Formats: 320k aac vs Lossless (Roon related)

[bravomail]

My experience with lower bitrate MP3 (128k was very popular in the beginning of compressed music era) is that they sound scary, hollow, lack these little details, imperfections. As for comparison of codecs and bitrates - my latest suggestion is to keep your lossless files on PC, and on mobile (phones, DAPs, tablets) reencode them to AAC ABR 320k. Opus sucks as a complete codec - removes lows and highs and changes everything to 48kHz (from 44.1 for example). And there are studies which shown that AAC is better than MP3. Also AAC ABR 320k is variable bit rate as opposed to MP3 highest CBR 320k (constant bit rate), so AAC can reach into 500kbits on difficult music fragments.

 

[Svperstar]

My experience with lower bitrate MP3 (128k was very popular in the beginning of compressed music era) is that they sound scary, hollow, lack these little details, imperfections. As for comparison of codecs and bitrates - my latest suggestion is to keep your lossless files on PC, and on mobile (phones, DAPs, tablets) reencode them to AAC ABR 320k. Opus sucks as a complete codec - removes lows and highs and changes everything to 48kHz (from 44.1 for example). And there are studies which shown that AAC is better than MP3. Also AAC ABR 320k is variable bit rate as opposed to MP3 highest CBR 320k (constant bit rate), so AAC can reach into 500kbits on difficult music fragments.

Back in 2005 or so I ripped all my CDs as APE in the High/Insane preset.

Over the years I have used 256 k mp3 for mobile devices.

I recently converted over to FLAC since space isn't nearly the consideration it once was in the past and APE takes more battery to decode then FLAC. My computer, phone, and mp3 player I use for biking all have identical libraries.

Basically I don't recommend using lossy anymore unless you have a device with serious space constraints.

 

[jfetter]

Are there any particular styles/genre's of music which are more susceptible to compression?

Solo piano, I can her the effects of compression without any difficulty.
If you remember the Yamaha dx7 fm synth piano, the tails on piano sound like fm.

 

[Dj7675]

Solo piano, I can her the effects of compression without any difficulty.
If you remember the Yamaha dx7 fm synth piano, the tails on piano sound like fm.

Thanks, appreciate the comment. I attempted a double blind test of 320K AAC vs Lossless as noted and I could do no better than guessing to matter how many times I played the samples. I have not done any further testing with other bitrates or codecs such as mp3. But for me 320k aac is transparent. FWIW Tidal uses 320K AAC for their low res plan and it really does sound great. Have you specifically tested 320k aac, or is this something you noticed with other codecs or lower bitrates?

 

[q3cpma]

My experience with lower bitrate MP3 (128k was very popular in the beginning of compressed music era) is that they sound scary, hollow, lack these little details, imperfections. As for comparison of codecs and bitrates - my latest suggestion is to keep your lossless files on PC, and on mobile (phones, DAPs, tablets) reencode them to AAC ABR 320k. Opus sucks as a complete codec - removes lows and highs and changes everything to 48kHz (from 44.1 for example). And there are studies which shown that AAC is better than MP3. Also AAC ABR 320k is variable bit rate as opposed to MP3 highest CBR 320k (constant bit rate), so AAC can reach into 500kbits on difficult music fragments.

Any arguments for this Opus FUD? It's a libre codec with a very good reference encoder where AAC only has fdkaac which isn't really libre. Personally, I'd use Opus if it solved its horrible volume normalization situation (R128 vs REPLAYGAIN tags application support mess, no support for peak in the spec) and way higher complexity than Vorbis.
It's also a much more complex codec where music is a secondary concern; having standalone CELT would have been cool.

 

[jfetter]

My library at that time was partially encoded lossless apple m4a. (bit stuffed version)
The remainder of files were encoded using lame with psy turned off and 320k, brought over from Linux.
The lame mp3 were very good, close to lossless except for as mentioned, piano.
I made the files myself from many thousands of physical CDs.
I'm testing Flac now as next method, no longer trusting iTunes going forward.

 

[Blujackaal]

My experience with lower bitrate MP3 (128k was very popular in the beginning of compressed music era) is that they sound scary, hollow, lack these little details, imperfections. As for comparison of codecs and bitrates - my latest suggestion is to keep your lossless files on PC, and on mobile (phones, DAPs, tablets) reencode them to AAC ABR 320k. Opus sucks as a complete codec - removes lows and highs and changes everything to 48kHz (from 44.1 for example). And there are studies which shown that AAC is better than MP3. Also AAC ABR 320k is variable bit rate as opposed to MP3 highest CBR 320k (constant bit rate), so AAC can reach into 500kbits on difficult music fragments.

Being 500kb/s means nothing if the encoder was tuned to use it, Many AAC encoders suck on that aspect. Musepack is fantastic for that responding well to hard to compress music, By shooting for 400Kb/s(320 ~ 1300kb/s). I have 2 albums that have songs that reach 780kb/s for few +1 mins.