Anybody Out There Who Hears a Difference Between 320 kbps MP3 and Red Book CD? What Differences Do You Hear?

[pkane]

Stereophile has done measurements between 320 kbps and red book CD.
Its about 45 dB difference - advantage red book CD.
The dynamic range with 320 kbps is only 51 dB with those test tones.
This is really bad. The red graph is 320 kbps, green is CD.
Why would someone pay money for this music-destruction ?
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MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD Page 2

For reference, fig.3 shows the spectrum of the signal on the CD. Other than the well-defined green vertical lines representing the tones and the uniform background noise, the spectrum is clean. Important points to note with this graph are that 1) all musical fundamentals lie to the left of the...

www.stereophile.com

Not a very pleasant music, if you actually listen to it. May even sound better in 320kbps...

 

[Julf]

You likely have exceptional hearing.

Or the opposite. There seems to be some hearing issues that cause some parts of the masking (that perceptual encoders assume) not to work. Let's say there is a very strong sound at 2 kHz that normally blocks a much lower sound at 1 kHz, but you have a dip in your hearing at 2 k - you will notice the 1 kHz signal missing, even if most other people don't (OK, that was an over-simplified example, but...)

 

[LeftCoastTim]

Or the opposite. There seems to be some hearing issues that cause some parts of the masking (that perceptual encoders assume) not to work. Let's say there is a very strong sound at 2 kHz that normally blocks a much lower sound at 1 kHz, but you have a dip in your hearing at 2 k - you will notice the 1 kHz signal missing, even if most other people don't (OK, that was an over-simplified example, but...)

I would consider that "exceptional" as well

 

[LeftCoastTim]

LAME -V 0 has no lowpass filtering. What's it doing wrong up there?

So mp3 encodes 16kHz and above as one frequency band. And this band has no scale factor that can be changed independently (ref1, ref2), limiting mp3 format's ability to accurately encode this band.

 

[HRTF_Enthusiast]

You likely have exceptional hearing. How old are you by the way? In decades only (20s/30s, etc).

20s and I can pass a full range vs below 19 kHz upper hearing limit ABX.

And now that you can abx 320kbps vorbis, what's your *perceptual* score of it?
5. transparent, 4. perceptable not annoying, 3. slightly annoying, 2. annoying, 1. very annoying?

I'd put 320 kbps vorbis in the 4-5 range and 320 kbps mp3 in the 3-5 range. Both can be audibly transparent depending on the part of the song.

 

[j_j]

No, but if we are serious with sound, we really should abandon all lossy codecs . 320 kbps dont belong in a hifi-forum like this. Its a bad codec and it was the same 20 years ago.
This codec has a SINAD of maybe 50 ….

320 WHAT codec? Let's start with that.

Then, let's ask, shall we, "what does SINAD actually mean to the human ear"?

The answer is "what's the error spectrum compared to the signal spectrum"?

So, somewhere between 3.5dB SNR and 90dB SNR is transparent, considering short-term local SNR, depending on the signal statistics, that's the answer.

 

[krabapple]

No, but if we are serious with sound, we really should abandon all lossy codecs . 320 kbps dont belong in a hifi-forum like this. Its a bad codec and it was the same 20 years ago.
This codec has a SINAD of maybe 50 ….

If we are serious about audio science, we would not dismiss useful, proven technology nor promote misleading articles about it, like you did..

 

[JRS]

I think one should also bear in mind that the criterion with MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis etc etc isn't that they should be transparent, but that the disturbance should be acceptable under the circumstances under which they are used. That MP3 at 320kbps or AAC at 192kbps are transparent for most people under most circumstances doesn't mean that they're transparent for all people under all circumstances. As a means of commercially viable distribution, as long as it's acceptable most of time to most people, that's good enough.

S.

Thank you for a most sensible and practical summary. There is a point where good enough is simply good enough for all but the most critical listening on some treasured material. And why obsessing over a dynamic range or S/N ratios greater than 110dB, or distortion less than 0.005 percent seems just as pointless, especially if it means making life much more complicated (here I am thinking tri-amped speakers and/or multichannel audio), expensive and worst of all, less stable and prone to glitching out just as you sit down for a few hours of listening pleasure.

 

[JRS]

I think mp3's are the 30" CRT TVs. There have been many improvements like AAC, Vorbis, Opus, or whatever. Just like there have been 30"+ LCD TVs forever. But now, nobody buys 30" LCD TV's. You either stick with, and complain about the 30" Trinitron, or move on and get lossless (50" LCD).

What irks me the most is that people believe these are the only two choices. They are not!

No way. Perhaps an off inexpensive LED panel, but no way is the difference that great. To go to the extremes of CRT would require something like a cassette vs an AIX recording.

 

[JRS]

I would consider OLED as the best analogy to lossless, since it has the highest (infinite) contrast ratio.

Love mine except when I walk into the screen during a dark scene (color me stupid, but has happened twice). None of my plasma's came close to that--hell even when turned off, they were still emitting tons of IR that could steer me clear.

 

[Chrispy]

You have a point, but why defending something thats clearly NOT good ? The lossless alternativ cost the same or almost the same.

What does that have to do with it? Why does it bother you so much what other people use? You want to expand "hifi" you need to keep it in mind due the large number of users.

 

[Tangband]

One also has to keep in mind that if you use MP3 codec or similar sounddestruction codecs, together with bluetooth ( also horrible ) , you get a VERY destructed music signal .

To mimize the damage, its much better to use lossless streaming together with bluetooth, than 320 kbps with bluetooth.

 

[solderdude]

A lot of science went into lossy codecs, that's one thing that makes them interesting.
The fact that the vast majority of people on this planet can enjoy music with substantially reduced amount of bits is quite an achievement.

When you are really into squeezing out maximum performance no one uses lossy codecs. Maybe the exception to some of the Voldemort codec.

BT is for convenience. It has nothing to do with high end music transfer. Here too we see improved codecs further reducing bitrates (essential for this type of data communication). All very sciency.

 

[BoredErica]

When people say 'what incentive do I have to lie on an abx test?' it's pretty damn funny. I've met many, many guys who like to believe they are capable of something others are not. They want to feel special and have something to prove. Many biases that can lead somebody to cheat. And when people tell me they can clearly hear a difference from track to track without too much effort, that just proves they're full of BS.

It's one thing to say 'I can hear a difference in some tracks if I really look for it' vs 'there's something pretty obviously missing in my music in general'.


In other news, my phone is from the stone age and I'm not replacing it until it dies or the battery dies. It has limited storage space, so I take some flac files and turn em' into opus files with heavy compression. Heavy enough that I actually can hear some degradation in some tracks without much effort, so quite heavy compression. But I'm happy with the sound and I enjoy the music variety I get to have with the compression. On the go there is often too much ambient noise or divided attention on my part for me to notice. Is it hifi? No, but I'm happy with the music. and don't feel like upgrading my phone. For now lossless only belongs on my PC.

 

[HRTF_Enthusiast]

Just get a 1 TB iPhone 13 Pro and call it a day

 

[Julf]

Just get a 1 TB iPhone 13 Pro and call it a day

Some of us prefer phones without walled gardens (and all sort of spyware).

 

[Robin L]

Some of us prefer phones without walled gardens (and all sort of spyware).

I like my $80 DAP. No involvement with the interwebs.

 

[Tangband]

A lot of science went into lossy codecs, that's one thing that makes them interesting.
The fact that the vast majority of people on this planet can enjoy music with substantially reduced amount of bits is quite an achievement.

When you are really into squeezing out maximum performance no one uses lossy codecs. Maybe the exception to some of the Voldemort codec.

BT is for convenience. It has nothing to do with high end music transfer. Here too we see improved codecs further reducing bitrates (essential for this type of data communication). All very sciency.

Very true.
But Im sure many enthusiasts use bluetooth AND lossy material and dont realize how bad that combination is.
Its like 1+1 = 3 in bad numbers….

 

[Tangband]

Just get a 1 TB iPhone 13 Pro and call it a day

You can buy a used iphone 10 for very little money. Works perfectly with Apple lossless.

 

[Julf]

You can buy a used iphone 10 for very little money. Works perfectly with Apple lossless.

Less perfectly with anything non-apple