Topic: Why 24-bit/192kHz music files make no sense - and may be bad for you! (Read 93,594 times)
I'm not trying to find that perfect flat seventh chord in some song.
one think I am picking up from this is that I probably should re-encode all my CDs - that it is likely that the ogg encoder I used in 2000 could have been of lower quality than the one I could use now (although it was not the one in ffmpeg). And I have much better processing power now so it should be less painful.That sort of tedium would be makework akin to sharpening a mountain of pencils.
Who am I kidding, this would take months - there's between 300 and 500 CDs in that basement, if not more :S
one think I am picking up from this is that I probably should re-encode all my CDs - that it is likely that the ogg encoder I used in 2000 could have been of lower quality than the one I could use now (although it was not the one in ffmpeg). And I have much better processing power now so it should be less painful.
Who am I kidding, this would take months - there's between 300 and 500 CDs in that basement, if not more :S
, I have done stuff like that and probably will do it again!That's why a lot of people initially rip their collection to something lossless (like FLAC). Then when they want to do another lossy encode (maybe going from MP3 to OGG or advances in lossy encoding) they can just fire up a program that will automate the task overnight for them. You save a lot of time with this method, but of course the trade-off is maintaining two sets of your music & the huge amount of space the lossless set will consume.I resisted flac for years. But with the huge hard drives now, and the upcoming abilities to pool drives easily can take care of that concern. And that strategy is probably the best if you are unsure of how music formats are going to evolve. It's interesting that mp3s are STILL the most robust, bang for the buck format after all these years. I love mp3s, they changed my life starting in 1997. I hadn't touched the piano for 10 years, and in 1998 I was back playing again. And, of course, all the wonderful music I discovered since then.
I swear by Exact Audio Copy for ripping.EAC is rock solid. I used it for years. Now I use dbpoweramp because it's basically one-click...done. But it costs a little bit. I think I checked at some point if dbp was as good as EAC, and I think it was. Or else I'd still be using EAC.
And my archive files are all FLAC. I'll convert something to MP3 if I need it in a tighter format. But at least with lossless formats all the music is there to begin with. Which gives you much more running room if you ever decide to re-encode.
And with the advent of mufti-tetrabyte drives (at affordable prices) filesize isn't the issue it used to be.
I'm sold on flac.
But at least with lossless formats all the music is there to begin with.I'm not sure whether that is true.
@iphigenie - If you do in fact decide you absolutely must re-encode 500 CDs, I can give you the name of an excellent psychologist I know. She specializes in the treatment of OCD.
I think I recall reading somewhere that, if you ripped your music from CDs, then it was a rip of sampled music, where the loss from sampling was inaudible/undetectable by the human ear.
That is, the analogue copy is apparently the only copy that could actually contain all the music and thus be the closet approach to the original sound.
) to sound clearer and "fuller" than a file whose fidelity broadly exceeds them.
@iphigenie - If you do in fact decide you absolutely must re-encode 500 CDs, I can give you the name of an excellent psychologist I know. She specializes in the treatment of OCD.
But does she specialize in re-encoding CD's?
That sort of tedium would be makework akin to sharpening a mountain of pencils.(see attachment in previous post)
@iphigenie - If you do in fact decide you absolutely must re-encode 500 CDs, I can give you the name of an excellent psychologist I know. She specializes in the treatment of OCD.
I use Mp3Tag to edit tags. Among other things, it lets me export and import tags to and from text files. I often find it faster to export a lot of tags and edit them in a text editor, then re-import them. That also makes it easy to re-use tags from one rip to another of the same material, or copy them from other versions of the same works (particularly useful for classical music).I use DrTag. I had tried Mp3Tag a few years back, found it wanting and so discarded it, but after what you wrote I am trialling it again. It looks like it may have been considerably improved.
I use DrTag. I had tried Mp3Tag a few years back, found it wanting and so discarded it, but after what you wrote I am trialling it again. It looks like it may have been considerably improved.
I've hear records played on very expensive record players with crazy expensive needles, and if I'm being honest, they actually DO sound better. I'm specifically thinking of Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life. Now, it wasn't the greatest experiment in the world...I didn't do a double-blind test or anything, but what I heard actually confirmed that belief. The record sounded more organic and full of life. But again...it's not something I'm very convinced of.
If the speakers were "crazy expensive" as well they may have played a large part in the increase in music quality.
I personally think LPs sound better because what you're hearing is the actual music and not a digital resynthesis of it. I think there are subliminal qualities and cues in analog music reproduction (that certain 'breathiness' or 'air' as it's been called) that make LPs sound more natural to our ears. I don't really know how to describe it other than to say when you first cue an LP, just before the music starts you can hear "the room." That empty but not totally silent "space" that the music starts playing in a second or so later. That ambient space is something digital recordings don't have. Digital is pristine. Almost too pure at times. (Which is why some noise often gets added to a digital mix just to remove some of that "too clean" quality.)Actually, I think you described it rather well!
The other thing that I think makes a big difference is the mastering. With analog multitrack tape, there was always some slight "bleed" between the tracks. Nothing can be totally isolated on an analog master tape. Digital, on the other hand, totally isolates each track. I don't know if everybody hears it this way, but to me CDs have this odd effect of making each track sound like it's in a separate "layer." Almost like there's separate "planes" that each of the tracks are on. And they're "stacked." You don't get a normal sense of 3D in the audio space. On some level you have to connect the dots and create it yourself.
If analog's soundspace can be imagined as a cube, digital (again to my ears) sounds more like stacked 2D layers.
Something like this:
(see attachment in previous post)
I don't know if it makes any sense the way I'm describing it, but to me it's almost like you're missing that continuous Z-axis with digital. I'm aware of discreet layers in the Z-axis of the sound when I pay attention to it. It doesn't "mush together" like an analog recording does. And like sound does in the real world.
And I think that on a largely subconscious level, a part of your brain detects it and thinks there's something wrong until you learn to ignore it. Much like you learn to ignore parallax when you wear glasses. You learn to look through them rather than focus on the front or back of the lens surface.
I think you teach your brain to do something similar when listening to digital music playback.
Hope some of this makes sense. I have a hard time trying to communicate something as subjective as this.
There is a discreteness in digital music that removes whatever it is that I call the soulfulness of real life. It's really not noticeable unless you A/B really high end stuff...but I sometimes wonder what the conditioning has done to my ears. I do enjoy listening to a record once in a while, but it's probably just the nostalgia more so than anything technical.
It's a weird thing. The discrete-ness of digital...it does remove some gray area stuff. Like pulse width modulator...it can approximate functionally well enough, but it's not true continuity. And while we may not be aware of whatever is "missing", I can't shake the feeling that I can "feel" it.I think the term for this is "ambience":
1. the mood, character, quality, tone, atmosphere, etc., particularly of an environment or milieu: The restaurant had a delightful ambiance.
2. that which surrounds or encompasses; environment.
I think the term for this is "ambience":
1. the mood, character, quality, tone, atmosphere, etc., particularly of an environment or milieu: The restaurant had a delightful ambiance.
2. that which surrounds or encompasses; environment.
That was the word I was looking for. (And which is funny, because I alluded to it in my earlier ramble - even though I didn't pick up on it!):I don't really know how to describe it other than to say when you first cue an LP, just before the music starts you can hear "the room." That empty but not totally silent "space" that the music starts playing in a second or so later. That ambient space is something digital recordings don't have.
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