Telling the difference between mp3 and flac quality

[eugene]

hm, that's true, didn't know this. just don't tell it to what.cd people though, they'll go insane.

i played with it a bit while it's true the cutoff can be extended the 16khz shelf is visible nonetheless

[modey]

was curious to see whether browser does something to the sound

I only ever listen to music through netscape navigator it has a nice warm sound compared to chrome's cold brittle delivery

[Hail Sagan]

The difference is about $3 if you're buying from a label's website. No extra charge on bandcamp though since there shouldn't be any real reason whatsofuckingever for it costing more in the first fucking place.

[Adieu]

lol

[logakght]

I can't. There's none other than price.

[Adieu]

I know I can definitely tell the difference, and that's why I'm subscribed to TIDAL.

 

do you also use one of these?

 

[Guest cult fiction]

I like to unplug my headphones halfway so you get phase cancellation and hear all sorts of swishing and swirling in low bitrate mp3s

[nobody]

 

I know I can definitely tell the difference, and that's why I'm subscribed to TIDAL.

 

do you also use one of these?

 

 

 

Yeah except mine is a pentagonal prism and it can only play RealAudio files

 

 

I like to unplug my headphones halfway so you get phase cancellation and hear all sorts of swishing and swirling in low bitrate mp3s

 

That is a cool effect

[cear]

The difference is about $3 if you're buying from a label's website. No extra charge on bandcamp though since there shouldn't be any real reason whatsofuckingever for it costing more in the first fucking place.

bandwidth

[mcbpete]

I like to unplug my headphones halfway so you get phase cancellation and hear all sorts of swishing and swirling in low bitrate mp3s

That's how I accidentally heard Oversteps the first time, took me till track 3 to notice what I'd done!

[malaria]

Only got the vocal track right; I picked 320 on everything else.. Good thing I like 320!

[eugene]

i have a feeling that if we repeat those tests we will get completely different results...

[beerwolf]

I might just ask my magician uncle peter to sort this out, 'cause I'm gonna pack my little rucksack and leave home, though I might be back for teatime

[beerwolf]

morning

 

so glad I edited that ^^

 

have a good day

[logakght]

 

I like to unplug my headphones halfway so you get phase cancellation and hear all sorts of swishing and swirling in low bitrate mp3s

That's how I accidentally heard Oversteps the first time, took me till track 3 to notice what I'd done!

 

 

lel at your avatar

[Guest mrx]

got 5/6. picked 320 on the neil young sample.

[dumplings]

1/6 lol. The Jay Z track. However, I managed to pick out all the low bitrate from the 320's, for whatever that's worth.

[th555]

I converted all my mp3s to FLAC and everything sounds so much better now.

[pcock]

just did this on my genelecs in the studio, couldnt tell the difference on any of them. I think im going a bit deaf though.

[Twelvetrees]

I got the WAV only once on my laptop speakers. It's easy to tell between 320 and 128 but between 320 and lossless is difficult for me, even on good headphones.

[BUNKUM]

Not done this yet but I'm curious to know how much of a difference the subject matter makes? I imagine it's easier to spot the compression on sounds our brains are familiar with (guitar, voice, etc). With lots of electronic music there's no reference to what a high quality version of a track should sound like. Or do some of you know what compression does to a particular sound whether you're familiar with it or not?

[Avarik]

I failed the Jay-Z track because I couldn't fucking stand to hear it

[chim]

Not done this yet but I'm curious to know how much of a difference the subject matter makes? I imagine it's easier to spot the compression on sounds our brains are familiar with (guitar, voice, etc). With lots of electronic music there's no reference to what a high quality version of a track should sound like. Or do some of you know what compression does to a particular sound whether you're familiar with it or not?

Mp3 compression's effect on sibilance, high frequencies and sharp transients tend to give it away, in conjunction with the sense of spatial depth that, aside from reverb, usually depends on frequencies at the upper threshold. Hihats are usually the first to suffer (just look at soundcloud uploads). The Katy Perry track was the easiest for me because of the clap sound. Sharp transients like that can get slayed already at 320kbps. The Coldplay track is muffled and would have been very difficult it didn't have a lot of distortion from aggressive mastering that became more obvious at higher bit rates.

 

In my experience, mp3 can handle sparse audio quite well, like ambient music and solo instrumentation, unless it's a delicate and characterful acoustic instrument like guitar or violin. Pure sine waves and other sounds with few harmonics can go virtually unscathed from severe encoding.

 

Highly dynamic material like classical music demands lossless encoding - the piano in the classical sample of the test sounds so brilliant and defined that you can nearly taste it in the wav version. Complex waveforms and tracks with a lot of layers and percussion tend to suffer heavily from mp3 compression as well, and a lot of electronic music falls under this category. You get a howling sound at lower bit rates that has been dubbed "the space monkeys" by engineers. Synth parts lose their brilliance and definition whenever drums are heard, although this applies for recorded instruments as well, but common synth sawtooth waves are extremely rich in harmonics and give it away more obviously. I found the Tom's Diner track quite difficult for several reasons; it's a single track of audio, it was the benchmark for the original mp3 encoding algorithms, it didn't have very pronounced "s"-sounds and it was recorded in the early 80s - the somewhat inferior recording quality, compared to modern equipment, could be mistaken for a lossy encoding. I think the "resolution" of one of the unintentional high frequency pops/clicks gave it away for me.

[Guest igloos unlmtd]

I always loved Harmonic 313 / Mark Pritchard's mp3 bitrate test : http://warp.net/news/laboratories-test-no-1/

 

What I don't understand is why music is going backward in time with sound quality. Most music these days has the capability of being released in 24bit (or better yet - 32bit floating) with much higher sample rates... Anyone who has worked in 24 bit then dithered down to 16bit can tell you that there is a noticeable sound quality difference especially when it comes to wide stereophonic space.

 

Personally, I hate being forced to buy music in something as low quality as 320 files.. I feel like this quality should be free or close to free..

 

I listen a lot with headphones - especially with highly textural listening music. I wanna go deep... totally lose myself in the experience.

 

In my opinion, I'd like to see the future of music be like this.. What if we all had really cool modern looking hard drives totally optimized for music.. maybe some built in dac's that are totally wicked with a mega stereophonic spread.

 

Which if you like stereo music or even a 3D sound (my personal favorite) then low quality files don't cut it.