The ultimate Wave vs Mp3 showdown ;-)

On 2008-09-01 14:42, Spindrift wrote:

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On 2008-09-01 07:34, Upavas wrote: I would guess by more amplification he means spl.

Err...did anyone question what amplification means?
I wondered what "responsive amplification" actually refers to.

Instead of answering questions you invent youself, maybe you could answer this:

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And since you obviously discredit the tests I linked to, do you have any comments on why neither mastering engineers or producers succeeded in spotting mp3's when conducting blind tests on top quality PA's and mastering speakers? Is it something that makes you unique in that you can spot the difference or do you think the test methodology was flawed?

On 2008-09-02 00:37, Kaz wrote:

Spindrift: I used to be a long-time believer in the 320kbps is close enough theorem, and for the most part - it's true. I happened to hear a 320kbps mp3 of some track from FSOL - Dead Cities (the title track). And in the opening of it (after the vocal), it has a lot of relatively muffled sounds hitting you all at once, with only a dab of reverbs really enlivening the high frequencies.

In order to make sure I wasn't tripping, I took the album, ripped the track to .WAV, encoded it using LAME (320kbps, high quality encoding), and then decoded it to .WAV again, renamed both tracks obscurely enough in order to not hint at anything (agbe7i.wav and some other one like that). I put both in a playlist, randomized the play order, and left the room before my friend entered, just to make sure he won't even get a hint from me as to which is which.

I will note: this is one of the extremely rare cases where I could point my finger on it without specifically looking for it. And as such, it may very well be just certain types of problems which are noticeable at all... but they exist, and they can be heard, and that is reason enough for obsessive-compulsive people like forum frequenters to switch to .FLAC (I did ). And one out of 3 friends did not recognize the difference at all, and the other two agreed that the difference was very subtle.

On 2008-09-02 02:54, Upavas wrote:

The fact that I could
a) hear the difference many times on many parties, given, the circumstances weren't the same each time, although the fact that I and my friends could hear it on a 320 bitrate and dj's agreed with me by telling me they had problems keeping up the levels leads me to believe so. Again, the dj's approached me, not I them!

b) As also previously mentioned by me the difference becomes crystal clear when you have an mp3 in a film mix instead of a wav file. What I should have mentioned is that it becomes ever more obvious when you render stems into an ac3 file. The fact that ac3 is a lossy compression format might definitely have something to do with it. Again I stress that all the people questioned could tell a difference, even the director (not an audio geek)clearly could. And I did ask them without telling them what was what.

On 2008-09-02 03:07, Upavas wrote:
I forgot to mention that in b a 320 bitrate was used. I am not certain as to the method of encoding, I believe lame was used. I also believe that most dj's use lame encoding when it comes to mp3's since it is the most widley available and possibly cheapest method.

On 2008-09-02 03:16, Spindrift wrote:

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On 2008-09-02 02:54, Upavas wrote: The fact that I could a) hear the difference many times on many parties, given, the circumstances weren't the same each time, although the fact that I and my friends could hear it on a 320 bitrate and dj's agreed with me by telling me they had problems keeping up the levels leads me to believe so. Again, the dj's approached me, not I them! b) As also previously mentioned by me the difference becomes crystal clear when you have an mp3 in a film mix instead of a wav file. What I should have mentioned is that it becomes ever more obvious when you render stems into an ac3 file. The fact that ac3 is a lossy compression format might definitely have something to do with it. Again I stress that all the people questioned could tell a difference, even the director (not an audio geek)clearly could. And I did ask them without telling them what was what.

Yes, I understood you claim you and lots of people heard it even on 320kbps, but I'm just telling you that there is a factor other than the compression you have overlooked.
Until you find or make a test that confirms your opinion where the methodology and results is documented I really have trouble taking your claims seriously since the are in opposition to what I found in my own tests and in all the documented tests I have been able to find.

One problem with finding tests comparing high bitrates with PCM audio is that most people serious about ABX testing of encoders laugh at the idea of doing general "wav vs 320k" test.
It's since long determined that it's transparent and it's only really done when trying to find problem samples.
Most blind tests carried out on for example hydrogenaudio is done comparing low bitrate encoding.

On 2008-09-04 02:18, elesdifrend wrote:
so just a question to all this:

an mp3 with 192 kbps should be the quality of a cd, right?

so if i take this file and burn it as an audio cd, will it sound much worse than the original audio cd?

On 2008-09-02 00:37, Kaz wrote:

What a shame that a tweeter is basically something that vibrates air and not a CPU. You have to move a membrane back, forth, and back again within .05ms and then not continue vibrating unless you want it to. While this is not impressive on the digital level, making something move both that quickly and that accurately within analog means is a VERY hard (and unfortunately, usually expensive) feat. Most monitors start losing accuracy at high frequencies because of that. Even analog amps have problems with this, and they don't even have moving parts that reproduce sound (digital amps have problems, but this usually isn't one of them, hence the bm6a mkII's superior trebles to the mkI).

On 2008-09-04 22:22, UnderTow wrote:
There is no such thing as a digital amp. There are class D switching amps but the D does not stand for digital.
UnderTow