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Loud, Louder, Loudest: The Tradeoff of MP3s

I just bumped into a great article in the Wall Street Journal regarding the the intricate differences in sound of a compressed music file versus an uncompressed studio recording. It's very interesting and sheds some light on how record labels master cds for the ipod generation and so forth.

quote:

Are Technology Limits In MP3s and iPods Ruining Pop Music? September 12, 2007 by Lee Gomes Wall Street Journal If it seems like you are listening to music more but enjoying it less, some people in the recording industry say they know why. They blame that iPod that you can't live without, along with all the compressed MP3 music files you've loaded on it. Those who work behind-the-mic in the music industry -- producers, engineers, mixers and the like -- say they increasingly assume their recordings will be heard as MP3s on an iPod music player. That combination is thus becoming the "reference platform" used as a test of how a track should sound. (Movie makers make much the same complaint when they see their filmed images in low-quality digital form.) But because both compressed music and the iPod's relatively low-quality earbuds have many limitations, music producers fret that they are engineering music to a technical lowest common denominator. The result, many say, is music that is loud but harsh and flat, and thus not enjoyable for long periods of time. "Right now, when you are done recording a track, the first thing the band does is to load it onto an iPod and give it a listen," said Alan Douches, who has worked with Fleetwood Mac and others. "Years ago, we might have checked the sound of a track on a Walkman, but no one believed that was the best it could sound. Today, young artists think MP3s are a high-quality medium and the iPod is state-of-the-art sound." It isn't. Producers and engineers say there are many ways they might change a track to accommodate an iPod MP3. Sometimes, the changes are for the worse. For example, says veteran Los Angeles studio owner Skip Saylor, high frequencies that might seem splendid on a CD might not sound as good as an MP3 file and so will get taken out of the mix. "The result might make you happy on an MP3, but it wouldn't make you happy on a CD," he says. "Am I glad I am doing this? No. But it's the real world and so you make adjustments." This shift to compressed music heard via an iPod is occurring at the same time as another music trend that bothers audiophiles: Music today is released at higher volume levels than ever before, on the assumption that louder music sells better. The process of boosting volume, though, tends to eliminate a track's distinct highs and lows. As a result, contemporary pop music has a characteristic sound, says veteran L.A. engineer Jack Joseph Puig, whose credits include the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. "Ten years ago, music was warmer; it was rich and thick, with more tones and more 'real power.' But newer records are more brittle and bright. They have what I call 'implied power.' It's all done with delays and reverbs and compression to fool your brain." All these engineers tend to be audiophiles, the sort who would fuss over a track to make it perfect. But they're beginning to wonder if they should bother. "I care about quality, even though the kid on the street might like what he hears on MySpace, which is even worse than an MP3," said Stuart Brawley, an L.A. engineer who has recorded Cher and Michael Jackson. "We try to make the best quality sound we can, but we increasingly have to be realistic about how much time we can spend doing it." Howard Benson, who has done work for Santana and Chris Daughtry, says members of a studio recording crew will sometimes complain after a session, "I just spent all this time getting the greatest guitar and drums solo, and it ends up as an MP3." Even those who complain about MP3s say they own and enjoy iPods, and appreciate how they have made music so widely available. They just wish, they say, the device wasn't setting the technical standard for how music gets made. Of course, not all music producers agree that MP3s and iPods are affecting music in quite so bad a way. Larry Klein, noted for his work with Joni Mitchell, said, "If something sounds really good on an average pair of speakers, it will sound great on earbuds. I can't imagine mixing a record so that it sounds better on earbuds." And Clif Magness, who has recorded with Kelly Clarkson and Clay Aiken, says music recorded by young artists in living rooms via MP3s, while technically crude, can sometimes have an urgency and immediacy that might be missing from slick studio projects. When CDs were first introduced, they were regarded as cold and flat, compared with vinyl. But their sound improved as engineers learned the medium, a process many hope will happen again with MP3s and portable music players. Michael Bradford, who has produced Kid Rock, notes that as storage and bandwidth capabilities grow, music won't need to be as compressed. Even now, some audio buffs, such as Stereophile magazine columnist Michael Fremer, insist on a best-of-both-worlds approach to digital music. He uses $500 earbuds with his iPod to listen to digital, but uncompressed, music he captures from vinyl LPs. Still, engineers experience some nostalgia about earlier technologies. Says Mr. Saylor, "What we've lost with this new era of massive compression and low fidelity are the records that sounds so good that you get lost in them. "Dark Side of the Moon" -- records like that just aren't being made today." Source: http://online.wsj.com/public/articl...6892024096.html

This is what it boils down to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

Giving the people what they want.

It's the fast food attitude toward music. As long as it makes their mouths water and gets their money in our pockets, right?

Been bitching about this for a while now, but then I tend to make use of headphones that will bring out MP3 limitations. I find a 192kbs format fairly good though.

But yeah, the whole "crank that volume so it'll sound good on crap iPod buds" bit makes my blood boil. You're just getting assaulted by a wall of sound that lacks dynamics, which is only good if the music is intended to be listened as such (like noizecore, heh).

Folks should really take a listen to Brian Wilson's Smile to hear how lovely music can sound even today using older recording techniques.

quote:

Today, young artists think MP3s are a high-quality medium and the iPod is state-of-the-art sound.

Entirely their fault.

extreme compressing and limiting has been a problem for few years already. there seems to be a competition who has the loudest tracks. very sad indeed, but what can you do. i do hope that one day they reach the max (when all the masters just look like a rectangle) and they decide that dynamics are more important than the volume.

i've personally tried to keep my collections at decent levels. editing all too much limited tracks to lower volumes. so that they are as "loud" as other tracks in my collection, but ofcourse sound shittier (messy mixing etc) since someone killed the dynamics.

This is relevant to rock jazz and acoustic genres.
These genres want to capture performances in live rooms and making the recording too loud makes the track sound artificial.

But electronic music has always been artificial and mechanical and has always been loud.
Always.
On EDM the sounds and samples are already very very compressed. This is the nature of the dance genre.
Step sequencers... akai samplers 808s 909s SP1200s.
It is also going on vinyl so it is important to get the track sounding as loud as you can to cover up the hiss. It will either be played on a radio which is as loud as sound gets (The louder the sound the further they reach)... or in clubs.
In either case a brickwall limiter is on the output pulled all the way down...

What makes a track sound good is the quality of the gear that is pumping volume into the music. While my waves L2 is nice it certaintly won't compare to the 20.000 limiters they have at the sony mastering studios.

Gear for the radio and broadcast market costs a fortune because they know that they will push the sound into clipping. It is important that that happens in a way that is musical and when you are shooting the superball for ex. to 50.000.000 people there is no room for compomise you need the best regardless of the cost.
This is why the engineers mixing the britney spears cd can push the fuck out of it and still make it sound warmer than your production.

It is good that you read up and learn about stuff like ''the loudness war'' but know when that info does not apply to your genre coz arguing that ''our trance track does not sound as natural as the room and instruments we miked up to capture the trance performers'' or that ''we are losing the warm fidelity and dynamics of trance'' makes you look silly.

if they are going to talk about ipods, they might as well discuss AAC which is
1. the codec used for music from iTunes
1a. superior to MP3.

quote:

Originally posted by a98 extreme compressing and limiting has been a problem for few years already. there seems to be a competition who has the loudest tracks. very sad indeed, but what can you do. i do hope that one day they reach the max (when all the masters just look like a rectangle) and they decide that dynamics are more important than the volume. i've personally tried to keep my collections at decent levels. editing all too much limited tracks to lower volumes. so that they are as "loud" as other tracks in my collection, but ofcourse sound shittier (messy mixing etc) since someone killed the dynamics.

No it hasn't.

You haven't heard what overcompression is until you have got a compressor, run it before the output stage of your amp with a threshold of -60dB (or thereabouts) and a compression ratio of 10:1 (or thereabouts). Then normalise the output to 0dB. Be sure to turn down your amp output level ALOT because it will be loud.

That is overcompression. If you think you have heard anything like that in professionally released music you have got to be out of your mind.

Compressors are tools that control gain. A paintbrush is a tool that controls the application of paint. Like a palette knife.

How you use them is a matter of preference and appropriateness with respect to what has to be done.

You can no more say modern music has too much compression as you can say that William Faulkner 'doesn't use enough punctuation'. Or Mark Rothko 'doesn't use enough colours.'

So when I hear this bullshit repeated for the nth time I am reminded of that scene in Amadeus where Mozart is told 'your work is good but it has too many notes'. To which Mozart replies perplexedly 'but sir, the peice neither has too many nor too few notes. It has exactly the number of notes required. No more, no less.'

If you are talking about high level outputs in clubs then that is another issue. You use limiters at the end of the signal chain to prevent stray clips from destroying the soundsystem. The people listening to the music at 116dB wear properly fitted earplugs - as any clubber should because any sound at 116dB is destroying your middle and inner ear progressively in a matter of minutes. You would be a fool not to do this.

But as soon as you have people in 'the industry' telling you what is and is not creatively acceptible you have the end of music as art. Its even more hilarious when engineers say stupid shit like 'music used to be warmer and fuller with more tone'. All I read is setence full of onomatopaeic words which don't describe sound adequately.

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative stuff..

you can say that a chainsaw is very noisy though it's no where in the same level as a jet plane or a bomb for instance.

for some people it doesn't have to be that much limited it to become too limited. for me if the RMS values are more than -12dB, the track is overlimited. and even -12db is kinda too much, -13dB is enough.
one track i recently bought had the rms in -9.5dB, you can imaging how loud it is.

the spectrum looks like this:

quote:

Originally posted by a98 you can say that a chainsaw is very noisy though it's no where in the same level as a jet plane or a bomb for instance. for some people it doesn't have to be that much limited it to become too limited. for me if the RMS values are more than -12dB, the track is overlimited. and even -12db is kinda too much, -13dB is enough. one track i recently bought had the rms in -9.5dB, you can imaging how loud it is. the spectrum looks like this:

This is where you fuck up. That image you posted is from Sony Soundforge and the waveform is zoomed all the way out. Bear in mind that you can zoom in to view individual samples. In a 44.1khz recording that is 44,100 samples per second. You will note that if you zoom in only a small degree you will begin to make out individual transients much better and even electronic dance music has massive dynamic range. I'll post some example pictures in a while to show you exactly what I mean.

About RMS and the idea that 'RMS peak level is rising'. What do you expect for a hard rock recording or a dance anthem? Oasis's 'Definitely Maybe' is a loud, brash rock recording and it is recorded in a loud and brash way.

Do you expect Oasis to make a record that is normalised to -3dB with no compression? Back in the day Noel Gallagher used to just swipe all the volume and EQ dials on his amp to 10. It is telling because all of this is documented in the film 'There we were now here we are' and they also note that they went through about 10 engineers before they found one who was actually capable of producing something which captured what Oasis sounded like live. And that guy brickwalled every track.

You also realise that there are no standard measurements for RMS peak level calculation seeing as the window in which peak level detection occurs and is averaged varies massively? In soundforge you can vary the size of this window from 5ms to 1000ms. Thats a huge difference when calculating average peak level and the results will vary massively depending on the size of said window. Some meters and dynamic processors have RMS peak level detection that goes up to 3000ms.

Also you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what sound pressure level is.

You don't need to drive an ear bud headphone with anywhere near as much power as you do a full PA system but many earbud headphones are capable of generating exactly the same sound pressure level in the ear canal causing exactly the same amount of damage to your inner ear.

A chainsaw, a plane, an earbud headphone. It doesn't matter what it is. All it needs is close enough proximity to the ear to generate the same sound pressure level in the ear canal and it causes the same damage. It can also be safely listened to for the same amount of time before it starts permanently damaging your ear. For an SPL of 116dB in the ear canal you are talking a couple of minutes at most before it starts fucking your middle and inner ear. How that pressure level is generated is meaningless.

So if you expose your ear to this kind of SPL on even an occassional basis you should wear fitted earplugs.

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative This is where you fuck up. That image you posted is from Sony Soundforge and the waveform is zoomed all the way out.

only way to see the difference in the spectrum is when it's zoomed to full size. one small part of the song doesn't tell anything about the overall dynamics. and even then the visual doesn't really tell anything, i just wanted to show how it looked.

recording something loud has nothing to do with the overall dynamics of the track. mixing and mastering process is what counts. and rock music is rock music, they can do what ever they want i don't care.

and a track being a dance anthem doesn't mean it has to be limited too much. it will probably sound a lot better if it has more dynamics when it's played loud in a club.

and ofcourse mastering/overlimiting can be a form of art too, unfortunetly in dance music 99% of the case the artist doesn't get to choose how the track is mastered. so if a label decides to compress it flat, it isn't nessasery what the artist wanted from the track.

my point was just that overlimiting ruins the songs in my opinnion. if the mixing hasn't been done perfectly, it will make the song sound really messy. ofcourse it's something the artist/label decided to do, but that doesn't mean i have to put up with it and listen to that.
too much limited/compressed track has to be really good for me to still wanna enjoy it.

but yeah whatever, i don't wanna argue with you anymore, we're clearly on the wrong page. and you seem to be an expert on mastering though you've probably never studied or done it professionally.

quote:

Originally posted by a98 though you've probably never studied or done it professionally.

Oh I've studied it and mastered my own tracks. I've never done it professionally because being quite honest, I suck at it. The basic principles however are quite simple.

I will demonstrate how using any waveform analysis zoomed out to a ratio in excess of 1:16,384 samples will make any trance tune look like a big blue rectangle.

This is a single bar drum loop (duration = 1.855 seconds or 81,840 samples) that I simply cloned to bring the total length of the audio file to 2 minutes 57.771 seconds (or 7,839,744 samples). It is recorded at 32 bit float (uncompressed) 44,100hz.

There is no dynamic compression on any individual instruments nor is there any compression on the master bus.

Waveform fully zoomed out (ratio 1:16384 samples):


Note that you cannot make out individual transients very well because each kickdrum has a duration of between 60 and 120 ms (depending on if you add in the decay phase of the drum). Zoomed out this far, you cannot make out individual high hats.

End of waveform zoomed in ratio 1:2048 samples:


End of waveform zoomed in 1:128 samples:


Now you can begin to make out individual kick drums exposing that there is in fact massive dynamic range. It just occurs regularly during a very short time frame (less than 5ms). You can also make out the open high hats and you can tell which kick drums the snare strikes on.

Kickdrum zoomed in to show the highest dynamic range (in excess of 85dB, zoom ratio 1:1):


Note that the duration of the highlighted section representing the highest dynamic range (the biggest difference between the loudest and quietest part of the sound) is 0.003 seconds.

In dance music which has a constant metronomic kickdrum at 130bpm (as this demonstration shows will have a fullscale burst in loudness lasting between 10 and 30 milliseconds (the duration of the initial peak of the kick drum) 4 times every 1.851 seconds of playback.

Therefore if you take a trance tune with no breakdowns and a kickdrum playing throughout at this tempo with a duration of 3 minutes or greater you look at the waveform in soundforge zoomed out fully - you will get a big blue rectangle. In short, it proves nothing as I have already mentioned - this demonstration has no compression on it. I even deliberately recorded it -6dB under soundforge's clip indictor and then normalised the result to -0.3dB.

Hell, I'll upload the audio file if you want but its boring as hell. Its just a bass drum, an open hihat, a snare drum and a closed hat striking on 1/8ths.

Conclusion:

You are wrong.

quote:

Originally posted by a98 and ofcourse mastering/overlimiting can be a form of art too, unfortunetly in dance music 99% of the case the artist doesn't get to choose how the track is mastered. so if a label decides to compress it flat, it isn't nessasery what the artist wanted from the track. my point was just that overlimiting ruins the songs in my opinnion. if the mixing hasn't been done perfectly, it will make the song sound really messy. ofcourse it's something the artist/label decided to do, but that doesn't mean i have to put up with it and listen to that. too much limited/compressed track has to be really good for me to still wanna enjoy it.

I admit to not exactly liking the majority of music marketing folks that I have met in Dublin's underground music scene (I think most of them are quite honestly, a bunch of leeches) but you make it sound as if the engineer is chained to his mixing console with a marketting executive whipping his back with a square mustache and shouting 'NOT LOUD ENOUGH. WE NEED MORE POWER.'

It really doesn't work like this and if an engineer decides to mix a track a certain way, there is a very good reason for doing it. Engineer's aren't forced to do anything although they do operate on the instructions of their client, they are free to voice their concerns and its not like the average exec doesn't even know what the hell dynamic range compression is anyway. You can always push it far enough and prove that it sounds shit. But I honestly haven't heard anything approaching 'overcompression' in professionally released music. Go get a compressor and fiddle around with it. You will be surprised how far you can go.

The article is ridiculous.

People enjoyed lo-fi recordings of music for over 100 years before digital compression came around. Good music is good music, and is enjoyed at any level regardless. It's a fallacy to assume that the enjoyment of music decreases because of the compression algorithms of mp3s. Rather, people aren't enjoying the music anymore because the music is uncreative, derivative dreck.

And if I may wager a guess, the reason for that is probably the rise of studio wizardry, techniques, and sound engineering in the last 20 years. Audio engineering has come to dominate music production so completely that it has neutered the entire songwriting process.

In much the same way Hollywood movies are now 10% scriptwriting, 10% principle production and direction, and 80% post-production and digital effects, so to in music has there been an over-reliance on software, computers, studio effects and processors to make hit music.

Topnotch music production will make a good song better. But it can never make a bad song good, no matter how much it sugarcoats it in stupid audio tricks.

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative Its even more hilarious when engineers say stupid shit like 'music used to be warmer and fuller with more tone'. All I read is setence full of onomatopaeic words which don't describe sound adequately.

I don't know what sentence that was then, because there isn't a single onomatopoeia in that quote.

quote:

Originally posted by Ishkur The article is ridiculous. People enjoyed lo-fi recordings of music for over 100 years before digital compression came around. Good music is good music, and is enjoyed at any level regardless. It's a fallacy to assume that the enjoyment of music decreases because of the compression algorithms of mp3s. Rather, people aren't enjoying the music anymore because the music is uncreative, derivative dreck.

I generally agree, in so far as this incessant bitching by audiophiles about minute sound quality is missing the point of music. You get the impression sometimes that these people are listening to music purely for the sound quality: sonic fireworks that evoke "oohs" and "ahhs".

I do think sound quality is important to an extent though, which is why I don't ever bog-standard "ear buds" to listen to music, because you miss half of what is actually there. If a track is specifically made to work through a full sound such as deep bass, if you cut that away the track doesn't work as well. But that is most probably a different issue altogether.

When your goal is to bludgeon senses dulled by near-constant exposure to music, loudness is the way to go. That's the thing, for people in the richer countries music is everywhere and cheap, or free if you're content to listen to just MP3s from file-sharing. Most users of this site are part of the first generation of people for whom all of this seems utterly natural, who entered their middle school or high school years (those formative ones for musical taste and habits) when Napster was taking off, or even when it had died down and been replaced by other programs.

Of course, with few exceptions the pop industry has never traded in subtlety or dynamic ebb and flow. It's about giving people the aural equivalent of a bathroom stall quickie, bang bang bang and on to the next attraction. It's just that as what was once disposable becomes even more so, certain trends that always existed have come to a crescendo.

I wonder if producers who are mixing and mastering a record for an independent label do the same thing. Because if this only applies to mainstream music - I couldn't care less.

quote:

Originally posted by ibizzzaaa I wonder if producers who are mixing and mastering a record for an independent label do the same thing. Because if this only applies to mainstream music - I couldn't care less.

Nope, it's happening with a lot of dance music too.

By the way:

quote:

Is the human race evolving to become deafer? The thought suddenly occurred to me this morning that with all the constant noise citizens of big cities are exposed to, not just at nightclubs or while using our mp3 players, but at movie theatres, in the car, on the street, or at work, that we may perhaps be evolving to be deafer. All this exposure to loud noise can only convince our bodies to do what they've been doing for the better part of 4 million years - adapt. Like an arms race, as nightclubs crank the music louder and louder, the new generation stops hearing quieter sounds that their grandparents had no trouble with. As a result, the clubs crank the music even louder, in a never-ending cycle. Noise wars. At any rate, it would certainly explain why Americans speak so loudly; perhaps they are more highly evolved that the rest of us?

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J I don't know what sentence that was then, because there isn't a single onomatopoeia in that quote.

Eugh. Wrong use of the term but you know exactly what is meant. Terms like 'warm' and 'rich' and 'fat' and 'tone' are truly meaningless descriptors because everyone has a different idea of these sound like.

Also, that 'is the human race becoming deafer?' article is bollocks. Nobody exposes themselves to levels of sound comparable to that in a nightclub on a regular basis without destroying their ears completely. You do not adapt to this destruction to any meaningful degree as damage to the ear is a function of SPL in the ear canal and you can calculate pretty accurately the time it takes before damage occurs at any given SPL. Even if you did, it would simply take a little longer to have the same effect.

Besides, it has only really been possible to reproduce music at massive amplitudes since the advent of the valve amplifier so we are talking approximately 75 years since this has even been an issue with music.

Talking about any sort of evolution or physical within a maximum 75 year period (1 to 2 generations) is simply ridiculous.

quote:

Originally posted by Ishkur And if I may wager a guess, the reason for that is probably the rise of studio wizardry, techniques, and sound engineering in the last 20 years. Audio engineering has come to dominate music production so completely that it has neutered the entire songwriting process. In much the same way Hollywood movies are now 10% scriptwriting, 10% principle production and direction, and 80% post-production and digital effects, so to in music has there been an over-reliance on software, computers, studio effects and processors to make hit music.

Hardly. Production/post production are just steps in the song writing process and they are done using a bunch of fairly standard tools that manipulate the volume, frequency and phase of the appropriate sound.

Do not fall into the trap of blaming the technology for the failure of the producer/songwriter to deliver the goods. The failure is always human.

One thing though. How on earth did you manage to figure that 80% of the film process is post production? Even in a massive CGI film, half the work is the script, screenplay, filming process, production process and editting.

You can't stick CGI into a scene if you haven't filmed it yet or staged it with actors.

Yeah, true... but let's be honest here about three things.

Thing the First!
Very few people would be able to tell the difference between CD quality music and a 320 kbps mp3. Furthermore, who says that "CD quality" gets to be the best quality it can be? It's just another logical ceiling.

Thing the Second!
This doesn't really apply to electronic music. Most of our tracks are made with electronic instruments and on PCs, the acoustics and frequencies he's talking about are usually even cut right out of trance music for most instruments to make other instruments clearer in that range.

Thing the Third!
Only 1 in 10,000 consumers (or downloaders) of mp3s will even have a pair of speakers that can accurately replicate the sound. Did you spend $1,200 on your speakers? If not, you're not even in the audio mid-range. The best, cleanest, most well engineered and produced CD Quality track means NOTHING when played in shitty iPod headphones or crap computer speakers.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles When your goal is to bludgeon senses dulled by near-constant exposure to music, loudness is the way to go. That's the thing, for people in the richer countries music is everywhere and cheap, or free if you're content to listen to just MP3s from file-sharing. Most users of this site are part of the first generation of people for whom all of this seems utterly natural, who entered their middle school or high school years (those formative ones for musical taste and habits) when Napster was taking off, or even when it had died down and been replaced by other programs. Of course, with few exceptions the pop industry has never traded in subtlety or dynamic ebb and flow. It's about giving people the aural equivalent of a bathroom stall quickie, bang bang bang and on to the next attraction. It's just that as what was once disposable becomes even more so, certain trends that always existed have come to a crescendo.

Yup.

It's like telling advertising firms to make simple black and white stills to advertise products, when we are all awash in the constant bombardment of flashing neon signs, digital banners, internet advertisements and logos, fast paced catch lines, etc etc

lol. i only listen to music on ipod or crappy comp speakers.. maybe i should invest a bit, i might be blown away

whats a fair price for good speakers :/ actually i got to save for a car first.. ill buy up all the luxuries next year

quote:

Originally posted by stevo_0 lol. i only listen to music on ipod or crappy comp speakers.. maybe i should invest a bit, i might be blown away whats a fair price for good speakers :/ actually i got to save for a car first.. ill buy up all the luxuries next year

Try the M-Audio BX5as to start.. relatively cheap, but it will allow you to see what I'm talking about.

I think of my audio equipment as one of the most vital necessities for a good life. Afterall, I listen to music almost constantly.

It's the same as how I wouldn't sleep on a cheap matress/pillow/etc... afterall, we spend 1/3rd of our lives sleeping.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Shibby Thing the First! Very few people would be able to tell the difference between CD quality music and a 320 kbps mp3. Furthermore, who says that "CD quality" gets to be the best quality it can be? It's just another logical ceiling.

Very few? How about no one? The reason 192 kbps is considered so widely acceptable is that it's damn near impossible then to hear the difference. 320 I indistinguishable to everyone except dogs and dolphins. But we're not making music for them, are we?

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