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Topic: Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo (Read 33262 times) previous topic - next topic
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Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Quote from: jcoalson on
Quote from: danvolker on
Except in terms of relative sales and marketing skills, Musicgiants is like Coca Cola, and all the flac sellers combined are virtually unknown to the music buying public, and without any significant marketing efforts.

huh?  more like 'itunes is coca cola'.  I'd like to see some musicgiants sales numbers.  just because it's got 'giants' in the name doesn't mean anything.  you are probably not aware of all the places selling flac.  I think it's much more likely the flac market is larger than the wmal market.

Quote from: danvolker on
Personally, I don't care which format wins ( as long as it is NOT DRM wrapped) ...but I do care about planning my hardware and music purchases for the future. As AV recievers [harware manufacturers]are already sporting media server abilities ( like the Pioneer elite series, among others) which utilize the windows media player standards, and play the wma files, it is looking more like Microsoft has embedded itself into your culture for quite a bit longer :-)

wma != wmal.  except pc software that can use MS DLLs, almost nothing else plays wmal.  those pioneer/denon/marantz/etc av media servers support flac not wmal.


Sorry, I thought you guys also talked about "quality" based music on this site. I-tunes is great if you want to further marginalize an already dumbed down America --the proliferation of poor quality mp3 style music was bad enough with Napster and Morpheus, and itunes made this even worse, by adding a DRM product to a horrendously distorting compression format....

I am talking about music that sounds good on a really good home stereo, and for this, Musicgiants.com is setting the pace. They start with better masters, and try to maintain as much quality as possible ( which should make them a poster child operation for you guys, if you could forget about the wmal aspect.....which of course, is really moot, since most of the best music  downloads are NOT DRM...so you can convert to your heart's content..)

I am wondering why there is even any discussion about what the best way is to store these mp3 style, heavily compressed musical insults to your ears---itunes to mp3 to whatever, is polishing a turd...there is no point. From what I have been reading on Hydrogen Audio forums, there is an awful lot of IQ being wasted on figuring out the best way to polish a turd.....
How about we get some of the huge wealth in music knowledge represented on these forums, discussing digital music that stays close to the original master recordings--and particularly, HOW YOU CAN GET YOUR HANDS ON THESE FILES  :-)

Dan

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #1 –
Quote from: danvolker on
Sorry, I thought you guys also talked about "quality" based music on this site. I-tunes is great if you want to further marginalize an already dumbed down America --the proliferation of poor quality mp3 style music was bad enough with Napster and Morpheus, and itunes made this even worse, by adding a DRM product to a horrendously distorting compression format....

That's getting funny. 
You didn't know nothing about that Apple went to very high transparent quality 256 kbps MP4 AAC and DRM free music, right?

I'm not a follower of piracy but let's see the real situation about downloadable music. Legal download is nothing to compare with pirate download. Only few percents. FLAC is vastly popular there.

And did you see the results of poll? http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=68338




Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Nick.C on
Why would any user wish to be tied to a particular family of operating systems using a closed source audio codec - just to be able to access their bought and paid for music?

How many portable devices support WMAL?

How does WMAL differentiate itself from other, more widely used, lossless codecs?


Wow.
This is Not about whether we are mac or pc or linux or unix or whatever....It is about how to create a better music listening environment -- in my case, it is for my house.
Statistically, most people that began on PCs will stay on PCs, most that started on macs will stay on them, and the tiny little piece of the population that are programmers using linux or unix or whatever, will never be marketed to by the big Music distributors.
Maybe the whole issue I have missed the boat on is the issue of "Portable Devices". To me, this is not quality sound, particularly with the typical ipod filled with cr**.
But getting to your points:
    Getting the quality source music is very important , unless you have damaged hearing, or are tone deaf. It sounds like you are more interested in the counterculture world of battling the evil empire, than you are about the music. The deal is, buying the music and accessing for your stereo is far more important than tilting at windmills......and...virtually every album of track I have ever downloaded from Musicgiants was wmal, WITHOUT DRM, so I could easily convert these to any lossless open source format that I wanted to...As could you.[/li]



    How many portables take wma's or wmal's? You really miss the point. Download with your computer, and then convert to what your portable will accept. I bought a Zune, which does run wmal, and I use it on my boat ( cd player has issues in large waves, zune does not) But the zune get's closer to the sound quality of the cd player...An ipod would be a large step down in sound quality, for the stereo system on the boat.[/li]

    The wmal is lossless, so equivalent to the other lossless formats in most ways, except two---the wmal format is used by a large distributor of relatively hi def music, and 2nd, the wmal will play on higher quality hardware...such as the Transporter by Logitech (home stereo quality media server) or on several brands of AV Recievers ( such as the Pioneer Elite brand with the Media Gallery---they see every wmal file on your hard drives, and will also utilize each playlist you have created...)...so to answer you, close to master quality  wmal is easier to get your hands on( potentially the only "hi def" download choice for many artists), and wmal also differentiates itself by having already penetrated the manufacturing market, and the big boys are already adopting it.[/li]


If I was really paranoid about wmal someday becoming impossible to use, due to operating system changes or some other X-factor, the easy solution would be to have 100% of your wmal library backed up on another hard drive ( or more) and have the wmal files converted to the best open source format with equivalent lossless sound qualities. It would NOT be related at all to compression size like mp3s, as this is  for people who might as well be tone deaf :-)

Dan

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #3 –
Quote from: IgorC on
Quote from: danvolker on
Sorry, I thought you guys also talked about "quality" based music on this site. I-tunes is great if you want to further marginalize an already dumbed down America --the proliferation of poor quality mp3 style music was bad enough with Napster and Morpheus, and itunes made this even worse, by adding a DRM product to a horrendously distorting compression format....

That's getting funny. 
You didn't know nothing about that Apple went to very high transparent quality 256 kbps MP4 AAC and DRM free music, right?

I'm not a follower of piracy but let's see the real situation about downloadable music. Legal download is nothing to compare with pirate download. Only few percents. FLAC is vastly popular there.

And did you see the results of poll? http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=68338

Apple at 256k does not compare to wmal at 1100kbps ...again, you are refercing marginalised music, good only for portable devices with little sound quality ability in playback, regardless of what file format they play. Portable device with the Bad DAC( which they all have), and a pair of $50 headpones or earbuds is NOT going to provide anything but mediocre sound.

As to the masses liking MP3, that is my point--culturally, we have been dumbed down by advertising. Instead of looking for a more realistic music experience, the masses are now just cncerned with how many of their songs they can carry around with them, and they are not even aware of the distortion...

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #4 –
dan, you're repeatingly asserting that 256kbps aac from itunes "does not compare" to lossless, "is crap", etc.  we get people like you coming in and out all the time.  around here you have to back it up with abx results or no one's going to listern.  abx repeatedly shows, scientifically, that aac and mp3 can generally be transparent down to lower bitrates than that.

the rest of your argument is all over the map.  you probably don't know that the transporter (edit:squeezecenter actually) is converting your wmal to another format (flac by default) which the player is actually playing, but wmal only works if your server is on windows.

you started the 'musicgiants is coca cola' analogy either because it is big or high-quality.  when I ask to prove that it's big like itunes you call itunes crap (non-sequitur).  maybe you meant coca cola is the pinnacle of beverage quality?  doesn't make any sense either way.

this board is not the place for making frayed arguments or extraordinary claims with no evidence.

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #5 –
Quote from: danvolker on
Apple at 256k does not compare to wmal at 1100kbps ...again

There is no any particular reason to speak about wmal instead of generic "lossless" as there is no difference in output quality.
Most of people can't spot the difference between vbr at approx. 192 kbps lossy codec and original.
And you are not doing any revolution around "lossless vs lossy". Most of people who listen MP3 on DAP have lossless files of their music.  I don't see any mediocricty in high quality MP3.

Before you will try to bring revolution to HA I will give you some advices.

Read terms of sevice
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=3974

Especially
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=149481

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #6 –


Quote
There is no any particular reason to speak about wmal instead of generic "lossless" as there is no difference in output quality.
Most of people can't spot the difference between vbr at approx. 192 kbps lossy codec and original.
And you are not doing any revolution around "lossless vs lossy". Most of people who listen MP3 on DAP have lossless files of their music.  I don't see any mediocricty in high quality MP3.


The "most people" you say "can not spot the difference", are listening on the worst garbage in music playback potential ( ie, portable devices),  that we could have imagined 20 years ago.

If you truly believe there "is" such a thing as a high quality mp3 download, then I have to believe you listen exclusively to Ipods or Radio Shack gear. Listening on this type of hardware, does not offer you any opportunity to hear music as it was originally recorded.

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #7 –
I wonder if Dan is in some way affiliated with Musicgiants.....

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #8 –
Quote from: danvolker on
The "most people" you say "can not spot the difference", are listening on the worst garbage in music playback potential ( ie, portable devices),  that we could have imagined 20 years ago.

If you truly believe there "is" such a thing as a high quality mp3 download, then I have to believe you listen exclusively to Ipods or Radio Shack gear. Listening on this type of hardware, does not offer you any opportunity to hear music as it was originally recorded.


dude, people use mles cannot mp3's because they provide peceptual transparancy, even audiophiles cannot tell the difference unless it has a killer sample the audio codec is particularly bad at encoding. this is not to say it is a perfect copy but it is 'good enough'.

unless you can provide abx results that prove you can distinguish a 320kbps LAME mp3 from lossless and aac 320kbps from lossless then nobody is going to believe you. why? because most people here have done the test.

personally, mp3 and aac reach transparency on 99% of my music at 192kbps(i have some tracks that these encoders seem to have difficulty encoding, different songs for each encoder) ogg performs similarly and possibly a bit better but i haven't looked into it in much detail.

for my portable(i audio7) i use 90kbit/s ogg. i use such a low bitrate for several reasons

1/ i use it mainly in noisy environments, the city, trains and around the chemical plants i'm frequently on. so its not going to make much of a difference if i hear some distortion because i have a lot of background noise.
2/ i can fit my entire collection on at this bitrate.

as you can see, the target for audio is not always quality. yes, lossless is ALWAYS better than lossy in terms of quality but is often equaled by lossy in terms of PERCIEVED quality.

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #9 –
Quote from: jcoalson on
Quote
dan, you're repeatingly asserting that 256kbps aac from itunes "does not compare" to lossless, "is crap", etc.  we get people like you coming in and out all the time.  around here you have to back it up with abx results or no one's going to listern.  abx repeatedly shows, scientifically, that aac and mp3 can generally be transparent down to lower bitrates than that.


I would not argue your point if we are talking exclusively about listening to the music on portables like Ipods or Zunes...But I came to this forum, looking for non-advertorial information on the future of digital, to help my own library building efforts for the home stereo system I am setting up. In my experience, the ONLY people who think that 256kbps mp3's sound fine, are people with low end hardware--like portables.  If this is NOT the forum with the right brain power and knowledge to discuss audiophile sound and equipment issues, then what is? Clearly, you and many regular posters here know a great deal, but to me it seems you are fixated on numbers so much, you have forgotten to listen to music....or you have forgotten what it sounds like to here music live in a concert hall, and then to re-create this at home.
Quote
the rest of your argument is all over the map.  you probably don't know that the transporter (edit:squeezecenter actually) is converting your wmal to another format (flac by default) which the player is actually playing, but wmal only works if your server is on windows.


This is not significant to me, as the point was I can find and buy downloads in wmal format, of high quality master recordings. Flac or wma or lossless wav does not matter to me, other than how I can acquire the high quality music. when I buy a flac file from HDTraks, it is simple to convert it for my system--the Big deal here is finding the high quality lossless files, which were created from good quality master recordings.


Quote
you started the 'musicgiants is coca cola' analogy either because it is big or high-quality.  when I ask to prove that it's big like itunes you call itunes crap (non-sequitur).  maybe you meant coca cola is the pinnacle of beverage quality?  doesn't make any sense either way.


Sorry, the way I wrote this was very poorly phrased.
I am referring to the "Marketing" effectiveness of MusicGiants.. I see them as much better at getting their product into the minds of music lovers, than HDTraks or the other little ones. if they do a great job of marketing, they may very well succeed in gaining a large share of the population looking for QUALITY MUSIC downloads---meaning that they would ultimately have the buying power to sell virtually every artist's music that I may ever want....This was the end of the Coke anology.


If I am to spend a lot of money now, on looking for  BluRay content (limited now) versus SACD, versus downloaded wmal or other lossless downloads, I need to know this future of a complete access to all music I want will be there....This knowledge/belief,  justifies the purchase of a high end media server. If the marketing effort fails, then the future of the hi def downloads will be less likley, and that could push people like me back to looking for hi quality vinyl LP's to play on an audiophile grade turntable. This is about getting the source music I want.....I might still decide on a media server down the road, with the right DAC and recording device to convert this to a digital file.  But the expense of this approach is huge, as is the time expense....another good reason for me to be trying to figure out if I can plan on any given format right now, as being superior to try to acquire the best source material in. Right now, the only two I see as valuable to me, are HDTraks and MusicGiants.
I see what HDTraks and MusicGiants do--- as catering to people who are trying to recreate a "realistic" re-creation of music they like--to hear it in their homes with a sound as similar as possible to the original performance.....I tunes, on the other hand, was a development of the portable device market, which is poor sound no matter what the quality is of the file they might play.

Quote
this board is not the place for making frayed arguments or extraordinary claims with no evidence.


Unfortunately, I am seeing people on this board saying lots of things like : most people can not hear the difference between******* and ***** when in fact, "most people" are not listening to good stereos--it is just a fact of life. Here, the emphasis on absolute science in sound , would seem to be impossible to discuss if people are allowed to use tests involving such inferior sound equipment as an Ipod or other portable device. 

It's like we have 100 people here saying that no car can drive faster than 110 mph, and still handle well---each of these 100, drives either a ford focus, a chevy impala, a volkswagon van, or an equivalent economy car...Suddenly jcoalson walks into the discussion, and you happen to drive a lamborghini gallardo or a corvette....you beg to differ--you say your experience with your car is that 150 mph feels pretty stable--and they all howl, and say, no way, no car can do this..get in mine, I'll show you.....But clearly, you would have to make the test in your car, not their's.

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #10 –
Quote from: danvolker on
Unfortunately, I am seeing people on this board saying lots of things like : most people can not hear the difference between******* and ***** when in fact, "most people" are not listening to good stereos--it is just a fact of life. Here, the emphasis on absolute science in sound , would seem to be impossible to discuss if people are allowed to use tests involving such inferior sound equipment as an Ipod or other portable device.

When it comes to discerning lossy from lossless, this is largely a myth that has been dis-proven time and again.

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #11 –
Quote from: danvolker on
Unfortunately, I am seeing people on this board saying lots of things like : most people can not hear the difference between******* and ***** when in fact, "most people" are not listening to good stereos.

abx tests have been done on all kinds of equiment, including very good equipment, and the results still show aac and mp3 can be transparent.  we run double-blind listening tests here from time to time.  you can join in with your state of the art system and prove everyone wrong.  you will be the first.  after that you can get a dream job of being "hired golden ears", flying all over then world, listening to all kinds of music on all kinds of neat equipment.

until then there is no need to keep repeating the same myths that have been disproven time and again.  we hear it all the time, that's why there's an item in the TOS about it.

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #12 –
Quote from: greynol on
When it comes to discerning lossy from lossless, this is largely a myth that has been dis-proven time and again.


I agree with this notion. I've heard too many quality recordings in various lossy formats to think otherwise. However the benefit of having a lossless collection vs a lossy collection is that if/when your lossy format of choice falls out of favor you will have to either re-rip you music in the new popular format or transcode into the new popular format. When you transcode lossy to lossy you end up with a worse recording. Imagine going from WMA to MP3 to AAC... that wouldn't sound very pretty. If you choose to re-rip then there is a lot of time and effort lost in duplicating your original efforts..

Now if your collection was already in a lossless format you can transcode to a new lossless format with out any degradation... or you can always transcode into a lossy format which would be identical to re-ripping from the original source into the new lossy format.

It is mostly about future-proofing your digital music collection.

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #14 –
Quote from: Nick.C on
I wonder if Dan is in some way affiliated with Musicgiants.....

Whoa...did I say something about your girlfriend? There is no call for saying nasty stuff like this   

Since I post under my real name, it is easy to find out who I am. You will find me in thousands of posts relating to diving, as I was big into the incpeption of technical diving and DIR, and also I created the first Scuba diving Magazine on the Internet, back in 1994 (  www.sfdj.com  )

I have nothing to do with Musicgiants.
Dan V

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #15 –
Quote from: greynol on
So that I'm clear, the myth I'm talking about is "the better your system the easier it is to hear artifacts."

That is something I expect,  I will easily prove true.
Regards,
Dan

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #16 –
Until you do, I feel more inclined believing what I've read from people who have actually demonstrated that they have golden ears.  I hope you understand.

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #17 –
Quote
That is something I expect, I will easily prove true.
Regards,
Dan


I guess we won't be hearing back from you then  . Just make sure you bring up the topic in in your "hi-end audio" discussion thread, rather then to continue to make the same claims in this thread.
budding I.T professional

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #18 –
Please post the results if you abx 256 aac from lossless (on any equipment).  I believe some persons can do it with the 'fatboy' 'killer' sample, but I haven't read of anyone regularly abxing 256 aac using a modern encoder and non-killer samples.  (correct me if I'm wrong!)  My sense is that would be exceptional hearing, but I don't know if anyone has produced a table of how it ranks in the population (99th percentile or what)--table would have to be adjusted for age.

Quote from: danvolker on
Quote from: greynol on
So that I'm clear, the myth I'm talking about is "the better your system the easier it is to hear artifacts."

That is something I expect, I will easily prove true.
Regards,
Dan

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #19 –
well, lets just sit back and prepare for the new episode of mythbusters.
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Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #20 –
Quote from: TechVsLife on
Please post the results if you abx 256 aac from lossless (on any equipment).  I believe some persons can do it with the 'fatboy' 'killer' sample, but I haven't read of anyone regularly abxing 256 aac using a modern encoder and non-killer samples.  (correct me if I'm wrong!)  My sense is that would be exceptional hearing, but I don't know if anyone has produced a table of how it ranks in the population (99th percentile or what)--table would have to be adjusted for age.

Quote from: danvolker on
Quote from: greynol on
So that I'm clear, the myth I'm talking about is "the better your system the easier it is to hear artifacts."

That is something I expect, I will easily prove true.
Regards,
Dan



I would like to abx in a double blind format, wmal or flak against mp3 at 256kbps , using a high quality master of some piano music I have heard....among other tests...The Piano should be dramatic, as there are huge differences between good stereos on how ell they can reproduce piano--to maker it sound as though there is a piano in the room, or some speakers playing  piano music...I imagine the differences between lossless and mp4 will be equally great here.

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #21 –
now we're getting somewhere... search the forum for listening tests, that will tell you who to get a hold of about samples and procedure.

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #22 –
Quote from: danvolker on
I would like to abx in a double blind format, wmal or flak against mp3 at 256kbps

And don't forget about your claim about AAC at VBR 256 kbps. 

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #23 –
one more point I would like to make.  this not about you dan, this is a general point.

there is a difference between and audiophile (a lover of sound) and an audiophool (a lover of expensive audio equipment).  the way to figure out which is to participate in valid abx tests.

if you pass, you are one of god's chosen and can get a dream job as hired golden ears (a win for a true audiophile)
if you fail, you realize you could be saving lots of money on equipment and have a lot more money to spend on music (a win for a true audiophile)

but a hardened audiophool gains nothing.

Music that sounds good on a really good home stereo

Reply #24 –
ok, so i should not be so lazy;

i have found a nice OS sample (all attribution goes to http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/), it is a last part of the soundtrack - stereo version, the flac they provide (uh, oh, why it is not wma?) seems to be 24bit, i have used audacity beta to cut out the last part, which makes some nice classical dynamic music (imho), then this part was saved as 24bit flac..., then i used lame (3.98.2) with -V2 to 'provide' an mp3 version...,
so check it out, should make an enjoyable abx (or abchr) test.

files are here:
http://somestuff.org/bbb_listening/

(i'am listening with beyerdynamic DT 770 headphones, not that anybody cares thought )

edit: found two locations that were 'funny' with lame,
a. the 1st part, chirping - failed to abx (1st few seconds)
b. the part from 1.46 - 1.50 some sort of worbly efect, i got 5/5 at some point, but then failed to abx.
so far failure, lossy seems to be good enough for this specific sample (and for this specific user).
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