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A warning. There is a new web article going aroud that is a crock of schmidt.

yikky900

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I think that 192 k AAC is probably the sweet spot for size vs quality. That's what I have on my iPhone and I doubt that I could tell if from lossless even though it uses ¼ the storage of ALAC or FLAC (4x the music for a given capacity!).

Put's Lame V0 to shame from my experience on Ambient/electronic music, So a kbps avg of 80 ~ 180 vs 180 ~ 320. No idea why audiophiles use 320k Lame when AAC & other newer codecs beat at <192kb/s. The support issues is moot with android for the modern ones and AAC is as supported as mp3 nowadays.
 
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AudioSceptic

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Put's Lame V0 to shame from my experience on Ambient/electronic music, So a kbps avg of 80 ~ 180 vs 180 ~ 320. No idea why audiophiles use 320k Lame when AAC & other newer codecs beat at <192kb/s. The support issues is moot with android for the modern ones and AAC is as supported as mp3 nowadays.
For some reason MP3 is universal but AAC is still not, although both are part of MPEG standards. As for 320, I'm sure many delude themselves into thinking they must use the highest or they will hear some deficiency. I wonder how many actually test their hearing instead of just accepting the audiophool myths about compression? It's not hard to do <https://www.audiocheck.net>.
 

yikky900

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For some reason MP3 is universal but AAC is still not, although both are part of MPEG standards. As for 320, I'm sure many delude themselves into thinking they must use the highest or they will hear some deficiency. I wonder how many actually test their hearing instead of just accepting the audiophool myths about compression? It's not hard to do <https://www.audiocheck.net>.

Because there knowledge of audio is so poor. They have this idea that it in case they can hear a difference or because of there good set up but are too stupid to back those claims with. DBT tests to see if they can walk away with 144 ~ 192kb/s or that there hearing is weak like 15KHz.
 

pkane

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I think discourse is impossible without 'knowing' that 'knowledge' is a very ambiguous concept.

There is no real knowledge without study, experimentation, curiosity. The online discourse is being dominated by the intellectual plagiarism of people blindly stealing and aggressively defending ideas they don't understand, or have the patience to study or even to question. As long as the idea fits ones worldview, it must be true.

To your point, partial knowledge, or knowledge acquired without context is not only 'ambiguous' but is most likely incorrect.
 

Soniclife

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You're not the odd one out re: lossy. Every double-blind study ever done agrees with your experiences.
Can you point me at such a study please.
I think there is a case to be made that uncompressed redbook audio is perhaps very very very slightly more enjoyable than high-quality lossy audio, even if we're not consciously aware of the differences.
I can see how that would work, given people get better at such DBT after training, it shows the difference is there, even if they cannot detect it whilst untrained.
 

Soniclife

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For some reason MP3 is universal but AAC is still not
First mover advantage explains this. Licence fees will come into it as well, but free codecs don't enjoy universal support, even now FLAC is not supported as much as MP3.
 

Neddy

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...at the expense of other worthwhile projects...
Of course, when any organization spends any money, on X thing, there will be those who claim it would have been better spent on Y.
And, yes, there were other very large initiatives (in other areas - this was at the beginning of the web-fication of public service IT ) that were also well funded. And, I attended some committee meetings regarding funding of some other projects - a real eye opener that was! :facepalm: - and was at least very glad one of them did not get funded, as it was a 'get rich quick scheme' for another 'professional' group.
But, from my perspective, at the time, this project was very worthwhile, as it included (for 1 example out of perhaps a dozen) big improvements in communications across and between (layers of) disaster response teams (the ebola scare happened at about this same time) that simply had not existed before.
Anyway, what happened, happened, and is one case where I just happened to be positioned to observe beneficial outcomes from the Goofy leading the Brilliant. Now, had the IT teams been also Goofies (almost happened, actually), it could have been a real mess - and we all know of big budget projects that came to no good, in both private and public sector (MS Phones?).
Thanks!
 

Cosmik

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AudioSceptic

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AudioSceptic

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First mover advantage explains this. Licence fees will come into it as well, but free codecs don't enjoy universal support, even now FLAC is not supported as much as MP3.
Yes, also strange that Ogg Vorbis, generally thought to be the best of the lot (until Opus came along) but free, failed to displace MP3.
 
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Soniclife

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Yes, also strange that Ogg Vorbis, generally though to be the best of the lot (until Opus came along) but free, failed to displace MP3.
MP3 became the 'brand' for this, almost no one knows what it means, other than it works, and other things don't.
What I find odd is that services like Tidal use MP3 for their lossy tier, when they could use anything they like because it's invisible to the users technically, rather than a better codec. Especially odd as spotify had already gone with ogg, and are the leader in the market.
 

yikky900

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AudioSceptic

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MP3 became the 'brand' for this, almost no one knows what it means, other than it works, and other things don't.
Other things don't? Please explain.
What I find odd is that services like Tidal use MP3 for their lossy tier, when they could use anything they like because it's invisible to the users technically, rather than a better codec. Especially odd as spotify had already gone with ogg, and are the leader in the market.
Agreed. Did they think that not using MP3 would limit their market in terms of hardware platforms?
 

Robin L

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Then there is the bit about many people creating music think digital screws it up. Very scientific that is considering that 99.99% of music in the world is created using digital technology.
It's Philip K. Dick's world, we just "live" in it.
 

Robin L

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"Neil Young was a famous rock musician in the 1970s, specializing in live performance and weird acoustic spaces, like the echo-filled iron sawdust burner I once camped in as a kid."

Neil Young took out my top octave back in 1978, his "Zuma" days at the Fabulous Forum in L.A. It's a wonder he can hear anything.
 

Soniclife

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Other things don't? Please explain.
Other codecs. No point encoding in AAC onto a memory stick and finding out your car does not support AAC. I don't even know what other codecs my car supports, I just used mp3 because it was always going to work.
 

AudioSceptic

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Other codecs. No point encoding in AAC onto a memory stick and finding out your car does not support AAC. I don't even know what other codecs my car supports, I just used mp3 because it was always going to work.
Yes, but your 2nd para seemed to contradict that. ;)
 

AudioSceptic

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