Author Topic: At last: MP3 Lossless!!! (Read 74,279 times)

Curt · « **Reply #50 on:** November 14, 2009, 10:30 AM »

yeah, I know, I didn't say it right. The idea of explaining it in English, was a bit overwhelming at the time. Sorry.

When I was younger there was no Internet. If I wanted to hear a new CD, I would go into a shop in an actual building and put on a giant pair of headphones, or take a seat in their "listening room", and listen to that music in high fidelity sound. At high volumes! Today I will have to go to a page on the Internet and listen to some tiny 22 kbps LOW fidelity sound stream. The same goes for the replacement of the BIG stereo gear in my living-room; the two four feet cabinets on the floor have been replaced by a couple of tiny speakers next to my monitor on the table. Quality has been sacrificed for comfort. No progress, in real life.

tsaint · « **Reply #51 on:** November 14, 2009, 01:54 PM »

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If I wanted to hear a new CD, I would go into a shop in an actual building and put on a giant pair of headphones, or take a seat in their "listening room", and listen to that music in high fidelity sound. At high volumes!

That reminded me of the distinctly unpleasant experiences of going to preview a cd, like you, but so very often, some heavy-techno-metallic-crap would be blaring from speakers in the store so the sound permeated the earphones. So trying to listen to sensitive, subtle piano solos would be hideously interfered with by "musicians" substituting enthusiastic frenzy for skill. I am GLAD those days are past and my music can be a private affair. I'll settle for being able to hear a low quality sample with no background noise.

On another note, one of the positives of my descent into old age is that I have no need to pay a premium to buy frequencies I can't hear anymore. Nature has now blessed me with mp3 ears.

(Profuse apologies to all the techno-metallic-??? fans I've offended.

)

Darwin · « **Reply #52 on:** November 14, 2009, 03:09 PM »

Quote from: tsaint on November 14, 2009, 01:54 PM

On another note, one of the positives of my descent into old age is that I have no need to pay a premium to buy frequencies I can't hear anymore. Nature has now blessed me with mp3 ears.

That really resonates with me, as well. I like that, mp3 ears

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #53 on:** November 14, 2009, 04:11 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on November 14, 2009, 03:09 PM

Quote from: tsaint on November 14, 2009, 01:54 PM
On another note, one of the positives of my descent into old age is that I have no need to pay a premium to buy frequencies I can't hear anymore. Nature has now blessed me with mp3 ears.

That really resonates with me, as well. I like that, mp3 ears

Save me a seat on that bus also ... 30 years if open piped Harleys has had an impact on my hearing.

I am wondering if the Loudness War fiasco that Innuendo mentioned is why many tracks sound like the vocals are/have been washed out (barely audible) to me.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #54 on:** November 14, 2009, 09:49 PM »

Quote from: Stoic Joker on November 14, 2009, 04:11 PM

Quote from: Darwin on November 14, 2009, 03:09 PM
Quote from: tsaint on November 14, 2009, 01:54 PM
On another note, one of the positives of my descent into old age is that I have no need to pay a premium to buy frequencies I can't hear anymore. Nature has now blessed me with mp3 ears.

That really resonates with me, as well. I like that, mp3 ears
Save me a seat on that bus also ... 30 years if open piped Harleys has had an impact on my hearing.

I am wondering if the Loudness War fiasco that Innuendo mentioned is why many tracks sound like the vocals are/have been washed out (barely audible) to me.

Ditto - my problem is I like to know the frequencies are there even if I can't hear them.

Seriously though I still buy CDs mostly. I hate paying the same price for audio downloads (or even more quite often) when I can have a shiny disk plus a booklet full of pictures and text, or in the case of classical music background info on the artists, performance and historical notes.

Maybe I am old fashioned but I do like to have the physical product. When I do download stuff more often than not I burn a CD anyway to listen on a HiFi system or in the car.

mouser · « **Reply #55 on:** November 14, 2009, 09:55 PM »

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my problem is I like to know the frequencies are there even if I can't hear them.

xtabber · « **Reply #56 on:** November 15, 2009, 01:21 PM »

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my problem is I like to know the frequencies are there even if I can't hear them.

If you are a discerning listener, you will readily notice the difference if they are missing, even if you don't actually hear them, because the lack of harmonic resonances in the higher frequencies dulls the tone of the sound in the range you do hear. That's why music mastered at a higher resolution (96Khz, 24 bit) sounds better when reproduced on a CD (44Khz, 16 bit resolution). It's also why violinists can continue to play beautifully long after they are no longer able to hear directly the highest tones they produce.

While this is true of acoustic music, I don't know if it applies to tones generated electronically, but then I don't listen to much electric music anyway.

That said, high bit rate MP3 (256-320 kbs, VBR) should be nearly indistinguishable from CD sound if properly encoded, and I listen to a lot of music that way, but I usually rip it or convert it from lossless myself. In-ear headphones also help make up for some of the upper frequency hearing loss.

Innuendo · « **Reply #57 on:** November 15, 2009, 04:05 PM »

Quote from: Curt on November 14, 2009, 10:30 AM

yeah, I know, I didn't say it right. The idea of explaining it in English, was a bit overwhelming at the time. Sorry.

Don't worry about it, Curt. I'm a native English speaker & sometimes even I struggle for the right way to say something.

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When I was younger there was no Internet. If I wanted to hear a new CD, I would go into a shop in an actual building and put on a giant pair of headphones, or take a seat in their "listening room", and listen to that music in high fidelity sound. At high volumes!

Lucky you. When I was younger there was no internet, either, but the shops around here didn't even have listening rooms. One just had to either hope that during the time you were shopping one of the clerks would play it on the in-store sound system or you could try your luck begging one of those clerks to put on the album you were were interested in. If the clerk didn't have anywhere near your musical tastes then you were out of luck.

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Today I will have to go to a page on the Internet and listen to some tiny 22 kbps LOW fidelity sound stream.

Yes, which is why when I am interested in hearing what something REALLY sounds like I don't even bother with those crummy sound streams & I secure a more high-fidelity sample elsewhere.

Quote

The same goes for the replacement of the BIG stereo gear in my living-room; the two four feet cabinets on the floor have been replaced by a couple of tiny speakers next to my monitor on the table. Quality has been sacrificed for comfort. No progress, in real life.

Technology used to listen to has changed, but you don't have to give up quality if you do not want to. There are stereo components that integrate with that BIG stereo gear in your living room that allows you to stream high quality music streams (FLAC, APE, TAK, etc.) across your network & play them through your high end stereo like any other sound source with amazing results.

And as for the computer itself, sacrifices do not have to be made there, either, if you are willing to part with a little cash. Myself, I have a stand-alone sound card (Creative Audigy 2 ZS - needs upgrading, I know, but still sounds good) connected to a set of Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 Ultra speakers. With this setup on my PC I can tell you that music can fill the house, the yard, the neighbors' yards, etc. and sound excellent with any sounds emanating from my PC. Once I found the music player with the plugins of my choice a little tweaking yielded me a heavenly music experience.

I guess what I'm saying is just like it's always been, good sounding audio is possible, but today you just have to spend your money on slightly different directions in order to achieve your goal.

Innuendo · « **Reply #58 on:** November 15, 2009, 04:12 PM »

Quote from: xtabber on November 15, 2009, 01:21 PM

While this is true of acoustic music, I don't know if it applies to tones generated electronically, but then I don't listen to much electric music anyway.

There have been studies done on this and yes, it's even a factor when the music is generated electronically. One study found that people who listened to the music via a lossless were affected mentally and emotionally more than when they listened to the same music via a lossy source.

Something else I found interesting was that the test subjects exhibited more mental fatique when listening to the lossy music as their brains were trying to find the parts of the music that "wasn't there" even if there was no audible difference between the lossy & lossless source to the human ear.

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That said, high bit rate MP3 (256-320 kbs, VBR) should be nearly indistinguishable from CD sound if properly encoded...

I find that to be 99% true, but during some complex musical segments even the best MP3 encoding cannot get rid of some artifacts that just aren't there when listening to a lossless version of the song. Again, it's very rare that it ever happens, but it irritates me no less.

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In-ear headphones also help make up for some of the upper frequency hearing loss.

In-ear headphones also contribute to hearing loss.

Curt · « **Reply #59 on:** January 12, 2010, 08:42 AM »

The announcement of the first MP3HD player is more about touch-screen etcetetera than about MP3HD. I guess they realize that nobody except a few DC-members will know what MP3HD is.

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Dear all4mp3.com subscribers,

first things first: we wish you all a happy 2010, full of love and mp3.

For us, the year starts with this great news: Samsung just announced the first ever mp3HD player during last week's CES show in Las Vegas .

We were lucky to have a hands-on demo of the IceTouch (YP-H1) during the show, and this innovation-rich player is very promising:

Beside mp3HD playback, the Icetouch features the world’s first 2-inch, full color, transparent Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) touch-screen display. It functions as a DVD-quality video player, studio quality audio player, an ultra-portable photo album, an FM radio and even a portable storage device (up to 16GB onboard memory)

According to Samsung, it will be available for purchase in the first half of ....

Link to the full Samsung press release here

all4mp3 team
Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/all4mp3

MerleOne · « **Reply #60 on:** January 12, 2010, 10:56 AM »

Maybe a bit off topic but I'd like to share this with you all : I recently had a go at Jetaudio Plus because it was on sale and I wanted to get it since a long time ago. I was interested in the mp3 sound management by Cowon, which I find outstanding, something called BBE. See http://www.bbesound.com/technologies/BBE_MP/BBE_MP_WhitePaper.pdf for those who are interested.

But actually I was favorably surprised by another point, the mp3 encoder. I used to rely on EasyCDDA, encoding my CD @ 192 kbps ABR. With Jetaudio Plus I chose 192 kbps VBR and I was astonished by the difference (on the same Sony Walkman, a NWZ-S738F). The music seems "clearer", "richer" than with EasyCDDA with a similar compression level.

I don't know if the basic version of JetAudio (free) has the same mp3 encoding capabilities, but I can now highly recommend it if it's there.

Curt · « **Reply #61 on:** January 12, 2010, 11:06 AM »

- the way you describe your experience, I must say that I don't think the improvement necessarily was due to JetAudio's converter as much as to ABR versus VBR. 192 kbps ABR is mostly something like 110~180 kbps, while 192 kbps VBR always is 192 kbps. Edited: wrong! the "V" in VBR is for "variable". "CBR" is constant.

But I do think JetAudio Plus is really fine.

f0dder · « **Reply #62 on:** January 12, 2010, 12:12 PM »

Quote from: MerleOne on January 12, 2010, 10:56 AM

ut actually I was favorably surprised by another point, the mp3 encoder. I used to rely on EasyCDDA, encoding my CD @ 192 kbps ABR. With Jetaudio Plus I chose 192 kbps VBR and I was astonished by the difference (on the same Sony Walkman, a NWZ-S738F). The music seems "clearer", "richer" than with EasyCDDA with a similar compression level.

Hm, couldn't find mention of which MP3 encoding engine EasyCDDA uses; the closest "official" info I found in any obvious place was a link to mp3dev.org, which seems to be an old site for LAME? - some review does say it uses LAME, though. And afaik, LAME is pretty much the highest-quality encoder on the market?

JetAudio doesn't mention it's codec either, but a 2007 thread on their forum implies Fraunhofer... I hope that they've either changed codec since, or that Fraunhofer has improved their codec, since it used to have worse quality (except for very low bitrates, but who use 96kbps for their audio?

)

But hey, some blind-listening studies have been made where people actually prefered MP3 over FLAC... probably because they've been listening to MP3s so long that they've gotten used to the lossy sound >_<

Quote from: Curt on January 12, 2010, 11:06 AM

192 kbps ABR is mostly something like 110~180 kbps, while 192 kbps VBR always is 192 kbps.

Hm, don't you mean that CBR will always have constant rate? ABR is still variable bitrate, and don't give 100% predictable output size... but more so than VBR. See this

Crush · « **Reply #63 on:** January 12, 2010, 01:36 PM »

You can use all stupid archivers for lossless audio compression. We don´t need hundrets of redundant lossless formats.

Curt · « **Reply #64 on:** January 12, 2010, 03:21 PM »

Quote from: f0dder on January 12, 2010, 12:12 PM

Quote from: Curt on January 12, 2010, 11:06 AM
..., while 192 kbps VBR always is 192 kbps.
Hm, don't you mean that CBR will always have constant rate?

- you're of course right, f0dder. I confused VBR with CBR.

f0dder · « **Reply #65 on:** January 12, 2010, 04:00 PM »

Quote from: Crush on January 12, 2010, 01:36 PM

You can use all stupid archivers for lossless audio compression. We don´t need hundrets of redundant lossless formats.

Archivers? Generic compression tools don't tend to work very well with audio data compared to a specialized codec... besides, not all media players are going to support, say, playback of .wav from a .rar file

I agree that we don't need Yet Another Format^TM, though, if it doesn't bring anything really valuable into the mix... and imho MP3HD doesn't. In fact, because of the way it works, I even think it's a downright bad idea

Crush · « **Reply #66 on:** January 12, 2010, 05:54 PM »

Try 7zip or rar. The main difference of the lossless compressors is sometimes a small function before compression similar to this one:
for (t_audiosize x=0; x<wavlen-1; x++) { wav[x] = wav[x+1]-wav[x]; if (wav[x]<0) wav[x]=0-wav[x]; }
... That´s all

Lashiec · « **Reply #67 on:** January 12, 2010, 10:57 PM »

Yes, yes, I had that crazy idea years ago, when I found I could save a few megabytes by ZIP compressing my MP3s, since both foobar2000 and XMPlay can play compressed files with ease. Then I realized I could not edit any MP3 directly from fb2k if I did that...

The WAV format doesn't have a metadata system, and a PMP doesn't handle 7ZIP or RAR compressed WAV files too well. Heck, my own computer takes several seconds just to process a single compressed audio file (a fairly big one, though). The fact that general compression algorithms are pretty efficient compared to FLAC doesn't make them a suitable option for audio compression.

xtabber · « **Reply #68 on:** January 13, 2010, 04:07 PM »

Quote from: f0dder on January 12, 2010, 12:12 PM

Quote from: MerleOne on January 12, 2010, 10:56 AM
ut actually I was favorably surprised by another point, the mp3 encoder. I used to rely on EasyCDDA, encoding my CD @ 192 kbps ABR. With Jetaudio Plus I chose 192 kbps VBR and I was astonished by the difference (on the same Sony Walkman, a NWZ-S738F). The music seems "clearer", "richer" than with EasyCDDA with a similar compression level.
Hm, couldn't find mention of which MP3 encoding engine EasyCDDA uses; the closest "official" info I found in any obvious place was a link to mp3dev.org, which seems to be an old site for LAME? - some review does say it uses LAME, though. And afaik, LAME is pretty much the highest-quality encoder on the market?

JetAudio doesn't mention it's codec either, but a 2007 thread on their forum implies Fraunhofer... I hope that they've either changed codec since, or that Fraunhofer has improved their codec, since it used to have worse quality (except for very low bitrates, but who use 96kbps for their audio? )

Easy-CDDA uses LAME. Don't know about JetAudio, but since the free version does not include MP3 encoding, they probably pay for their MP3 codecs, and since they bundle MP3 and MP3pro together, I'd guess they license them from Thomson.

Setting VBR rates is a lot more complicated than just picking a bitrate. You need to set maximum and minimum filters and various options. LAME provides a number of optimized presets which you can use as is or tweak yourself. These are available only in the registered version of Easy-CDDA, IIRC. ABR is VBR with averaging between frames to achieve a consistent file size, so the final quality may depend on how much compression is actually needed for a given source.

Here's a reasonably comprehensible description of VBR vs ABR: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ABR

tomos · « **Reply #69 on:** January 13, 2010, 06:07 PM »

So,
can anyone recommend the least damaging way to rip CD's to mp3 (with preferably a reasonably priced or free app) ?? ...seeing as it looks like the MP3HD sounds (har har :p) like a bit of a dead dog

Darwin · « **Reply #70 on:** January 13, 2010, 06:27 PM »

Quote from: tomos on January 13, 2010, 06:07 PM

So,
can anyone recommend the least damaging way to rip CD's to mp3 (with preferably a reasonably priced or free app) ?? ...seeing as it looks like the MP3HD sounds (har har :p) like a bit of a dead dog

Presumably, you mean the least lossy way, no? I don't think it is possible to physically harm the media itself when ripping CD's.

tomos · « **Reply #71 on:** January 13, 2010, 06:57 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on January 13, 2010, 06:27 PM

Quote from: tomos on January 13, 2010, 06:07 PM
So,
can anyone recommend the least damaging way to rip CD's to mp3 (with preferably a reasonably priced or free app) ?? ...seeing as it looks like the MP3HD sounds (har har :p) like a bit of a dead dog

Presumably, you mean the least lossy way, no? I don't think it is possible to physically harm the media itself when ripping CD's.

ehh, the least lossy way for the MP3's

(I meant)

sajman99 · « **Reply #72 on:** January 13, 2010, 07:07 PM »

Many years ago I used EasyLAME which was a pre-configured RazorLAME-- alt-preset-standard (VBR).

Though I haven't encoded mp3s in many years, I would probably try Pazera's freeware LAME Front-End if I were to get started on a mp3 collection today.

f0dder · « **Reply #73 on:** January 13, 2010, 07:44 PM »

tomos: for free ripping, go with EAC and also use the AccurateRip plugin... and choose a decent MP3 rate (or do the sane thing and go FLAC if you aren't super-constrained by disk space). If you're willing to pay a bit, go for dBpoweramp - faster ripping than EAC (especially if your drive supports C2 error reporting), but still does it securely.

sajman99 · « **Reply #74 on:** January 13, 2010, 08:01 PM »

Yep, EAC is the best ripper-- especially if you have a scratched CD. Other free tools like CDex and Audiograbber reportedly get the job done as well.