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Topic: Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD (Read 85948 times) previous topic - next topic
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Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #75 –
Quote from: Soap on
Then again, that assumes we are dealing with rational actors in the first place, probably not a safe assumption.


I agree, that isn't a safe assumption.  I also agree that an attack (however light it may be) is probably not the best route.  Then again, the original article attacked all lossy encoders in a more blunt manner that should not be taken seriously.  So I think that Axon's reply is spot on.  I am sure the authors/people who keep responding to all those posts will create some holes in that response though just to make themselves look better.  It is sad when people actually take articles like this seriously.  I once had a friend who purchased a $200 phone line cable, it was about 1 inch in diameter and 3 feet long.  He used it with his dial-up connection even though it was with a 28k modem/connection.  He bought it from a no-name electronics store that he frequented because the people told him that it would be the fastest way to connect to his internet.  I tried to explain to him that it didn't matter, a phone line is a phone line as long as it isn't physically damaged.  He was really surprised to see me connect to a 56k connection using a $20 30ft phone line I purchased form Wal-Mart and that my transfer speeds were twice as fast as his.  I guess those are the types of people who fully believe this stuff.  They are the ones who think that Monster HDMI/DVI cables are worth the extra $120 when in fact a $3 HDMI cable off of Monoprice.com works just as good.  Not everything in that article was wrong though, they made some good points about lossless being a viable format.  However, that represents about 2% of the entire article so take it for what you will.

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #76 –
Quote from: pdq on
Quote from: tgoose on

Wait, what? Aren't DVDs more expensive per GB than hard disks? And more likely to decay? And take up more physical space?

No, DVD+-R is still about one fourth the cost of the equivalent hard drive space. The rest I won't argue with.

You forgot to compute the toll it takes on the life of the DVD burner to burn so many DVDs to compete with the hdd write/read operations.

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #77 –
Quote from: Light-Fire on
Quote from: pdq on

Quote from: tgoose on

Wait, what? Aren't DVDs more expensive per GB than hard disks? And more likely to decay? And take up more physical space?

No, DVD+-R is still about one fourth the cost of the equivalent hard drive space. The rest I won't argue with.

You forgot to compute the toll it takes on the life of the DVD burner to burn so many DVDs to compete with the hdd write/read operations.

I typically pay under $25 for a DVD burner, and easily burn 3 or 4 hundred DVDs without any problems. Thus the cost of the burner is significantly less than the cost of the media.

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #78 –
Quote from: pdq on
I typically pay under $25 for a DVD burner, and easily burn 3 or 4 hundred DVDs without any problems. Thus the cost of the burner is significantly less than the cost of the media.


Not to mention that many stores like Best Buy will throw in a free 50-100 pack of blank DVD+/-R discs with the purchase.  I think I saw a DVD+-R/RW DL drive at Best Buy for $29 the other day.  It almost made me want to purchase it just to replace the dead one in my desktop.

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #79 –
Just because you've silenced someone doesn't mean you've converted them.

A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #80 –
Quote from: greynol on
Quote from: dehmmy on
I can almost tell the difference approx. 85.something - 97% of the time (Strictly speaking of MP3 codecs).

Hi and welcome.  :)

Please reread our Terms of Service, specifically #8.

Unless you've done a double-blind test in order to determine this and specify the details about the codec and settings used, statements like this are not taken seriously.


My apologies. Being new to the forums, I should have read the rules more carefully.

It is now my understanding of the applicable rule #8, that is expressed in my post http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=552324  that there is no way to quantify an individuals preference of listening device, in this scenario, headphones, and is completely subjective.

I shall be more careful in the future.

Please correct me if I'm wrong about this and any other violation of ToS I may have misinterpreted in the post stated above.


Many Thanks,

jay
[/font]

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #81 –
@dehmmy:

Your statement of being able to distinguish mp3 encodes a high percentage of the time is a very broad claim that is quite useless unless, first, qualified as to what quality of mp3 you are talking about and, second, backed up by careful double blind testing to supply proof.

If you are talking about 96 kbit blade encodes then your statement could probably be taken at face value because it agrees with most people's experience. On the other hand if you are talking about 320 kbit lame encodes then that would make you unique among all the people who post here and you would need to make a serious effort to prove your assertion.

So, please clarify, what kind of mp3 encodes can you detect so easily?

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #82 –
I wouldnt object to doing that (in my voluminous spare time), but wouldn't that be usurping the thread? Also the point of the post was that Stereophile is out of touch with current technology.  Does anybody give a hill of beans about my ears?  I'd hope not.  But if some think that me posting up some ABX would help this thread in anyway, then sure.  But again. I think this is veering close to extremely off-topic.  Sorry for doing that

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #83 –
Quote from: scientus on
I wouldnt object to doing that (in my voluminous spare time), but wouldn't that be usurping the thread?
<SNIP>
But if some think that me posting up some ABX would help this thread in anyway, then sure.  But again. I think this is veering close to extremely off-topic.  Sorry for doing that


Hi scientus. Are you also dehmmy?

Anyway, OT or not, there are people here who would be very interested if you could demonstrate consistent ability to ABX high-bitrate lossy from lossless. They're the developers of lossy codecs, who would like your help. Srsly. A couple of people a while back posted ABX logs showing such discrimination, and the world was interested.

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #84 –
This is the kind of stuff I would expect out of Stereophile magazine:

http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/

Quote
"And while lossy codecs differ in the assumptions made by their designers, all of them discard—permanently—real musical information that would have been audible to some listeners with some kinds of music played through some systems. These codecs are not, in the jargon, "transparent," as can be demonstrated in listening tests (footnote 1)."


Please read the article first. Did they provide any ABX tests to back up their claims regarding "transparency". The answer is "no" they did not. No they are providing the same usual form of technical non-sense in the form of jargon and linking to another hi-end test. 

Quote
"Fig.2 shows the spectrum of this tone after it has been converted to an MP3 at a constant bit rate of 128kbps. (The MP3 codec I used for this and all the other tests was the Fraunhöfer, from one of the original developers of the MP3 technology.) The 1kHz tone is now represented by the dark red vertical line at the left of the graph. Note that it has acquired "skirts" below –80dB. These result, I believe, from the splitting of the continuous data representing the tone into the time chunks mentioned above, which in return results in a very slight uncertainty about the exact frequency of the tone. Note also that the random background noise has disappeared entirely. This is because the encoder is basically deaf to frequency regions that don't contain musical information. With its very limited "bit budget," the codec concentrates its resources on regions where there is audio information. However, a picket fence of very-low-level vertical lines can be seen. These represent spurious tones that result, I suspect, from mathematical limitations in the codec. Like the skirts that flank the 1kHz tone, these will not be audible. But they do reveal that the codec is working hard even with this most simple of signals."


WTF!? What is the author of this article talking about? How many times has it been discussed that spectrum analyzers don't work? I am lost what exactly is trying to measure in relation to everything else? Would somebody care to comment for me Axon maybe? Why the hell is he using a 1 kHz test tone? He seems to think he is performing a "listening test", but is going about it in a manner that is all wrong.

Quote
Both MP3 and AAC introduce fairly large changes in the measured spectra, even at the highest rate of 320kbps. There seems little point in spending large sums of money on superbly specified audio equipment if you are going to play sonically compromised, lossy-compressed music on it.


No duh you moron! that is precisely why they exploit psychoacoustics models to begin with. The term is "if". I doubt the average individual has $2000 to spend on the Transporter and other DAC that have "cleaner bass tone" as you presume.


Quote
"It is true that there are better-performing MP3 codecs than the basic Fraunhöfer—many audiophiles recommend the LAME encoder—but the AAC codec used by iTunes has better resolution than MP3 at the same bit rate (if a little noisier at the top of the audioband). If you want the maximum number of files on your iPod, therefore, you take less of a quality hit if you use AAC encoding than if you use MP3. But "CD quality"? Yeah, right!"


Again did he even bother to perform the correct ABX test? He is pulling this "resolution" claims out of his ass.  I understand his reasoning for not wanting to go with lossy codecs, but he is going about it again in a manner that is inheriently flawed. He acknowledges different players like Foobar2000 and claims to use EAC to make his lossless backups. His other article regarding CD ripping is "somewhat" better from a hi-end stand point.

http://stereophile.com/computeraudio/1008servers/
budding I.T professional

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #85 –
Quote from: HotshotGG on
His other article regarding CD ripping is "somewhat" better from a hi-end stand point.

"We have found that sending uncompressed digital audio data from a PC to a high-quality standalone D/A processor results in sound quality that is indistinguishable from playing a CD on a regular player." ~ Stereophile

I agree and it sounds like they AB things. Of course, Stereophile, like most mags, makes most of its revenue from advertising, and if they don't help sell the product, they're simply not doing their jobs. I am not, of course, trying to say that there isn't a lot of hype in the audio 'industry', but can't the same be said for each and every industry? All I see here is good old American salesmanship. Am I wrong?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #86 –
Quote from: 2tec on
"We have found that sending uncompressed digital audio data from a PC to a high-quality standalone D/A processor results in sound quality that is indistinguishable from playing a CD on a regular player." ~ Stereophile

Regular players are very good nowadays... 

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #87 –
I wonder how much of my music collection I'm not hearing because I'm playing files that are missing so much information on equipment that only costs a few hundred dollars, total.

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #88 –
Quote
However, a picket fence of very-low-level vertical lines can be seen. These represent spurious tones that result, I suspect, from mathematical limitations in the codec.
This is undithered 16-bit output from the decoder. That "picket fence" is truncation distortion. It's not present in the mp3 file itself - it's an artefact of decoding. It wouldn't be present had a 24-bit decoder, or a 16-bit decoder with dither, been used.

Quote
How did the MP3 codec running at 128kbps cope with the multitone signal? The result is shown in fig.5. The dark red vertical lines represent the tones, and none are missing;
An FhG mp3 encoder, running at 128kbps, which doesn't include a low pass filter?! I don't know of such a thing - unless you use the Cool Edit plug-in and manually over ride the low pass filter settings. I used to have that encoder, but I don't recall if it could be forced to preserve everything out to ~21.5kHz like that.

Quote from: HotshotGG on
did he even bother to perform the correct ABX test?
Why would he do that. If Stereophile resorted to ABX testing, some of their most lucrative advertisers would be most upset. ABX testing isn't compatible with their business model.

Slagging off lossy codecs is.

Cheers,
David.

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #89 –
"Our methodology of analysing audio using spectral graphs is proven and valid. In some specific scenarios, we do recommend that our readers listen to their music by viewing their frequency spectra at the same time. They may find the undertaking a whole lot more enjoyable. Don't just indulge your ears; do the same for your eyes too!"

 

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #90 –
Quote from: 2tec on
"We have found that sending uncompressed digital audio data from a PC to a high-quality standalone D/A processor results in sound quality that is indistinguishable from playing a CD on a regular player." ~ Stereophile

Obviously the test did not involve CDs which are so scratched that EAC or dBpoweramp could spend the night getting the track bit-perfect (and succeed).

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #91 –
If someone wants to challenge Atkinson on his nonsense directly, they can try it on this Stereophile forum thread, where he touted the article to fawning admirers:



http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showfla...age=3#Post35780

I can't seem to get a valid registration, though, after several tries.

Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Quote
However, a picket fence of very-low-level vertical lines can be seen. These represent spurious tones that result, I suspect, from mathematical limitations in the codec.
This is undithered 16-bit output from the decoder. That "picket fence" is truncation distortion. It's not present in the mp3 file itself - it's an artefact of decoding. It wouldn't be present had a 24-bit decoder, or a 16-bit decoder with dither, been used.

Quote
How did the MP3 codec running at 128kbps cope with the multitone signal? The result is shown in fig.5. The dark red vertical lines represent the tones, and none are missing;
An FhG mp3 encoder, running at 128kbps, which doesn't include a low pass filter?! I don't know of such a thing - unless you use the Cool Edit plug-in and manually over ride the low pass filter settings. I used to have that encoder, but I don't recall if it could be forced to preserve everything out to ~21.5kHz like that.



Atkinson almost certainly was using Audition (Cool Edit) and therefore FhG for his analyses.  Don't know why he'd override the lowpass settings, though.

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #92 –
I tried to call JA out to his face on this back when it was published:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost...p;postcount=145

The money shot:

Quote
To put the point far more bluntly, elitism about lossy encoding is one of the reasons why Stereophile is becoming less relevant (and HydrogenAudio is becoming more relevant) in the hi-fi world.

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #93 –
He doesn't post on SH.tv as far as I know.  That SH.tv thread did have lots of pointed criticisms, though.  He does reply on occasion to posts on rec.audio.high-end...and on rec.audio.opinion. I suppose I could start a thread on the former (the latter is a toxic waste dump not worth bothering with).

Edit -- oop , I see he did post on that SH.tv thread -- but not to address any of yours or other's substantial critiques.... 

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #94 –
Quote
"Great article, John!

Very easy to understand and nicely laid out. Extremely interesting.

And the illustration is indeed clever and well done."\


Are these people for real!?    Imagine hundreds of people being duped into believing this garbage. 


Quote
I tried to call JA out to his face on this back when it was published:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost...p;postcount=145


That's what we need more of around here! I was going to say somebody needs to put a stop to this nonsense.
budding I.T professional

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #95 –
Also note this was discussed before here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=61839

Moderation: Topic has been merged.

So, do y'all think I should speak out a little more forcefully by posting my screed to the Stereophile forums? Maybe cc it to my blog or something?

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #96 –
Quote
I agree and it sounds like they AB things. Of course, Stereophile, like most mags, makes most of its revenue from advertising, and if they don't help sell the product, they're simply not doing their jobs. I am not, of course, trying to say that there isn't a lot of hype in the audio 'industry', but can't the same be said for each and every industry? All I see here is good old American salesmanship. Am I wrong?


I absolutely agree with you on this one. He is creating a fair amount of hype by simply claiming that people are asking him " these questions".

Quote
I suppose I could start a thread on the former (the latter is a toxic waste dump not worth bothering with).




Quote
Also note this was discussed before here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=61839


I am sorry I didn't see that post. I was browsing the web and came across the article and thought "what attrocities" were being commited by this guy. I am lucky I had the stomach to read the rest of the article. 


Quote
So, do y'all think I should speak out a little more forcefully by posting my screed to the Stereophile forums? Maybe cc it to my blog or something?


I definitely would it would most certainly help people into not being duped into such outragous and bogus claims. We need to make a collection or series of articles that can thoroughly be debunked so misinformation does not spread like a wildfire.  I am ashamed. Technical Journalists come up with some really good articles and really like reading their stuff except they can't always seem to get their facts straight when it comes to topics like "audio" or even DBT method (it's as if it is non-existent out there). There is a lot of crappy information being spread out there by major publications like this one. We need to put an end to it. 
budding I.T professional

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #98 –
Quote
Yes, the infamous Sam Tellig in one of his cosmically stupid 'Audio Anarchist' columns in Stereophile.


Unfortunately it didn't end there. It turns out that RAIN-X was the treatment that people really should have been using to get that "taut and controlled bass", "low level detail" and "lessening of sibilance, presumably without the potential dangers of spraying armor-all on a digital optical medium.

Stereophile Article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

Reply #99 –
Epilogue: Fears about misattributing quantization noise to fundamental MP3 distortions are here unfounded.