Loving the work talk about high tech stuff.
Anyone want to talk about PWM anymore or did we wear that topic out?![]()
I still want to know What the Skein Effect is?
Loving the work talk about high tech stuff.
Anyone want to talk about PWM anymore or did we wear that topic out?![]()
I still want to know What the Skein Effect is?
Sound Better?
At my age, and with the things I did in my Youth, a 160VBR MP3 encoded from a CD I bought at a swap meet sound about the Same as a Digital Master Recording off a Studio Sound Board.
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Many make this claim but truth is, you most likely do hear the differences, you just do not acknowledge it because you are unaware of what those differences are.
Simple test to conduct should you wish to take on the challenge.
Take a Redbook quality song (CD quality of 16bit/44khz). Duplicate it and compress the copy to what ever MP3 bit rate you wish. Load both files in an audio editor such as Audacity. Invert one of the files - this will change the polarity of the file to be the exact opposite of the other. Now mix and render both tracks together. Everything that is identical will be canceled out and removed from the final file leaving only the differences between the 2. Once you hear the difference you will most likely pick up on it when listening to a compressed version of that song.
As for tube vs solid state – all boils down to the design of the amplifier and what voicing objectives where employed.
Many make this claim but truth is, you most likely do hear the differences, you just do not acknowledge it because you are unaware of what those differences are.
Simple test to conduct should you wish to take on the challenge.
Take a Redbook quality song (CD quality of 16bit/44khz). Duplicate it and compress the copy to what ever MP3 bit rate you wish. Load both files in an audio editor such as Audacity. Invert one of the files - this will change the polarity of the file to be the exact opposite of the other. Now mix and render both tracks together. Everything that is identical will be canceled out and removed from the final file leaving only the differences between the 2. Once you hear the difference you will most likely pick up on it when listening to a compressed version of that song.
As for tube vs solid state – all boils down to the design of the amplifier and what voicing objectives where employed.
My ears sense the loss of dynamic range when audio compression is involved. There's way too much processing in most new music these days.
... But in reference to my above post I was talking about file compression. There is no need for it. Mp3 was a poor solution to a temporary, almost non-existence problem. It was by fluke it became a household name.
I think it all came down to what one Wanted at the time.
When I got into MP3, 256mb was a Very High End portable player. And Hard Drives/CDR Disk Burners were still pretty Pricey. So compression made a Whole Lot of Sense.
MP3 also gave people Flexible. Some might want to Encode at 92VBR to be used with el-Cheap O MP3 Player Headphones. Or 256CBR for HD Archives or to feed a Reciever. And everything in between.
Today, with virtually Unlimited Storage, File Compression isn't as Meaningful.
I’ve been involved with file based audio long before MP3. When MP3 started to pick up momentum, the technology for lossless compression was already available. MP3 became a popular format due to Napster and not because it was beneficial to the end user. It was a licenced codec which you payed for in one way or another and only Winamp was able to get around the royalties (no idea how they managed that). WAV on the other hand was free and offered both uncompressed and compressed formats. It was the standard for both broadcasting and recording industry. The first portable DAP (digital audio players) did not even support MP3, but supported WAV, along with a few other codecs at the time such as ATRAC.
MP3 offered little benefits in comparison to what was already available and being used but due to the popularity of a certain pirating peer to peer service, it became a house hold name.
HD audio is audio processed greater than the Redbook standard of 16bit/44khz. MP3 is not HD – it is a lossy compression meaning it compresses based on the removal of information.
Even today, streaming music services rely on lossy compression to limit data usage over cellular networks. Whether it's a limit on storage space as it used to be to bandwidth expenses (obviously only matters on cellular unless you lack broadband access, wired or wifi), compression algorithms will remain relevant.
Let's face it, jpeg remains the standard in imaging even though storage issues for raw files are no longer as big a deal. After all, even with a broadband connection you can't upload anything other than jpg here, and even then file size is limited (what is it? 2-3 Mb) on this forum to accommodate those who would be bogged down with slow connections by large images.