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I used to be about lossless, and high resolution lossless music archives. However after hooking up my squeezebox and subscribing to mog I haven't bought an album in over 6 months, I don't know 320kbps streaming mp3 sounds good enough for me streaming from mog. I have a modest setup, cost me two arms, two legs and my head in terms of investment, but this squeezebox and unlimited choices with mog takes me to realms Plato would have never believed. I must be crazy, I am posting here.
When you can have all the music you could ever consume for half the price of a CD a month, who cares anymore? Currently listening to Rapoon, "What do you suppose, the alien question", this stuff is brilliant, whether it's alien technology or not!
The question is time to digest all this stuff.
Follow Ups:
I agree about the SB Touch, best thing since sliced bread. However, I don't agree about low rez music.
That said, with the type of music you tend to listen to, prolly doesn't matter much.
Oz
Don't worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.
- Winston Churchill
> > > That said, with the type of music you tend to listen to, prolly doesn't matter much. < < <
I have to disagree. I believe he listens to a lot of ambient/synthesizer music. Since I listen to that genre (as well as others) I can honestly say that it does benefit from good quality recordings and decent systems. It can have quite good imaging and a huge soundstage with a FR that will challenge the best systems. Hell, this music tends to have more deep bass( <50 hz) than just about any other genre.
Just my 2 cents.
Jack
To be kind one can call what I listen to "ambient", it is a lot more complicated that that, it can get into the dark ambient and noise genres as well as a fusion between the two at certain points in my library. The bass is to form the atmospherics of the presentation and in most of my albums this soundscape causes a great sense of expanded soundstage space as well as time disintegration.
Too bad most of the artists I listen to and support are very poor (some that I have met at shows are literally homeless), so CD quality is as good as it gets. Some still release on tape (not DAT, but old school tape). Dying artist type of stuff, esoteric is being kind :-)
Indeed when I can get a well recorded recording I prefer the Compact Disk, however for convenience sake I always rip to FLAC.
age old question isn't it? Compared to many my 5000 titles isn't that much, although as I have less and less time to actually sit down and enjoy a listening session, I find myself less and less tolerant of badly recorded music. I'd say I'm more of a quality over quantity. That said, I won't turn down any albums sent my way.
All things being equal, I'd prefer higher rez recordings to lower rez MP3s. That being said, 320 kps doesn't sound bad, unless you're listening vs lossless back to back. In the car it's almost doesn't matter (of course I drive a convertible!) Still I got so caught up in trying to get the nth ounce of perfect sound in my system that I almost forgot why I listen to music in the fiirst place. ALAC files and FLAC files at home and 320kps MOG on the road still bring a smile to my face and joy to my heart. Ultimately that's all I ask.
There are so many awful digital recordings that IMO benefit from lossy compression........ I also find high-resolution MP3 (256 or 320 kbps) to be more listenable than lossless playback decoded in real time. I just think there is some sort of time distortion going on with lossless decoding that breaks the music.
I think Redbook CDs is still the best digital medium for music playback. If the space on a portable device becomes an issue, then 256 or 320 kbps MP3 playback is IMO the best compromise.
"There are so many awful digital recordings that IMO benefit from lossy compression........ I also find high-resolution MP3 (256 or 320 kbps) to be more listenable than lossless playback decoded in real time. I just think there is some sort of time distortion going on with lossless decoding that breaks the music."
Are you comparing 256/320 kbps MP3 to FLAC, Apple Lossless, and other lossless compression schemes and coming to the conclusion that MP3 is better? Did I misunderstand your comment?
"Are you comparing 256/320 kbps MP3 to FLAC, Apple Lossless, and other lossless compression schemes and coming to the conclusion that MP3 is better?"
Yes. Specifically lossless that's decoded in real time. (If the lossless is decoded prior to playback, then I prefer the lossless.)
"Did I misunderstand your comment?"
No.
By the way, I've had this sentiment for quite some time (link). If given the choice, from purely a sonic perspective, I find 256 or 320 kbps MP3 to be less destructive to the music than lossless decoded in real time.
Nope you aren't crazy and you are not alone. Personally I've drawn the line at CD quality but I have not had any reason to try high resolution mp3 others I trust assure me it's very reasonable.
But that's beside the point. If you are happy, who cares?
At some point, one needs to stop chasing audiophile, and just enjoy music. I still buy albums, and find MP3s unacceptable except for background music.
But, that's just me.
Jack
I prefer FLAC to MP3 when I do a back-to-back comparison and the majority of my collection is in that format, but, especially for higher bit rate MP3 material, I do not find them "unacceptable" in the sense that some around here go full tilt on the hyperbolic language.
Interestingly, some months ago I was at a local high end store and had brought my own material for audition purposes with me. One CD was burned from a 256K Amazon download (Ronnie Magri's "Shim Sham Revue" -- I hadn't been able to locate a CD copy at the time I was looking for it).
That CD sounded great and drew raves with the store owner and another customer making note of the album. It didn't occur to me until later that the CD was made from an evil set of MP3s. But, those who heard it loved the music, thought it was well recorded, and wanted to get a copy for themselves.
That's something I've noticed repeatedly over the years. Often when deprived of a back-to-back comparison and/or put in a situation the listening takes place without knowing the official pedigree, most people will simply enjoy the music.
.
marc g. - audiophile by day, music lover by night
... take away advance knowledge or side-by-side comparison and the the righteous declarations subside considerably.
I've been given a few MP3 burned discs over the years. They tend to have a flat soundstage and messed uo treble. I still listen to them because I like the music. They just don't sound very good.
To each his own.
Jack
If you enjoy the music that's what counts.
However, if you can hear the difference, it's hard to go back to an inferior sounding format. At least it is for me. But as you say, to each his own.
I had a few thousand 256kbps AAC tunes on my iPod Classic for the car audio system. It was enjoyable until I compared some of the songs using Apple Lossless. I ended up wiping out the entire library and redoing everything in Apple Lossless. Much better! So the car audio setup now uses Apple Lossless compression throughout. I couldn't go back to AAC and still enjoy it.
On the other hand, and for the sake of saving space, I use 256kbps AAC on my iPhone for portable use. I can still enjoy the music during my travels but would never attach the iPhone with the AAC files to my car audio or home setup for primary use.
NT
Are you happy? Are you enjoying yourself? It's just a hobby. I am massively into vinyl even though I usually feel that, for the indie music I listen to, the vinyl is seldomly better than the CD given the source. But I just enjoy the vinyl experience. So who cares?
It doesn't matter, I setup something a trillion times better than the receiver I had 20 years ago, mid-fi mp3 sure, wrapped in the best I could do to extract every detail out of these streams, doesn't matter to me!
Rock on!
Being crazy is a prerequisite to post on this site.
You are if quantity trumps quality. I'd rather have 50 high def titles than 5000 mp3's. Rock out with your clock out.
Freedom is the right to discipline yourself.
I recently converted my 24/88.2, 24/96. 24/176.4 and 24/192 music files from Apple Lossless to AIFF using XLD as it sounds better in every comparison I made.
Many say "Lossless is Lossless" and "bits are bits" however unlike uncompressed music files, lossless compressed music files have to be uncompressed in real time while the music is playing and this is said to effect the sound. Losslessly compressed music files are bit by bit identical and can be converted back to an uncompressed format (WAV, AIFF) and sound like the original music file again with no losses.
I first compared formats using my Reference Recordings HRx 24/176k data DVDs and MA Recordings 24 bit data DVDs, which are both in the WAV format. I used XLD to convert them to AIFF and Apple Lossless as I find XLD sounds better in file conversion that does iTunes.
To me WAV sounds the best on my Mac Mini, which seems illogical to me since it is a Microsoft/IBM format played, but I accept what I hear. It is also possible that file conversion is not a perfect science.
Anyway WAV has an ease of presentation and ambiance that sounds very lifelike. AIFF was very close. Both WAV and AIFF have a larger soundstage and a lifelike attack of high percussion instruments that was somewhat subdued with Apple Lossless although it sounded excellent otherwise and one would not know what was missing if Apple Lossless was not played right after a WAV or AIFF music file. I selected AIFF since WAV doesn't support album artwork on my Mac Mini.
If you decide to convert 24 bit Apple Lossless files to WAV or AIFF don't use iTunes as it will convert them to 16 bit even though it retains the correct sampling frequency. Instead use XLD as it will retain the original 24 bit rate and sampling frequency.
I had to keep my 24/44.1kHz and 24/48kHz music files I made for iPod use in Apple Lossless, as AIFF and WAV on my iPod are limited to 16/44.1kHz and the iPod only does 24/48 with Apple Lossless. I eventually will have a portable digital player that does DSD and PCM up to 24/192kHz, until then I am stuck with 24/48 for iPod use.
A 24/96 AIFF or WAV music is 4608 kbps or 14.4 times larger than 320 kbps music files under discussion here. However memory is getting pretty cheap, so no reason to suffer clearly audible sonic losses by compression, in my opinon.
"Happy Listening,
Teresa."
By audio asylum standards, you have gotten some remarkably temperate responses here. This is a very subjective hobby, listening to music, and if you enjoy what you hear, then you are not crazy. All else being equal, yes, mp3 (or any lossy format) will, at some point, sound audibly "worse" than either a higher rate, or a pure PCM or God forbid, a poppy LP. Where that boundary lies is up to you. At least some things can show up in blind testing. While I haven't done this, I am sure most humans will have no trouble discerning a 64K MP3 vs. a PCM of most types of music. However, based on my listening, and what I read, the same test would be much harder at 320K, 192K, or even 128K.
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