many reasons... just not for its reproduction.)
zokier 17y ago
If only the problem would be in the transfer medium and not in the MAX GAIN LOUDNESS IS HEAVEN -style mastering.
aurora72 17y ago
MP3 causes a hearing disorder called Tinnitus. There's a research paper about it here: http://weltenschule.de/Logologie/info/MP3-Gefahr/MP3-risk.html http://weltenschule.de/Logologie/info/MP3-Gefahr/MP3-risk.ht... I don't mean MP3 is totally bad but, I believe it might affect a sensitive person when the bitrate is below 160kbps and badly encoded.

11 points by yan 17y ago

Well, if CD sound quality is good enough..

The problem isn't that $format doesn't sound good, the problem is that when you convert $format to $otherformat for playback on $system, you lose far more quality than if you converted from the original audio file.

anigbrowl 17y ago
Two words: repeat sales. Those who care about audio quality won't abandon their hardware playback platform for exactly this reason. Even those who don't understand the technicalities are vaguely aware of the problem. The solution is FLAC, but since it's free, lossless, and (typically) 2-3x larger, it has had fairly slow growth. Still: http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html
jrschulz 17y ago
ACK. Additionally, FLAC is perfect for future-proof archiving. MP3 is already declining (thanks to Apple) and while you will probably still be able to play MP3 files in twenty years, it will hopefully not be the format of choice. Other formats are superior to MP3 even today -- not only in sound quality, but in other areas like gapless playback and metadata capabilities as well. But hey, Jonny is still one of my heroes. :)
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  "MP3 is already declining (thanks to Apple) " How do you know that? And what format is supposed to be replacing mp3? It's the only audio format I run into on the Web (but then I don't use Apple products to play music).
  - jrschulz 17y ago
    I don't use Apple products either but I know that they sell tracks AAC encoded. And that's exactly why I see MP3 declining: before iTunes, there was no serious competitor for it.[1] But now the biggest online retailer of music uses an alternative. MP3's "market share" may only have gone down by a few percent. But thanks to iTunes, AAC songs can now be played almost anywhere. Since most people couldn't care less about the format of theit digital music collection, as long as they can play it, MP3 has lost a lot of its relevance. It will probably survive as a household term for digital music, irrespective of the actual encoder, though. [1] Yes, I do know Ogg Vorbis. It is even my lossy format of choice. But it's never been a threat to MP3.

rphillips 17y ago

I was just talking to friends about this the other day. MP3s are convenient, but the fidelity isn't the same as a CD (or the nuisances of a record). Are we lowering our standards as a society, because we don't have time for Xbox, TV, Music, and Family. For the most part music is timeless. Will we get to the point where MP3s will be the only distribution medium and we lose the timelessness of Music? Perhaps we already have.

gort 17y ago
"the fidelity isn't the same as a CD" At what bitrate? I don't think I can tell the difference by 256...
- Edinburger 17y ago
  What are you listening on? I expect that most people could tell the difference if they listened on a reasonable quality separate CD player, amp and speakers and compared that with an MP3 player plugged into the same amp and speakers. Unfortunately I don't have an experiment I can cite but having tried it myself, I can say the difference is substantial.
  - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    You're probably experiencing the placebo effect. If you care there's software that will let you double-blind test yourself to see what bitrate is transparent for you. LAME above 165 should be transparent (i.e. sound the same as the source) for most people even with good equipment.
    - magnade 17y ago
      well I think rphillips has proven his point with these replys I've done ABX testing with cd and mp3s and I always choose cds correctly those that can't tell the difference i suggest you stop using your ipod earbuds and get something better
    - zokier 17y ago

MikeCapone 17y ago

"MP3" can mean a lot of things (to some people it just means "digital music"). Quality depends on the bitrate, on CBR vs VBR, on the encoder used, on the playback device, etc. Personally, I ripped most of my CDs in 256kbs VBR AAC (no DRM), and that's fine for me. But I wouldn't go back to 128kbps MP3s (especially if encoded with something else than LAME). I'd love to use more OGG Vorbis, but iTunes just plays better with AAC (even if you install the quicktime codec, you can't have the artwork inside the files).

masklinn 17y ago
> "MP3" can mean a lot of things (to some people it just means "digital music"). Quality depends on the bitrate, on CBR vs VBR, on the encoder used, on the playback device, etc. Yeah but every time you need to transcode your music to the next format of the day, you're going to lose a bit of quality. And the losses multiply too, they don't just add from one lossy format to one another. If you store your music in a lossless format, you just have to come back to your lossless copy to create each lossily-generated copy, and you'll only ever have the losses of this transcoding.

kwantam 17y ago

This guy takes the "anti-audiophile" sentiment a bit too far. If you know what a FLAC is, you must also have more money than sense and want oxygen-free copper cables? FLAC is a good means of conveying audio losslessly. Monster Cables are snake oil. These things are not the same. (And I'm on the older cusp of the "MP3 generation," so this isn't somehow an age thing.)

headShrinker 17y ago
Hmmm... Well I agree with you about him taking it to far. I know monster cables are bull, but true audiophiles ($25000 and up per system) will use non-monster oxygen-free cables, and they swear by them. I will give it to them, some of those systems really sound great. I don't know if it's due to the lack of oxygen in the lines though.
- robotrout 17y ago
  I promise you, it's not. There's a lot of articles floating around recently about the placebo effect in medicine. I'll be kind to these people, and let them off with the excuse that placebo effect, which is still not understood, is the reason their $500 cables make them think their audio sounds better. Audio is something we understand pretty well. We can measure it's delay and phase and amplitude and distortion. We can measure these things, and we can see when they change, and we can see when they don't change. We can see these changes to levels that the human ear can't detect, but even if you believe that an audiophile can detect things that others can't, we can see these changes on our instruments. I'm not certain how far to beat this horse. It's a little like arguing that gold doesn't fall faster than lead, even though gold is heavier. At the end of the day, you either believe in measurable science, or you don't. As somebody who has spent countless hours in front of an audio analyzer, tracking down actual audio effects all the way down into the noise floor of the system, I am confident on this issue. Still, the guys selling those cables are richer than I am, so who's the idiot? Certainly not the salesmen.
  - ars 17y ago
    I agree with you about the cables, but this: > It's a little like arguing that gold doesn't fall faster than lead, even though gold is heavier. is a bad example, because heavier items do fall faster. If the difference in masses between them is very large (like a box vs the earth), the difference is not measurable, but it's there. It's off topic, but if you want me to show you the math I can.

davepeck 17y ago

He started this series by saying that he thinks vinyl is "the best available method for reproducing recorded music." I believe that anyone who thinks this has never bothered to learn how audio reproduction works in theory or in practice. (I say this as someone who loves vinyl for many reasons... just not for its reproduction.)

zokier 17y ago

If only the problem would be in the transfer medium and not in the MAX GAIN LOUDNESS IS HEAVEN -style mastering.

aurora72 17y ago

MP3 causes a hearing disorder called Tinnitus. There's a research paper about it here: http://weltenschule.de/Logologie/info/MP3-Gefahr/MP3-risk.html http://weltenschule.de/Logologie/info/MP3-Gefahr/MP3-risk.ht... I don't mean MP3 is totally bad but, I believe it might affect a sensitive person when the bitrate is below 160kbps and badly encoded.