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Music! Better quality!

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I find that 256kbps VBR from AmazonMP3 is more than suitable for every day listening, and it sounds great in my truck.
 
Arkaign said:
First, yes I know this is more topically relevant to the A/V & Home Theater section, but I think I'll get more regular-person responses and thoughts here in OT, so here goes :

I've been used to regular MP3s and AAC (iTunes store stuff) for quite a long time, and I never thought much about it. The quality seemed decent enough. Well recently, I was at a buddies place and was listening to some tunes (Pink Floyd, Satriani, etc) and commented that his system sounded really damned good. He proceeded to tell me that it wasn't the system so much as the source. He had a library of FLAC lossless stuff that had been transferred by audio nerds from really good vinyl sources. We switched back and forth from some of the duplicates that were on his Ipod from the iTunes store and the FLAC stuff, and jesus what a difference. Particularly notable was the crisp seperation of sounds towards the high end, and the discernible punch of the low end as well.

Came home, checked it out on my much less expensive hardware, and sure enough, a big difference.

Anyone else notice this?

Yes, I know I'm probably many years behind the cue ball on this one.

Makes me wonder when/if any industry movers and shakers will start offering a really decent digital audio player/file format. I imagine if Apple brought out iTunes HD Audio section, a lot of people would buy much of their libraries all over again just for the big difference in quality.

Back to tunes...
Click to expand...


This has nothing to do with the compression and everything to do with the mastering. If you take those FLACs and convert them to 192 mp3, you likely won't be able to hear a difference.

What your friend demonstrated to you is the effect the "loudness war" has had on music in the past couple decades. Even old music, when reissued, is being released with dynamically compressed mastering and even heavy clipping.

The reason for the change is twofold: The most cited reason is so that the music sounds louder on the radio than other songs. The more important one (IMO) is that most people listen to music in noisy environments nowdays. It's hard to hear quiet tones while driving in a car, or over crappy earbuds on a busy street, so they flatten out the mastering so that you can hear everything no matter how loud the background noise.

There are some labels/producers that still make music with a high dynamic range (T Bone Burnett comes to mind), and some labels will separately master their vinyl and SACD prints to have better sound.
 
In my experience, modern vinyl sounds the same as modern CDs due to the way music is produced anymore. People claim things sound "warmer" on vinyl, but that's because of the slight difference in sound the hardware makes. You can equalize your digital output to sound exactly the same if all other equipment is the same as well. Unless they master the vinyl different than the CD, there's no difference on identical hardware properly leveled.
 
zokudu said:
I use FLAC just because I can transcode it without the huge loss in quality lossy -> lossy gives. I can't hear the difference between a FLAC and a -V0 but if I'm paying for it I have to have FLAC.

I also wouldn't say vinyl is innately better than CD. Its just different and depends on a mastering a lot more than the actual medium. Thats why a lot of older stuff may sound better on vinyl than their modern CD counterparts they're mastered differently.
Click to expand...

There have probably been millions of words written by audiophiles on this subject, but you summed up the essential truths in two short paragraphs.

Personally I rip all my CDs to FLAC. Storage is cheap, you might as well go for a 100% perfect copy. If I later want to play something on a portable player, its simple to make a mp3 copy off the FLAC.

I've A-B'd properly done FLACs from both CDs and vinyl of the same songs, the difference is barely detectable by anything less than dog ears, if it's detectable at all. I own maybe a 1000 lps, all are in storage.
 
gorcorps said:
In my experience, modern vinyl sounds the same as modern CDs due to the way music is produced anymore. People claim things sound "warmer" on vinyl, but that's because of the slight difference in sound the hardware makes. You can equalize your digital output to sound exactly the same if all other equipment is the same as well. Unless they master the vinyl different than the CD, there's no difference on identical hardware properly leveled.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is the technician that controls the setup. Although some use (to much) dithering a lot for digital recordings. But when listening to classical music and having heard a good recording of some musical piece. Up till now i know immidialtely if it is MP3 or other compression. I think this is because of the compression algorithm assumes that high frequency harmonics are not detected by the human hearing threshold. But these harmonics describe the attack and decay of the sound from an instrument. Especially with a piano or plucked string instrument (guitar or plucked violin)it is easily detectable. When striking a key on a piano, there are a lot of harmonics, most higher then what we can hear. But the harmonics define the timbre of the sound.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/sound/timbre.html


harcon.gif



Dithering :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither
 
Last edited:
gorcorps said:
In my experience, modern vinyl sounds the same as modern CDs due to the way music is produced anymore. People claim things sound "warmer" on vinyl, but that's because of the slight difference in sound the hardware makes. You can equalize your digital output to sound exactly the same if all other equipment is the same as well. Unless they master the vinyl different than the CD, there's no difference on identical hardware properly leveled.
Click to expand...

I agree completely. Not to mention the fact that the record will lose sound quality slowly over time.

They are, however, increasingly mastering the vinyl discs differently from the CDs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/business/media/23petty.html?ref=business
 
crashtestdummy said:
This has nothing to do with the compression and everything to do with the mastering. If you take those FLACs and convert them to 192 mp3, you likely won't be able to hear a difference.

What your friend demonstrated to you is the effect the "loudness war" has had on music in the past couple decades. Even old music, when reissued, is being released with dynamically compressed mastering and even heavy clipping.

The reason for the change is twofold: The most cited reason is so that the music sounds louder on the radio than other songs. The more important one (IMO) is that most people listen to music in noisy environments nowdays. It's hard to hear quiet tones while driving in a car, or over crappy earbuds on a busy street, so they flatten out the mastering so that you can hear everything no matter how loud the background noise.

There are some labels/producers that still make music with a high dynamic range (T Bone Burnett comes to mind), and some labels will separately master their vinyl and SACD prints to have better sound.
Click to expand...

This. dynamic compression is really screwing up sound quality.
 
crashtestdummy said:
This has nothing to do with the compression and everything to do with the mastering. If you take those FLACs and convert them to 192 mp3, you likely won't be able to hear a difference.

What your friend demonstrated to you is the effect the "loudness war" has had on music in the past couple decades. Even old music, when reissued, is being released with dynamically compressed mastering and even heavy clipping.

The reason for the change is twofold: The most cited reason is so that the music sounds louder on the radio than other songs. The more important one (IMO) is that most people listen to music in noisy environments nowdays. It's hard to hear quiet tones while driving in a car, or over crappy earbuds on a busy street, so they flatten out the mastering so that you can hear everything no matter how loud the background noise.

There are some labels/producers that still make music with a high dynamic range (T Bone Burnett comes to mind), and some labels will separately master their vinyl and SACD prints to have better sound.
Click to expand...

This might very well be the reason i get a headache from listening to music on the radio or popular music these days while using headphones.
🙁

I just cannot do it.
 
Smashing Pumpkins are re-releasing Gish and Siamese Dream in 24-bit/96-kHz WAV files. 🙂

Personally I don't hear a ton of difference between 320 kbps MP3 and lossless 16/44, but there is a marked difference between 16/44 and 24/96, as I have seen from making my own recordings.
 
Actually I've just upgraded my home setup to the system in my sig. Instead of buying music I've started to use/pay for WiMP which is a streaming service in 256kpbs AAC, which I must say is pretty close to CD quality to me. I tried Spotify as well, but I didn't really like the interface compared to WiMP, even though they encode in 320kps MP3.

So now I don't have any need to store music on my computer any more since I have direct access to about 10M songs. 🙂

I'm very happy just being able to browse through all the music and discovering new artists.
 
most of the difference is in the recording/mastering/production.

properly encoded/higher quality mp3s are usually near impossible to differentiate from the lossless original.
 
Would be an interesting exercise to compare the waveforms of the line-outs from a CD player and a vinyl player, with the same recorded music.
 
Howard said:
Would be an interesting exercise to compare the waveforms of the line-outs from a CD player and a vinyl player, with the same recorded music.
Click to expand...

I have plenty of ripped vinyl.

Sometimes the vinyl is just the digital files used for the CD pressed to vinyl, other times it is a different mastering.

IATHCD.jpg


IATHVinyl.jpg


IATHCDlevelsmatched.jpg


This is Audioslave's "I am the Highway". The image is the waveform from the CD. The second is from the vinyl, which has more dynamic range. The third is the CD again, but with the volume matched to that of the vinyl so you can compare the mastering. You can see that not only is the dynamic range present on the vinyl, meaning the mastering had different compression, but you can also see from the intro the difference. The song has different EQ applied to it.
 
In general and IMHO, here is what makes the most difference in sound quality (in order):

1. Original recording and mastering quality. No matter how good is your audio system, garbage in = garbage out.
2. Transducer quality (i.e. speaker/headphone) makes the biggest difference out of all audio components.
2b. If speakers are used, room acoustics can make good speakers sound bad and bad speakers sound even worse. Reflections, echo, shaky bass, all can harm the enjoyment of audio performance. Proper speaker placement and calibration is important.
3. Digital-to-Analog conversion of recorded media/file and bitrate of the file. Noise, distortion, high jitter, latency, can all have a bad down-flow effect on your audio system.
4. Amplification of your transducer should be sufficient and beyond minimal specs.
5. Misc components that make insignificant or no difference (cables, power filters, accessories, etc).

6. Good hearing and understanding that it doesn't take a fortune to build good audio system. 🙂
 
gevorg said:
In general and IMHO, here is what makes the most difference in sound quality (in order):

1. Original recording and mastering quality. No matter how good is your audio system, garbage in = garbage out.
2. Transducer quality (i.e. speaker/headphone) makes the biggest difference out of all audio components.
2b. If speakers are used, room acoustics can make good speakers sound bad and bad speakers sound even worse. Reflections, echo, shaky bass, all can harm the enjoyment of audio performance. Proper speaker placement and calibration is important.
3. Digital-to-Analog conversion of recorded media/file and bitrate of the file. Noise, distortion, high jitter, latency, can all have a bad down-flow effect on your audio system.
4. Amplification of your transducer should be sufficient and beyond minimal specs.
5. Misc components that make insignificant or no difference (cables, power filters, accessories, etc).

6. Good hearing and understanding that it doesn't take a fortune to build good audio system. 🙂
Click to expand...

When I upgraded my system some weeks ago here's what I did:
1. Bought new speakers, wanted high quality bookshelf speakers, mid-tone and high notes improved greatly.
2. Bought access to 256kbps AAC files, compared to 160/192kbps mp3, sound was more lively and the old files just sounded muffled compared to the new.
3. Bought a DAC, the stereo imaging and liveliness just filled up the room

So I completely agree with your list 🙂
 
Sound System does effect the quality of sound otherwise there would be no sale of the products made by companies like Logitech, Yamaha and Boss. Most of the difference comes when there are different equalizer settings.
 
The flac is very little to do with how good it sounds. It's the source that it was ripped from that makes it sound so good.
Even if you converted that flac to mp3, it'd still sound a lot better than the other mp3s you have. Rubycon posted a few master tapes rips a while back in MP3, and they sounded way better than the mp3s I've had from the CD album rip.
 
gevorg said:
In general and IMHO, here is what makes the most difference in sound quality (in order):

1. Original recording and mastering quality. No matter how good is your audio system, garbage in = garbage out.
2. Transducer quality (i.e. speaker/headphone) makes the biggest difference out of all audio components.
2b. If speakers are used, room acoustics can make good speakers sound bad and bad speakers sound even worse. Reflections, echo, shaky bass, all can harm the enjoyment of audio performance. Proper speaker placement and calibration is important.
3. Digital-to-Analog conversion of recorded media/file and bitrate of the file. Noise, distortion, high jitter, latency, can all have a bad down-flow effect on your audio system.
4. Amplification of your transducer should be sufficient and beyond minimal specs.
5. Misc components that make insignificant or no difference (cables, power filters, accessories, etc).

6. Good hearing and understanding that it doesn't take a fortune to build good audio system. 🙂
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:
Well said. I'd maybe put recording quality at #2 though. Many cheap audio gear out there can't even reveal the extra detail a good recording provides.
 
crashtestdummy said:
This has nothing to do with the compression and everything to do with the mastering. If you take those FLACs and convert them to 192 mp3, you likely won't be able to hear a difference.

What your friend demonstrated to you is the effect the "loudness war" has had on music in the past couple decades. Even old music, when reissued, is being released with dynamically compressed mastering and even heavy clipping.

The reason for the change is twofold: The most cited reason is so that the music sounds louder on the radio than other songs. The more important one (IMO) is that most people listen to music in noisy environments nowdays. It's hard to hear quiet tones while driving in a car, or over crappy earbuds on a busy street, so they flatten out the mastering so that you can hear everything no matter how loud the background noise.

There are some labels/producers that still make music with a high dynamic range (T Bone Burnett comes to mind), and some labels will separately master their vinyl and SACD prints to have better sound.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
FLAC has often become an E-Penis thing lately.
I can bet 98.99% of people on here can't hear the difference between your average MP3 rip and flac on a blind test.
 
Here is a radio stream that says its CD QUALITY online! (No compression)

HIGH BITRATE,KEEPS BUFFERING WHEN I PLAY IT SOMETIMES!

1411k - www.kexp.org/audio/kexp-uncomp.asx
 
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