[Veltliner]

And another excerpt:

"Scott Bahneman, chief executive of MusicGiants, said that comparing lossless tracks and compressed tracks was like comparing photos taken with a high-end digital camera and those taken with a camera phone. “Every bit counts when you’re trying to get sound quality, resolution or anything else,” "

[Aegis]

Well, I think what he means to say is that even though information is trimmed from a 256kbps AAC, it is not a large trimming and your average set of ears could not tell the difference.

[Veltliner]

If you have an average set of ears, yes.

And if you have an average set of HiFi components, not only now, but also in future.

[madgreek]

Ever since upgrading to iTunes 7.2 it now always asks for my name and password, then checks the store for purchases. This never happened before.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

If you apply a lossy compression, you will lose sound quality. You can't have your cake, and...

Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too, because you can't hear those losses. Not with a high bitrate compression like 256 kb/s.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too, because you can't hear those losses. Not with a high bitrate compression like 256 kb/s.

No, YOU can't hear those losses.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

To many people, 256 kBit AAC is for many intents and purposes indistinguishable from CD-quality. YMMV.

Corrected that for you.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by analogika 

No, YOU can't hear those losses.

http://www.geocities.com/altbinaries...l/mp3test.html
http://www.heise.de/ct/00/06/092/default.shtml

Fazit

Im Klartext heißt das: Unsere musiktrainierten Testhörer konnten zwar die schlechtere MP3-Qualität (128 kBit/s) recht treffsicher von den beiden anderen Hörproben unterscheiden; zwischen MP3 mit 256 kBit/s und dem Original von CD hingegen ließ sich im Mittel über alle Stücke kein Unterschied erkennen: Die Tester schätzten MP3/256 ebenso häufig als CD-Qualität ein wie die CD selbst.

In plain language, this means that our musically trained test listeners could reliably distinguish the poorer quality MP3s at 128 kbps quite accurately from either of the other higher-quality samples. But when deciding between 256 kbps encoded MP3s and the original CD, no difference could be determined, on average, for all the pieces. The testers took the 256 kbps samples for the CD just as often as they took the original CD samples themselves.

AAC is an improved compression format over mp3. For all intents and purposes a 256 kb/s AAC is CD-quality. For me and for someone who professionally masters classical music for a record company. Without the placebo effect (and provided you don't have any hearing defect, since such sometimes can reveal psychoacoustic compression) you can't tell them from CD quality either.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by madgreek 

Ever since upgrading to iTunes 7.2 it now always asks for my name and password, then checks the store for purchases. This never happened before.

If you are sure you have no outstanding downloads, trash the folder "Downloads" in your iTunes music library folder.

[stoneage]

I opened iTunes 7.2 to find playlists listed in the sidebar but no songs. Completely missing. Library, podcasts, everything is empty. The only thing I can access is the store. I tried dragging the Music folders back into the app but it won't accept them. I do have an iPod with almost all my music, but what happened to the existing stuff on my iMac?

[TETENAL]

stoneage, do you have UNO installed? It was mentioned in this thread, that iTunes 7.2 is incompatible.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

http://www.geocities.com/altbinaries...l/mp3test.html
http://www.heise.de/ct/00/06/092/default.shtml



AAC is an improved compression format over mp3. For all intents and purposes a 256 kb/s AAC is CD-quality. For me and for someone who professionally masters classical music for a record company. Without the placebo effect (and provided you don't have any hearing defect, since such sometimes can reveal psychoacoustic compression) you can't tell them from CD quality either.

I keep seeing that c't test referenced.

First, they tested 12 (TWELVE) people - readers of a computer magazine - and a classical mastering engineer from DG. That number and selection already makes any conclusions they draw from this test completely insignificant, and the whole thing nothing more than a just-for-fun experiment.

Nex, what does this bit tell us:

‘Das war hart. Es kam mir fast so vor, als ob einige der 256-kBit-Einspielungen etwas runder und gefälliger geklungen hätten als die Originale von CD. Davon durfte man sich nicht beirren lassen.’ Tatsächlich wurde auffallend oft statt 256 kBit/s fälschlicherweise CD angekreuzt.

He's saying that 256 kBit/s material often appeared to sound better or less harsh than the original CD.

So, in other words, the 256 kBit/s material "softened" the material - i.e. the results say that people definitely *could* hear a difference. They just couldn't say which is which, and decided that the "better" one must be CD.

Which of course makes sense, but doesn't take into account that most CDs are expressly NOT mastered for €30,000 hi-fi systems, but detail-enhanced for somewhat muddier lower-end systems.

In other words: Yes, you *can* tell , if you know what you're listening for, since what you are actually looking for is not "better sound" but "better source fidelity", which are two completely different - and often even opposed - things.

The mastering engineer said as much. And I'm willing to bet that if you repeated the same test on his daily-job mastering rig with recordings that he's familiar with, he'd be able to tell you *instantly* what's going on.

[voodoo]

Audiophiles are insane. They claim there is an audible difference between an original audio CD and a burned CDR copy.

So what if they're bit for bit identical??! Meh.

The best sound is on vinyl anyways.

V

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Yes, you *can* tell , if you know what you're listening for.

All right. I will burn an Audio-CD with songs each encoded with Apple Lossless and AAC 256 kb/s in random order. PM me your postal address.

[dpicardi]

Originally Posted by Cadaver 

If you sell the CD to a friend, you have no right to keep the music in your iTunes library. Legally, if you sell the CD, you give up access to the CD's contents.

Wow, I never thought of that. You guys might be right and if so that's ridiculous!

How many of us in our sappy love twisted days made a love-inspired "mix tape" for our girlfriends or vice versa?

By your standards I was incriminating my girlfriend?

I guess deep down we're all pirates...(at least the hopelessly love struck ones.)

Dave

[peeb]

The mix tape example is an interesting one. I think most of us have made mix tapes, and consider it ok, and I think most people would think that making mix cds is ok too. I think that is a very different thing from torrenting.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Audiophiles are insane. They claim there is an audible difference between an original audio CD and a burned CDR copy.

Have you considered that it's the "audiophiles" that are actually responsible for MAKING these CDs?

What do you think a sound engineer is? What do you think he does?

Do you really believe that the reason studios invest in $18000 ProTools interfaces over a $1000 MotU, despite them having ostensibly the same functionality is simply because these people are "insane"?

[analogika]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

All right. I will burn an Audio-CD with songs each encoded with Apple Lossless and AAC 256 kb/s in random order. PM me your postal address.

There was a comma at the end of the bit you quoted, not a full stop, so I'll just repeat it now, since you were apparently unable to read it:

What you are actually looking for is not "better sound" but "better source fidelity", which are two completely different - and often even opposed - things.

In the test you quoted, people COULD hear a difference. They just didn't know which was which, and assumed that the "better"-sounding one must be CD. The only one who realized that this was happening was - surprise - the Deutsche Grammophon engineer.

What you people don't understand is that sound fidelity means that a crap production will sound like crap. The better your speakers, the shittier **** will sound. The better your compression codec, the more obviously **** will sound like ****. (and, of course, the better the truly excellent will sound)

If you have speakers that make everything sound "good", then they are not good speakers, and they do not, by definition have "high fidelity", i.e. trueness to the source.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Have you considered that it's the "audiophiles" that are actually responsible for MAKING these CDs?

What do you think a sound engineer is? What do you think he does?

Do you really believe that the reason studios invest in $18000 ProTools interfaces over a $1000 MotU, despite them having ostensibly the same functionality is simply because these people are "insane"?

Have you considered that a copy of a CD is identical to the last bit to the original? Those who claim to hear any difference are certifiable loonies.

V

[chabig]

Do you remember how we used to dust our LPs? There were products specifically for that.

When CDs were new, some of these companies came out with products for wiping onto CDs that they claimed improved the highs and lows. I used to get a laugh out of those ads.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Blablablabla

In other words: you are not willing to take the test. I thought so.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Have you considered that a copy of a CD is identical to the last bit to the original? Those who claim to hear any difference are certifiable loonies.

I have no idea why you posted that in response to my posts in this thread, because it has absolutely naught to do with anything I've written.

However, now that you mention it: I don't know whether people claim to hear the difference, but a copy burned off an AUDIO CD is most certainly almost NEVER bit-for-bit identical.

You are simply WRONG about that.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

In other words: you are not willing to take the test. I thought so.

No: The test you think you've read about and are thinking of doing does not test at all what you think it does.

Question: How do you propose to set up that CD?

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Question: How do you propose to set up that CD?

I already said that:

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

All right. I will burn an Audio-CD with songs each encoded with Apple Lossless and AAC 256 kb/s in random order. PM me your postal address.

You tell us which are which and we all know that 256 kb/s AAC is not CD-quality.

[analogika]

I can tell you whether or not I hear a difference, and I can tell you which I liked better.

For the third time:

As the link you posted tells us (or rather, the Deutsche Grammophon guy), it might actually be the 256 kb/s that sounds "better", depending on what the source sounds like and what the compression does with the signal.

What you want to do is post the source file as an AIFF, and then post three or four test files - some the original as AIFF, and some the 256 kbps converted to AIFF (so that there is no telltale difference in file size).

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by analogika 

I have no idea why you posted that in response to my posts in this thread, because it has absolutely naught to do with anything I've written.

However, now that you mention it: I don't know whether people claim to hear the difference, but a copy burned off an AUDIO CD is most certainly almost NEVER bit-for-bit identical.

You are simply WRONG about that.

Now you may out-nerd me any day of the week, but a digital copy is conveniently bit for bit identical to the source.

I brought it up because I'm replying to your reply to my post. Why you replied to my post, I do not know. I wasn't even discussing any of your points. I don't care about them.

However a digital copy is identical to the source. So many things would not work if that were not the case.

Now, you can try and convince the class otherwise

V

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by analogika 

What you want to do is post the source file as an AIFF

No, I'm not posting music files on the internet. I will mail you an Audio-CD, but since you refuse I will simply continue to assume that you can not tell AAC 256 kb/s from CD-quality.

Originally Posted by analogika 

I can tell you whether or not I hear a difference.

So now you are not sure yourself any more. Nice backpedaling.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Now you may out-nerd me any day of the week, but a digital copy is conveniently bit for bit identical to the source.

I brought it up because I'm replying to your reply to my post. Why you replied to my post, I do not know. I wasn't even discussing any of your points. I don't care about them.

However a digital copy is identical to the source. So many things would not work if that were not the case.

Now, you can try and convince the class otherwise

V

*sigh*

An audio Cd is NOT a data CD.

Data CDs have redundant error-checking routines built into the format, which audio CDs DO NOT (or only very rudimentarily).

You may have noticed that when you burn data CDs, they are completely checked and verified, while audio CDs are not.

Why do you think that is?

I'll tell you: Because in audio CDs, it is ASSUMED that read errors that occur are interpolated and glossed over by the CD player's error correction. In fact, at any point, listening to a CD, a good percentage of the "music" you're hearing is actually a small digital circuit's best guess at what might have been there.

This is unacceptable in data CDs. But in data CDs, you have checksumming algorithms built in, and the machine has the chance to go back and try reading that sector again - which a CD player doesn't.

And the cheaper the read mechanism, the likelier a high percentage of read errors.

Interestingly, since error correction falsifies the music data, often more "high-end" CD players have LESS invasive error correction, relying instead on a better drive mechanism to reduce read errors, which can have the odd effect of scratched CDs playing better on cheap equipment.

Now tell me that CD copies are bit-for-bit equivalent to the original.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Have you considered that it's the "audiophiles" that are actually responsible for MAKING these CDs?

They're not. For the most part audiophiles != musicians or sound engineers.

I know some famous and semi-famous musicians and sound engineers, mostly rock and quite a few jazz people. Almost to a person they are NOT audiophiles: they are musicians. Meaning, they are not worried about the equipment or the cables, but the music itself. Most of these guys do not have 37337 stereo systems in their homes because in a way they're agnostic about what the music is played on. It could be played on a $100,000 audiophile stereo or the ten year old boombox in their kitchen and it's the same to them, because they're obsessed about the music and not its reproduction. A lot of these guys use their iPods 90% of the time, with or without fancy headphones.

Obsession with the reproduction--the whole audiophile thing--is not about the music. It's just tech geekery with a sheen of cultural arrogance. It's like "serious" gamers who will pay $600 for a video card which gives them a 5% better framerate, even though there is no discernible difference to be gained with that 5%. Knowing they have the 5% is more important than the actual gain.

Do you really believe that the reason studios invest in $18000 ProTools interfaces over a $1000 MotU, despite them having ostensibly the same functionality is simply because these people are "insane"?

Studios invest in that stuff for a variety of reasons, not all of which has to do with reproduction. Part of it is bandwidth: the many parts, tracks, layers and effects which go into a recording takes a lot of memory and bandwitdh, and one thing higher end audio packages give is the ability to have hundreds of tracks interacting simultaneously. Part of it is effects: higher end packages have more and more varied effects, and the ways in which you can use them to modify the sound are more complex. And part of it is fidelity and reproducability, but not in the audiophile sense. These are recordings meant for mass production, and mass production always means sacrifincing some quality for quantity. So one of the things those expensive packages let you do is very carefully adjust your sound so that it will sound as good as it can given the limits of the processing and manufacturing technology. So, while studios invest a lot in gear and equipment, it's not for audiophile reasons.

As an analogy, why do printing plants or pre-press shops invest hundreds of thoudsands of dollars in computers, software, fonts and imagesetters when the final product will be printed on a fast web press at 133 lines per inch (the standard line screen for large run magazines like Rolling Stone or Sports Illustrated) when 133 lpi is actually a pretty crappy line screen which will show visible moire in the final art? Because you need all that technology to be able to compensate for the multiple losses in quality inherent in the production process and produce a halfway decent product millions of times over and over.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

They're not. For the most part audiophiles != musicians or sound engineers.

I know some famous and semi-famous musicians and sound engineers, mostly rock and quite a few jazz people. Almost to a person they are NOT audiophiles: they are musicians. Meaning, they are not worried about the equipment or the cables, but the music itself. Most of these guys do not have 37337 stereo systems in their homes because in a way they're agnostic about what the music is played on.

That goes for musicians, yes - many musicians I've met are completely clueless about what contitutes "good sound" or how to achieve it, except *perhaps* as pertains to their own particular instrument, and even then, their knowledge ends before microphones even come into play.

The only sound engineers I've met that are like that, however, are unemployed ones, or ones that are booked specifically *because* they're "punk-rock".

It is a studio engineer's JOB to be "audiophile". I DO know engineers, however, who don't have a high-end rig at home, because they hardly listen to music at home. They have to all day (and night) on the job.

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

Studios invest in that stuff for a variety of reasons, not all of which has to do with reproduction. Part of it is bandwidth: the many parts, tracks, layers and effects which go into a recording takes a lot of memory and bandwitdh, and one thing higher end audio packages give is the ability to have hundreds of tracks interacting simultaneously. Part of it is effects: higher end packages have more and more varied effects, and the ways in which you can use them to modify the sound are more complex. And part of it is fidelity and reproducability, but not in the audiophile sense. These are recordings meant for mass production, and mass production always means sacrifincing some quality for quantity. So one of the things those expensive packages let you do is very carefully adjust your sound so that it will sound as good as it can given the limits of the processing and manufacturing technology. So, while studios invest a lot in gear and equipment, it's not for audiophile reasons.

It is ABSOLUTELY for audiophile reasons!!!

What you want in the studio is to reproduce as accurately as possible the material you're trying to manipulate into sounding a certain way.

I'm not saying that recordings done on a four-track cassette recorder or via a MotU 828 don't have a certain charm. But they will never sound like anything other than that, so if you have better options, you will use them only if that is the desired effect you want to achieve.

And you'll play it back on $8000 Genelecs in the studio because you want to know exactly what's going on.

And frankly, I don't know what you use, but in my experience, the more expensive both instruments and outboard studio gear get, the LESS they are able to do, and the BETTER they do the little THAT they do.

A $2,000 Akai sampler will do a HELL of a lot more than a $20,000 Hammond B-3, but the Hammond will smash anything else trying to imitate it.

And a $200 digital FX unit will do a heck of a lot more than a compressor that costs 100 times that.

Or in the lower-end, the Roland Dimension D 19" rack chorus unit does exactly ONE thing (it actually has four settings, but only one is generally used), and it routinely fetches $800 and up.

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

As an analogy, why do printing plants or pre-press shops invest hundreds of thoudsands of dollars in computers, software, fonts and imagesetters when the final product will be printed on a fast web press at 133 lines per inch (the standard line screen for large run magazines like Rolling Stone or Sports Illustrated) when 133 lpi is actually a pretty crappy line screen which will show visible moire in the final art? Because you need all that technology to be able to compensate for the multiple losses in quality inherent in the production process and produce a halfway decent product millions of times over and over.

That's just another way of saying that you need all that technology to most accurately gauge what is going on and what will happen when different processes are applied.

This sidetrack is rather useless, though, because sound creation and sound reproduction are two *very* different, not equatable settings.

I would argue, though, that a studio playback rig - power amp and monitor speakers - are *necessarily* highest-possible fidelity (which is to say, anybody relying solely on Yamaha NS-10s is probably not going to be very flexible in terms of achievable sound quality).

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by analogika 

That goes for musicians, yes - most musicians I've met are completely clueless about what contitutes "good sound" or how to achieve it.

I don't see it as clueless. I see it as a different focus. For musicians it is the music itself which is most important, not the technical details of its reproduction. It's the content, not the form.

It is a studio engineer's JOB to be "audiophile". I DO know engineers, however, who don't have a high-end rig at home, because they hardly listen to music at home. They have to all day (and night) on the job.

I think we have different definitions of "audiophile" here. In my personal experience, audiophiles are much more about the techology fetish than the music. In fact, I have found that most audiophiles don't actually know a lot about music, and many don't play an instrument or read music. For them it seems the music has become somehow abstracted, so that the most important thing is not the music itself but almost just the sound wave. I sometimes feel that you could make an audiophile really happy by taking away the speakers altogether and just showing him/her a oscilloscope readout.

It is ABSOLUTELY for audiophile reasons!!!

Given what I've said above, I think the difference here is the definition. Of course studios have the best equipmen, but not because of any fetish (audiophile for me) but because that's what you need to do the job well. I wouldn't consider a studio engineer an audiophile, just a professional, and I doubt most will drop stupid amount of money on a listening set up of dubious value.

[analogika]

I believe we're in agreement.

Though the problem of the definition is an interesting one, because you're implying "audiophile" to mean "stupid fool easily parted from his money by people promising technological impossibilities", and my experience is with people who actually have ears and spend money they find appropriate on audible (to them) differences.

People who simply use "audiophile" as a demeaning term often seem to be as clueless about the subject of audio fidelity as the idiot audiophiles they take as examples (whom *do* exist, mind).



As for "different focus" - agreed. However, musicians must realize that just because computers enable them to do various amazing things, it certainly doesn't mean that these various amazing things aren't STILL best left to the judgement of an experienced engineer.

I've seen more than one record of truly good music completely ruined by the amateurish engineering endeavors and production misjudgement of the overambitioned artist.

And I mean to the point where things like overly compressed drums (to compensate lack of "fatness" from sub-par recording) completely KILL the light groove that actually made the song's character and turn it into a leaden, drum-machine like pounding.

Or an album "mastered" (i.e. final mixdown and master compression) by a musician-turned-engineer who actually red-lined the thing, resulting in audible clipping even on quiet songs. Painful. He didn't notice because his studio monitors (and his ears) weren't "audiophile" in the literal sense (not the snake-oil sense) of the word.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by analogika 

I believe we're in agreement.

Though the problem of the definition is an interesting one, because you're implying "audiophile" to mean "stupid fool easily parted from his money by people promising technological impossibilities", and my experience is with people who actually have ears and spend money they find appropriate on audible (to them) differences.

People who simply use "audiophile" as a demeaning term often seem to be as clueless about the subject of audio fidelity as the idiot audiophiles they take as examples (whom *do* exist, mind).

Could be my experience. Audiophiles I have run into seem to know or care very little about music, and there have been some incredibly wrong and stupid things said about music in serious audiophile magazines. I also have a friend who sells very, very, very high end audio/visual gear, and he finds most of his customers are people with much more money than sense. There's a lot of gear in the audiophile market which offers a 1% improvement for 100x the price.

[analogika]

As I say, people spending what THEY consider appopriate for an audible difference in sound.

A different matter are the people spending money they consider appropriate for what others TELL THEM is an audible difference in sound.

I had the great fortune of having a hi-fi dealer who'd demonstrate the $3-power strip vs. the $80 "high-end" power strip, to the amazing result that in a blind test, the $3 power strip actually sounded noticeably better.

He sold me quite a bit of stuff that was obviously better in ways I cared about than much more expensive gear.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by analogika 

*sigh*

An audio Cd is NOT a data CD.

Data CDs have redundant error-checking routines built into the format, which audio CDs DO NOT (or only very rudimentarily).

You may have noticed that when you burn data CDs, they are completely checked and verified, while audio CDs are not.

Why do you think that is?

...aaand the rest you write is irrelevant because the audio cds I burn are checked and verified. It is an option you know.

The computer doesn't care one squat what the binary represents. Not. One. Squat.

You are a very confused nerd.

V

[chabig]

Actually, audio CDs have a lot of data redundancy and error checking/correcting built into their format.

[TETENAL]

Audio-CD - Wikipedia

Die Daten werden in Frames gespeichert (auch "Mini-Frame" genannt). Jeder Frame enthält 33 Bytes. Davon sind 24 Byte Audio-Daten (also genau 6 Stereo-Samples), 8 Byte enthalten Fehlerkorrekturdaten und ein so genanntes "Subcode"-Byte.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

...aaand the rest you write is irrelevant because the audio cds I burn are checked and verified. It is an option you know.

In which program would that be?

[Veltliner]

I guess a lot of the discussion here is based on a different interpretation of the term audiophile.

Aside from that, there are people who truly love to hear Schubert's chamber music or a Bach cantata in rich and detailed sound. Or a rock concert, which often sounds different, regardind to the location.

That there are people, who mostly care about equipment and have no clue about music - you have these everywhere. Photographers talking about equipment like about weapons but never really going out to shoot, filmmakers who only discuss cameras and "video gear shoot-outs", but you'll never see good work from them. But those are nerds, and you can't take them seriously.

Analogika is definitely NOT a nerd, but loves music and wants to listen to it in good sound quality.

And as there are equipment nerds, there are people with pig ears, who can't tell a violin from a fart in a closet. Such people often feel challenged, when they meet someone, who loves something, and cares about it, which shows his limitations. Instead of improving abilities, such person tends to get aggressive.

I know there are musicians who don´t look beyond their own instrument. There are actors who only read their own lines, and never the whole screenplay. There are painters who paint with cheap paint on cardboard. Some of them are good, but the good are rather the exception. A musician not caring about sound, an actor not caring about the movie, a painter not caring about the material he's working with: awful.

Bottom line: there are lovers of music and good sound, and they are striving to acquire music in unreduced quality. It's the basic right of the music lover to hear good music in good sound. And they will never buy music stored in a compressed format. (The fact that some testers don't hear a difference, doesn't mean a thing. Who the hell were those "testers" anyway?)

If there wasn't a difference, there wouldn't be the gear out to show it. Because there are cameras make better images and are desired by the true photographer, there is film gear that makes films work better that simple equipment, and there is better audio equipment and recording formats, because there is a difference in sound quality.

Stradivari was a master violin maker. His work is unsurpassed til today. You can read an article in the New York Times about a museum in Italy, displaying Stradivaris. They are being taken out every day and played, so the wood doesn't get "tired". Many a times companies have tried to imitate the sound of a Stradivari. They failed, and Stradivaris are being sought after til today, and top violinists play over 200 year old Stradivaris.

And you can be sure, those master violinists are not nerds, nor have they acustic hallucinations.

[TETENAL]

Kudos to analogica for accepting the challenge!

The test situation is as follows: 12 songs have been ripped in Apple Lossless. They have then been converted to AAC 256 kbit/s using iTunes. then they have been burned to an Audio-CD sorted pairwise with either the lossless or the AAC version first (randomly).

analogica will try to identify which version is the original and which is the compressed one and he will also tell us which of the two versions he thinks sounds better (which might not always be the original for the reasons discussed above).

[analogika]

I do not appreciate the misrepresentation.



*sigh*

No, I will not. I *could* tell you which version I like better, and ONLY THAT. As the Deutsche Grammophon engineer quoted above already said.

For the now FIFTH TIME:

Originally Posted by analogika

For the third time:

As the link you posted tells us (or rather, the Deutsche Grammophon guy), it might actually be the 256 kb/s that sounds "better", depending on what the source sounds like and what the compression does with the signal.

What you want to do is post the source file as an AIFF, and then post three or four test files - some the original as AIFF, and some the 256 kbps converted to AIFF (so that there is no telltale difference in file size).

Having me tell you which version I like better is COMPLETELY USELESS AND SAYS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

If I liked the compressed version in half the cases, and the full-resolution ones in the other half of the cases, that could VERY well be due to the fact that the first half were mastered to be played on the radio, or on a Sony boombox, rather than the kinds of systems I have available here.

I have pretty much NO WAY of telling which is which without a reference, especially on the material you provided. Had it been older orchestral recordings or 70s rock/pop or older jazz material, I would have had a rough reference criterion, as I'm somewhat familiar with the sound standards of the time.
However, most of what you posted is newer electronic or 80's pop, which is so ridden with phase-munging and exciters that chances are quite high that I'd find whatever *reduces* those annoyances through data reduction MORE pleasant than the original. Or maybe not. Neither you, nor I, would have any way of knowing.

You can pretty much assume that anything produced within the past five years is also mixed and mastered *explicitly* to sound good at compressed rates.

And the only song I actually *have* a reference version of is the Beastie Boys instrumental - on vinyl. d'oh.


As I wrote to you in the private message, I DID take the time to listen thoroughly to at least the first example you put on the CD, and I wrote you my observations and my *hunch* as to which may be the original. (That was a live recording, with some nice *real* ambience.) Was my assessment correct?

On a few of the others I just gave a quick listen-to, what am I supposed to tell you: On one of the electronic pieces, in one version, the reverb on one specific sound is somewhat lo-fi and metallic on version, and has a slightly wispier and thinner quality on the other. Am I supposed to judge whether the producer used a lo-fi metal reverb on that sound, or the slightly thinner, airy one? Which do I like better? And how do you propose to judge from that whether I can identify the CD-resolution over the compressed audio?

I certainly don't have the time to sit down with eleven completely unfamiliar tracks and make a completely useless comparative analysis which may or may not reflect, but certainly has absolutely no bearing upon, the actual issue we were discussing, which is:

IS THERE AN AUDIBLE DIFFERENCE?


Stop wasting my time, and stop misrepresenting what I am telling you in order to disprove something the very source you yourself quoted allegedly in your support, has already qualified.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Having me tell you which version I like better is COMPLETELY USELESS AND SAYS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

If I liked the compressed version in half the cases, and the full-resolution ones in the other half of the cases, that could VERY well be due to the fact that the first half were mastered to be played on the radio, or on a Sony boombox, rather than the kinds of systems I have available here.

If you liked the compressed version in half the cases and the full-resolution ones in the other half of the cases, then we would know that 256 kbit/s AAC is CD-quality. As in: sounds as good as a CD.
We won't know whether there are audible differences. That is true. The test-CD is not suited to test this. But I think the differences you hear are due to the placebo effect. I can not hear the slightest difference between AAC 256 and lossless.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

As in: sounds as good as a CD.

NO, GOD DAMMIT!

As in: Sounds THE SAME as a CD.

For the SIXTH TIME:

What I'm trying to get across to you is that the vast majority of CDs today SOUND LIKE ****.

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

We won't know whether there are audible differences. That is true. The test-CD is not suited to test this.

Actually, that is the ONLY THING I COULD say. You have it completely backwards!

How on EARTH can you read SEVEN POSTS of mine AND a private message and come out thinking I've said the EXACT OPPOSITE of what I've been telling you?

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

But I think the differences you hear are due to the placebo effect. I can not hear the slightest difference between AAC 256 and lossless.

That, of course, is YOUR problem.

As for "placebo" effect: Why do you think I suggested a set-up that would actually make a referenced blind a/b test possible? When I saw the CD you sent me, with only two versions each of twelve tracks, eleven of which I'd never heard before, it was pretty clear that you had understood NOTHING of what I've been telling you, nor of what that Deutsche Grammophon engineer had said. You're just wasting my time.

You still haven't told me if my assessment of that first piece was correct.

[analogika]

Voodoo:

I'm still wondering which program you're using that gives you the option of verifying Audio-CD burns.

I'd like to know, because I'd like to use it!

Toast doesn't. iTunes doesn't. WaveBurner doesn't (and that's supposedly a mastering tool).

[analogika]

Bump:

Originally Posted by analogika 

Voodoo:

I'm still wondering which program you're using that gives you the option of verifying Audio-CD burns.

I'd like to know, because I'd like to use it!

Toast doesn't. iTunes doesn't. WaveBurner doesn't (and that's supposedly a mastering tool).

I'm also interested in why iTunes gives the option of "using error correction" when importing CDs, and what the difference is to the error correction employed when reading normal data CDs.

These things point to error correction built into the Audio CD format and error correction built into data CD formats NOT being the same thing.

[analogika]

*bump*

Originally Posted by voodoo 

...aaand the rest you write is irrelevant because the audio cds I burn are checked and verified. It is an option you know.

Still waiting for a reference, here.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by analogika 

*bump*



Still waiting for a reference, here.

Honestly, is google broken in Germany?

Read reviews and find best prices for Slysoft Clone CD at CD Freaks.com

CD DAE homepage

Introduction � Exact Audio Copy

.. all these make bit-by-bit verified copies of audio CDs.

These are for peezoids, but they work on Mactels with Boot Camp at least. Bit-by-bit audio CD copying isn't impossible, in fact it is quite accessable.

I assumed you had already figured this out by your lonesome.

V

[analogika]

Okay, so those are bit-for-bit copy burn utilities.

So that's what you're using? Since "all the audio cds [you] burn are checked and verified"?

What about CD burning utilities that let you CREATE audio CDs?

Such as, well, um, mastering tools? There are precious few, from what I gather, that have the OPTION of verifying audio CDs. (while you claim knowingly, "It is an option, you know.")

Any for Mac OS X? Seeing as Mac OS X is, you know, the audio platform of choice...

C'mon, help this confused nerd.

Out-nerd me.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Okay, so those are bit-for-bit copy burn utilities.

So that's what you're using? Since "all the audio cds [you] burn are checked and verified"?

What about CD burning utilities that let you CREATE audio CDs?

Such as, well, um, mastering tools? There are precious few, from what I gather, that have the OPTION of verifying audio CDs. (while you claim knowingly, "It is an option, you know.")

Any for Mac OS X? Seeing as Mac OS X is, you know, the audio platform of choice...

C'mon, help this confused nerd.

Out-nerd me.

I can't out-nerd you there, sorry. I have never made audio masters of my own music.. I've never made music on a computer or recorded it.

Live performance only

V

[analogika]

Well, it's nice of you to come out weeks later and admit that you cannot, after all, out-nerd me, though you claimed to in the post you told me I was "one confused nerd" above.

So if ALL your audio CDs are verified, as you say, WHAT do you burn with?

Or are you telling us that you don't actually burn audio CDs, but all of those are verified?