|
i just realized... (pg. 5)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| DigiNut |
*sigh*
Can't argue with stupid people.
Bloody hell, it's like the morons that put 89-octane fuel in their low-end Japanese cars. It's designed for ing 87 fuel, you're getting WORSE performance using 89!
I tried another experiment in person - I took some MP3s and burned them all onto a CD, then played it for 2 of these so-called "audiophiles" who were in my class last year. I told them the CD was the original (they didn't see the CD-R, it was in the tray), and played both for them. They were both like, "Oh yeah, the CD sounds waaaay better! You can totally tell the difference!"
Then I ejected the tray - HA HA SUCKERS, I just burned a bunch of MP3s!
Honestly, if you say that you can tell the difference without ever having [successfully] done a blind test with it, then you have no credibility. E.O.D. |
|
|
| Mr.Mystery |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
*sigh*
Can't argue with stupid people.
|
Indeed :rolleyes:
Has it ever occurred to you that you might not be correct after all?
The way the mp3s are heard are very much dependent on the system/and settings played. Like I said, on my old souncard and old speakers there was no difference at all. Now I can distinctively hear the difference, especially when played at a very loud volume.
It's not like the difference is huge, but it is noticeable. In mp3s the highs become slightly sharper and the dynamics may sometimes be a bit muffled.
Bottom line:
It is useless to argue with us "stupid people" because I can hear something you can't. And yes, I've done quite a few blind tests too - it's not always noticeable but like I said, it's very much dependent on the system played. When I play mp3s with my portable player with the tiny earphones there is no difference whatsoever. |
|
|
| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mr.Mystery
...because I can hear something you can't. |
Before I comment on this masterpiece of an argument, I'm curious, do you think you can tell the difference with 256 kbps-encoded MP3s too, or just 192? |
|
|
| Mr.Mystery |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
Before I comment on this masterpiece of an argument, I'm curious, do you think you can tell the difference with 256 kbps-encoded MP3s too, or just 192? |
Not as much as 192, it depends on the encoding. |
|
|
| Luke Terry |
| u can really tell the difference on the bass alone up to 256k, below 256k and the subs are missing if you play them at a fairly loud level on good speakers. |
|
|
| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by Luke Terry
u can really tell the difference on the bass alone up to 256k, below 256k and the subs are missing if you play them at a fairly loud level on good speakers. |
Now THAT is a load of crap. Just look at the white noise graphs, there is no difference whatsoever on the low end of the spectrum.
Alright Mr. Mystery, I don't know, maybe you really can hear a difference (although at 256 kbps you'll have a hard time convincing me), but there are too many people out there who just hop on the "MP3s suck" bandwagon for me to take such claims seriously.
I have "good" speakers at home - along with a brand-new Sony CD/DVD player and a 500 watt receiver, and I can just *barely* tell the difference between the original CD's and ones that were burned after being encoded and ripped.
However, another thing I left out, was that if MP3s get ripped, burned, re-ripped, burned again, etc., and this does happen, THEN you get crap quality. It's like saving a jpeg over and over and over again. |
|
|
| Luke Terry |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
Now THAT is a load of crap. Just look at the white noise graphs, there is no difference whatsoever on the low end of the spectrum.
Alright Mr. Mystery, I don't know, maybe you really can hear a difference (although at 256 kbps you'll have a hard time convincing me), but there are too many people out there who just hop on the "MP3s suck" bandwagon for me to take such claims seriously.
I have "good" speakers at home - along with a brand-new Sony CD/DVD player and a 500 watt receiver, and I can just *barely* tell the difference between the original CD's and ones that were burned after being encoded and ripped.
However, another thing I left out, was that if MP3s get ripped, burned, re-ripped, burned again, etc., and this does happen, THEN you get crap quality. It's like saving a jpeg over and over and over again. |
right, you go convert a tune with a lot of sub, for ease say something you probably have like tiesto - traffic. if you play the orginal wave/cd/vinyl you will clearly hear the bass stand out, if you convert to 192k mp3 or less and play it over 40Db u will notice the bass has just about almost gone apart from the low mids unless your ears/speakers are battered.
and some wise words by promise resident dj, lee foster:
Introduction
MPEG, Moving Picture Experts Group, audio layer 3. Layer 3 is one of three coding schemes (layer 1, layer 2 and layer 3) for the compression of audio signals. Reducing file size with compression usually means reducing quality as well. This is where the MP3 format shines. When converting audio to the MP3 format, the file size to sound quality ratio is adjustable. Layer 3 uses perceptual audio coding and psycho acoustic compression to remove all superfluous information, more specifically, the redundant and irrelevant parts of a sound signal, the frequencies the human ear doesn't hear. It also adds a MDCT (Modified Discrete Cosine Transform) that implements a filter bank, increasing the frequency resolution 18 times higher than that of layer 2.
The result in real terms is layer 3 shrinks the original sound data from a CD, with a bitrate of 1411.2 kilobits per one second of stereo music, by a factor of 12, down to 112-128kbps, without sacrificing sound quality. The bitrate denotes the average number of bits that one second of audio data will consume. Because MP3 files are small, they can easily be transferred across the Internet.
Such a reduction in file size facilitates fast, easy transfer of music while maintaining sound quality. One of the reasons that MP3 files have grown so popular is the ability for users to share them over the Internet. At just 1MB per minute of music, MP3s are easy to swap over fast connections and take just a bit of patience to trade over slower ones. Transferring MP3s from computer, to laptop, to portable audio device, to car MP3 player to home audio mp3/CD player/burner or for that matter, any MP3 enabled audio device is incredibly easy.
MP3s are fast and easy to share, don't fade and can't be scratched. Freeware MP3 players and other software are widely available.
Disadvantages do exist however. A professional, in a recording studio, recorded the tracks on audio CDs. Many MP3s available on file sharing networks are ripped and encoded by amateurs using much cheaper systems. MP3s that are cut off, encoded incorrectly, encoded using too low a bit rate, or named improperly, amongst others, are all too common.
When programmers created software that allowed users to share MP3 files with each other, the result was the biggest thing to hit the Internet since the World Wide Web.
Compression
Without any sort of compression, it would take 1.4 megabytes to represent just one second of CD quality music in WAV format, the de facto standard for sound on PCs. But by using MPEG audio coding, the size can be shrunk down, by a factor of twelve, without losing any of the sound quality.
Though MP3 compression is considered ‘lossy’ because some data cannot be recovered after compression, the MPEG algorithm can achieve transparent, or perceptually ‘lossless’, compression.
MP3 compression is so successful for imitating CD quality music, because it utilises the concept of auditory masking. Basically, this type of masking occurs when the presence of a strong audio signal makes weaker audio signals in the proximity imperceptible.
This non-linear and adaptive threshold of hearing (the level below which a sound is not heard) varies with frequency and between individuals. Whether a person hears a sound or not, depends on the frequency of the sound, and whether the amplitude is above or below that persons hearing threshold at that particular frequency. For example, in the vicinity of a loud noise such as an airplane passing overhead, it is impossible to hear ordinary conversations due to the distortions present at the hearing thresholds of the individuals. Sounds that are inaudible due to dynamic adaptation of the hearing threshold are said to be ‘masked’
This effect is particularly relevant to music. A loud orchestra easily masks the sounds of some individual instruments playing softly. Similarly, when this orchestra is recorded, the masked instruments will not be audible to the listener. A recording, in order to achieve efficiency, should discard the inaudible data and instead use that space to store other audible data. Drawing a parallel to digital audio compression, in order to achieve efficiency, an MP3 should drop the inaudible areas of data and, in that form of compression, save space.
When sounds are digitised, the computer grabs all the sound and stores it as binary data. Even if parts of the sound are beyond the range of human hearing, they're digitised anyway. MP3 compresses the file by removing any numbers representing sounds beyond the range of human hearing.
In a nutshell, it strips away unused space and sideband harmonics, reducing the overall feel of the sound. It’s horrible acoustically. |
|
|
| Pheobius |
| what the hell is the point arguing? chances are you haven't heard most of mp3s you've dl on CD, so what is the point worrying. The tracks i have on CD sound the same to me, i don't care if that makes me look amateur or anything, but when it comes down to it does that really care? |
|
|
| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by Luke Terry
right, you go convert a tune with a lot of sub, for ease say something you probably have like tiesto - traffic. if you play the orginal wave/cd/vinyl you will clearly hear the bass stand out, if you convert to 192k mp3 or less and play it over 40Db u will notice the bass has just about almost gone apart from the low mids unless your ears/speakers are battered. |
Been there, done that, and nobody can tell the difference in a blind test. The only time anyone can tell the difference is at the upper end of the spectrum. People can't physically hear sounds below 20 Hz or so.
| quote: | | ...In a nutshell, it strips away unused space and sideband harmonics, reducing the overall feel of the sound. It’s horrible acoustically. |
I'm guessing YOU added that part, because it is absolutely and totally inconsistent with the rest of the information. Lee Foster talks about how amazing the compression is, because it's perceptually lossless, and the conclusion you draw is that it's "reducing the overall feel" and "horrible acoustically?" Bah.
Also, the term "sideband harmonic" makes no sense at all, so you clearly have no clue what you're talking about. The term "sideband" is only used when talking about modulation schemes, and MP3s aren't modulated.
Besides which, since when does a resident DJ qualify as an audio and signal processing expert? I'm sure he knows some , yeah, but give me a break, I'm not going to accept your "expert testimony" over the cold hard facts of signal processing. |
|
|
| DJ Chrono |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
Yes, and like I said before, those tests (double-blind tests, actually) have been performed, and the results were that less than 1% of people could tell the difference with a 192 kbps MP3, and absolutely 0 could tell the difference at 256 kbps and above.
|
please point me into the direction of the scientific journal that published these tests. Its really important to know all the factors in the experiment (ie what equipment was used), and unless it has been published somewhere I would not rely on that information.
| quote: |
Actually, I can explain that right here and now. Noise floor of a resistive load is proportional to its temperature: pn (noise power) = kTB, where k is Boltzmann's constant, T is the ambient temperature, and B is the signal bandwidth. The lower the value of T, the less noise is present, and hence, the higher the SNR and the better the sound quality.
|
Negative. The temperature obviously wears off when the cable is removed from the cryogenic chamber, and returns to normal tempertures.
The cryogenic freeqing is supposed to change the crystal structure of an audio cable's copper, in order to reduce residual stress, and therefor reduce the Q of resonances. |
|
|
| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Chrono
please point me into the direction of the scientific journal that published these tests. Its really important to know all the factors in the experiment (ie what equipment was used), and unless it has been published somewhere I would not rely on that information. |
It used to be on r3mix.net, which isn't up anymore. Unfortunately, you're late getting onto the MP3-bashing bandwagon and missed your chance to see how utterly wrong you are. Besides which, do you really honestly doubt the validity of them, or are you just being stubborn?
| quote: | Negative. The temperature obviously wears off when the cable is removed from the cryogenic chamber, and returns to normal tempertures.
The cryogenic freeqing is supposed to change the crystal structure of an audio cable's copper, in order to reduce residual stress, and therefor reduce the Q of resonances. |
As you requested of me, please point me to the evidence of such a thing occurring. It sounds ludicrous too - crystal structures usually change with the addition of heat, not the subtraction of it. I really don't think copper is an exception, and besides which, if you're really going for quality, why would you pay all that for a frozen copper cable as opposed to a room-temperature gold or silver one?
I don't think that the cable would warm up *that* quickly, considering that it's been at -210° C. Heat transfer takes time, especially through an insulated cable.
This is utterly stupid - I've shown ample evidence for how the differences between CD audio and high-end MP3 are almost imperceptible, and yet you people continue to post this crap about how you can "hear" the difference. Well show some goddamn evidence, I don't care what you think you hear! I hear the voices of the dead!
A lot of you guys are basing your comparisons on MP3's that were encoded poorly, or encoded years ago when the technology wasn't very good. 256 kbps LAME using the current version is considered archival quality - 192 is one step lower and only the most sensitive ears can tell the difference. And ears that have been exposed to excess-130 dBW club noise aren't likely to be all that sensitive anymore. |
|
|
| Orbax |
| APE formats guys, im not reading this thread, but off newsgroups you can get 800kbit studio quality music. each song is 30 megs or so. Its awesome. |
|
|
|
|
