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Transparency of 320 Ogg Vorbis (Spotify Premium) and 256 AAC (Apple Music)

jazzendapus

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That's something you can easily find out for yourself. Get a few (or more) lossless files, encode them into whatever format you want to try and do a proper blind test with at least 10 trials per track, comparing lossless original and lossy encode. AFAIK Foobar 2k and its ABX comparator plugin are still the easiest ways to do it.

But the tl;dr answer to this question - it's extremely unlikely that you will be able to spot the difference. There are very few examples on the net of people successfully differentiating high bitrate lossy and lossless formats if compared properly.
 

majingotan

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Has it been definitively demonstrated that 320kbps Ogg Vorbis and 256kbps AAC are audibly transparent? If so, I assume there is no real need for 16/44.1 and "hi-res" streaming?

IMO, it’s not objectively transparent, and the audibility of it depends on how trained you are on where in the audible spectrum the differences show up. Getting 95% or above confidence result is incredibly hard even for well trained listeners in differentiating the differences between the two
 

Promit

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IIRC Amir himself can pick 320 MP3 from LPCM WAV, so in an absolute sense no, they're not transparent. I would be shocked if any normal listener can detect a problem in program material, though. Note that it's often necessary to transcode for things like BT headphones though, and the resulting output may be noticeably degraded.
 
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Zensō

Zensō

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That's something you can easily find out for yourself. Get a few (or more) lossless files, encode them into whatever format you want to try and do a proper blind test with at least 10 trials per track, comparing lossless original and lossy encode. AFAIK Foobar 2k and its ABX comparator plugin are still the easiest ways to do it.

But the tl;dr answer to this question - it's extremely unlikely that you will be able to spot the difference. There are very few examples on the net of people successfully differentiating high bitrate lossy and lossless formats if compared properly.

Good idea. I’m on MacOS and iOS so I’ll need to look into an alternative to Foobar.

I’ve had a Spotify Premium (320kbps) account for a long time and decided to try out Tidal after reading so many glowing reviews about the sound quality. Over the past couple of months I’ve been listening to both, occasionally switching from one to the other while working at my computer. For the life of me, I can’t hear one iota of difference. This lead me to wonder if I’m either clueless and/or going deaf, of if there really is virtually no audible difference. I have to wonder how much placebo is effecting people making these statements about Tidal/lossless.
 

A800

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I am sorry.
Really nothing is audibly transparent.
And even if it would be possible don't you think lossy compression will counter that claim?
 
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Zensō

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I am sorry.
Really nothing is audibly transparent.
And even if it would be possible don't you think lossy compression will counter that claim?
I’m probably not using the right language. This is from the Hydrogenaudio wiki:

"Informal listening test suggests Vorbis to be comparable to MPEG-4 AAC at most bitrates and Musepack at 128 kbps. Transparency is generally reached at about 150–170 kbps (-q 5) (with some exceptions). The encoder is reasonably young and unoptimized, so further improvements can always be expected."

https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Vorbis
 
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maverickronin

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I’m probably not using the right language. This is from the Hydrogen Audio wiki:

Informal listening test suggests Vorbis to be comparable to MPEG-4 AAC at most bitrates and Musepack at 128 kbps. Transparency is generally reached at about 150–170 kbps (-q 5) (with some exceptions). The encoder is reasonably young and unoptimized, so further improvements can always be expected.

They are transparent most of the time.

Detection threshold will vary based on listener training and program material.

There will always be "killer" samplers which require much higher bitrates to achieve transparency.
 
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q3cpma

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IIRC Amir himself can pick 320 MP3 from LPCM WAV, so in an absolute sense no, they're not transparent. I would be shocked if any normal listener can detect a problem in program material, though. Note that it's often necessary to transcode for things like BT headphones though, and the resulting output may be noticeably degraded.
But comparing MP3 to Vorbis/AAC is like comparing MPEG-2 to AVC.
 

mansr

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High-rate Vorbis is almost always transparent. It is, however, lossy. No matter how much you test, you can never be 100% sure that the next song won't contain something that trips up the encoder, causing an audible artefact. Given the option, choosing a lossless format eliminates this risk, however slim it may be. If the bandwidth is available, one may as well use lossless and rest easy.
 

maverickronin

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The improvement in Spotify's user interface vs. the Tidal outweighs the audible improvement Tidal has over Spotify. I have both, and I keep going back to Spotify. *raises shield*

Spotify is already pretty bad so Tidal must be absolutely horrific...
 

McFly

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Spotify is already pretty bad so Tidal must be absolutely horrific...
Please tell me a way of walking in the door and getting music playing on the system that is faster. If you have one, I will use it.

I walk in the door from work, crash on the couch , pull out my phone, turn on smart plug - system starts up, open spotify, push play and connect to ropieeXL. It takes all of 15 seconds. Tidal is close. But I'm not retired so I don't have time to fart around with Computer and Software source configurations.
 

maverickronin

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Please tell me a way of walking in the door and getting music playing on the system that is faster. If you have one, I will use it.

I walk in the door from work, crash on the couch , pull out my phone, turn on smart plug - system starts up, open spotify, push play and connect to ropieeXL. It takes all of 15 seconds. Tidal is close. But I'm not retired so I don't have time to fart around with Computer and Software source configurations.

I thought we were talking about the GUI and not integration with streaming devices...
 
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Zensō

Zensō

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High-rate Vorbis is almost always transparent. It is, however, lossy. No matter how much you test, you can never be 100% sure that the next song won't contain something that trips up the encoder, causing an audible artefact. Given the option, choosing a lossless format eliminates this risk, however slim it may be. If the bandwidth is available, one may as well use lossless and rest easy.
That makes sense. It would be an easier decision if the Spotify UI and algorithms weren't more polished and useful than Tidal's, which I find lacking for various reasons. Always trade-offs...
 

thewas

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Interestingly some people with impaired hearing can detect easier differences and need higher bitrates for transparency as due dips in their frequency response the psychoacoustic masking models used for compression don't work as well for them.
https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Kreuzverhoertest-287592.html (German test and article from 2000, you can use google translate or deepl.com for translation)
 

Honken

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For what it is worth, if I'm actively listening to instruments that I know sound a wee bit off with MP3s (like cymbals), I can tell that Apple are using rather heavily compressed tracks for their music service.

However, if I'm just listening to music and not actively trying to find faults, I can't tell the difference apart from Apple lowering the volume of their content quite a bit in comparison to my own library.

I do keep terabytes of lossless content around myself, but that is for transcoding purposes - not becase I think that I can hear a difference. Because I can't.
 
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Zensō

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Interestingly some people with impaired hearing can detect easier differences and need higher bitrates for transparency as due dips in their frequency response the psychoacoustic masking models used for compression don't work as well for them.
https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Kreuzverhoertest-287592.html (German test and article from 2000, you can use google translate or deepl.com for translation)
That’s very interesting, thank you!
 
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