Just revising for an exam I have this morning. Been reading about how MPEG while lossy is perceptually Lossless.

Utilises frequency masking (you hear similar to that of a series of bandpass filters, loud sounds, mask others because your stereocillia are already in a state of excitation), and temporal masking (ADPCM, DPCM, and Silence suppression).

Soooo in theory and by practical testing using expert listeners during the development of MPEG standards, and...

Quote...under optimal listening conditions there is no statistically distinguishable difference between original and MPEG encoded audio.

According to my notes at least.

Sooooo audiophiles using fancy FLAC and so on, I put it to you, your all victims of hype lol.

Also learnt that normal terrestrial TV broadcasts (analog) also employ compression too in an interesting way.

See if you can discern the difference between a 65kbps compared to a 128kbps compared to 256kbps and tell me how mpeg is perceptable difference between those and the original.  They must be referring to a specific bitrate otherwise its full of crap.

specific bit rate of course. according to noteage, mpeg-layer 3 was intended for a bitrate of 64kbps to provide "adequate" quality, 256kbps 44.1khz is considered to be indistinguishable from the original source.

The man speaketh the tooth.

Whats the point of flac, hows it better that a wav?

Quote from: sdpThe man speaketh the tooth.

Whats the point of flac, hows it better that a wav?

FLAC is better than WAV cause it takes less space and you cannot burn a CD from mp3 that sounds like the original I think when listening to mp3 and flac it is hard to hear the the difference but if you burn a CD it will be easier to hear a difference betwix one made from  FLAC and one made from mp3.

That would probably be more due to rounding errors or similar introduced when you transcode from MP3 to PCM WAV for burning. That and the amplification undergone during the quantisation stage could prove an issue I guess.

Yes I think so, with mp3 to wav it has to "fill in" more than from FLAC to wav.
So if one want to rip and burn but store a while before burning  FLAC is good.
I use EAC and flac.exe with write and read pregap calibrated to get an allmost exact copy of the original.

Dont believe everything you read.

Most people have cloth ears or dont have sufficiently good equipment to hear the difference.

VBR 256kbps MP3s are almost transparent, anything below that and you really can tell the difference quite easily.

Your iPod is not strictly critical listening.

very true,

I use 128K MP3s in my car because an MP3 player hooked up to a cheap car stereo via a tape adaptor does not exactly constitute Hi-Fi, and a 1993 306 Diesel doing 70 does not exactly constitute ideal listening conditions.

Put those same MP3s on my dads Hi-Fi separates system and they sound b****y awful.

what constitutes good listening is actually listening to the band perform said track. no medium is perfect unless the correct ambience, atmosphere and dramatism is recreated.

all recordings are hereby just mere shadows or their live counterparts.

and any musician which cannot perform live isnt really a musician more of a studio bum troubler.

Quote from: redall recordings are hereby just mere shadows or their live counterparts.

no arguement here, but that doesnt mean Im going to stop listening to music except at gigs, therefore the comment is irrelavent.

Quote from: Clockd 0NeDont believe everything you read.

Most people have cloth ears or dont have sufficiently good equipment to hear the difference.

VBR 256kbps MP3s are almost transparent, anything below that and you really can tell the difference quite easily.

Your iPod is not strictly critical listening.

Indeed, but expert listeners and whatever programs they used during the development in MPEG to produce "statistical information" about the way a track would sound. Would be critical listening in my opinion.

Certainly more so than a bloke with an iRiver and some ER-4ps

Quote from: Clockd 0NeDont believe everything you read.

Most people have cloth ears or dont have sufficiently good equipment to hear the difference.

VBR 256kbps MP3s are almost transparent, anything below that and you really can tell the difference quite easily.

Your iPod is not strictly critical listening.

People have pretty good noise filtering built into their hearing, if you really listen to something and have excellent musical hearing then the difference between 128kbps and 256kbps is obvious - providing you are using good equipment in a relatively noise free environment.

Unfortunately I dont have that hearing advantage, and a lot of other people dont. Some think that FM radio quality is very good.

A person who spends a lot of time listening properly will learn to notice the difference whereas a casual listener will not.

Quote from: Mongoosevery true,

I use 128K MP3s in my car because an MP3 player hooked up to a cheap car stereo via a tape adaptor does not exactly constitute Hi-Fi, and a 1993 306 Diesel doing 70 does not exactly constitute ideal listening conditions.

Put those same MP3s on my dads Hi-Fi separates system and they sound b****y awful.

Just the noise in the car will be enough to mask any small defects, I get the same effect playing them over my computer with the fan noise. Even with a reasonable quality amplifier and Gale speakers.

Quote from: M3ta7h3adIndeed, but expert listeners and whatever programs they used during the development in MPEG to produce "statistical information" about the way a track would sound. Would be critical listening in my opinion.

Certainly more so than a bloke with an iRiver and some ER-4ps

LOL fair comment (I dont own the iRiver any more mind, just a good Morss brand amp to plug into the PC ), but I think you cant really knock it until youve tried it and done your own critical listening tests. I know my ears dont lie to me and aside from cheap earphones to listen through, Ive heard expensive hifi setups that really introduce you to music in a new way and really reveal poor source material.

Ive been ripping my wax cylinders onto my wire recorder, and that thing they say about skimping on gauge--its, like SO TRUE!