lossy music formats

magnetik · 07-14-2001, 09:00 PM

another article of interest. Washington post running an article of "audiophiles" comparing the quality of various lossy audio compression techniques (being mp3pro, ogg, windows media).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2001Jul12.html

the terms "audiophiles" always has ****ted me... how do you join this club, or what allows you to "make the grade?" personally I just think its people with more money than sense who then get ripped off for buying what the salesperson told them was a fine piece of "audiophile" quality home/car audio equipment.

geez it ****s me!

Arby · 07-14-2001, 11:34 PM

Quote:

The test sessions were done in a home environment with an ordinary stereo system

Um, audiophiles don't use "ordinary stereo systems"

with an ordinary cheapo $100 stereo, you can't tell the difference between 128kbps and 320kbps, how are you supposed to compare audio formats?

Falcon62Travis · 07-15-2001, 12:04 PM

Taken from the article:

"On MP3Pro, I could hear the valves closing on the clarinet and the bassoon," said Peter Hubscher, a rock guitarist. "I couldn't on Vorbis."

Now that's as Audiophile as I think you can get!

magnetik · 07-16-2001, 02:14 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Falcon62Travis:
<STRONG>Taken from the article:

"On MP3Pro, I could hear the valves closing on the clarinet and the bassoon," said Peter Hubscher, a rock guitarist. "I couldn't on Vorbis."

Now that's as Audiophile as I think you can get!</STRONG>

..... and as I clearly heard the sound of an ant farting in the background three minutes and 32 seconds into track number 11 I knew that this sample was encoded using MP3Pro...

jshrieve · 07-16-2001, 09:00 AM

The article was worthwhile.

The judge talking about the valves is talking out of his ***. At best he heard compression artifacts which he assumed were valves.

They gave next to no information on the actual test. It's quite easy to make any of the formats look best, if you don't have to disclose the details of the test.

Take for examples that different formats have different optimal bitrates, where they sound best and increasing it doesn't do much more, but decreasing it makes it suffer a lot. Also, every encoder for every format makes a different mp3 that sounds somewhat different. They never mentioned what encoders they used, or what settings.

Basically just bull****.

Aaron Cake · 07-16-2001, 10:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Falcon62Travis:
<STRONG>Taken from the article:
"On MP3Pro, I could hear the valves closing on the clarinet and the bassoon," said Peter Hubscher, a rock guitarist. "I couldn't on Vorbis."
</STRONG>

Oh man, that's funny

. As a clarinet player, I can tell you that even with the instrument sticking out of your mouth, there is NO WAY you can hear the valves opening and closing.

But the really sad thing is that most people would believe this. They lack the critical thinking skills to figure out the BS level of this stuff.