I have a confession

[majingotan]

Same here. I do use tube amps with *may or may not* be acting as a bit of EQ, depending on the speaker.

Me three. Schiit Saga with some NOS RCA 5692 Red Base is my effect box distortion enhancer for my preferred sound coloration, but it's a subtle effect unlike some SET headphone amps or a fully tube stage preamp on the market

 

[LTig]

[..] In contrast, the accuracy-is-all-that-counts person accepts sonic compromises when the system "accurately" exposes the poor sound of a badly produced/recorded/mastered track.

It's the circle of confusion (as named by @Floyd Toole). There are lots of recordings which have been mastered using speakers with non-flat FR (resulting in a tonal balance inverse to the FR of the speakers), so it makes sense to use an EQ to imitate the FR of the speaker to get closer to an FR the master engineer experienced. Doing this makes the listening experience more accurate, not less.

Of course nobody knows exactly how to set the EQ.

Of course this person can always say "but I can just re-EQ those tracks if I want to, to make them sound better." Which is of course fine...but then don't say that you are all about "accuracy" if you are so ready to alter the sound to your taste ;-). You may do it with an EQ, I may do it with some slight coloration in a speaker or tube amp or whatever. (And the "but I can defeat the EQ at any time" rebuttal, making my system more flexible" really doesn't address the meat of the issue. Once you are introducing EQ to taste sometimes, you are altering the sound to taste. Even if you don't do this all the time, or often, on what principled grounds can you defend this against the preference-loving audiophile? "Well, I only alter the sound to taste *sometimes*. Well...who exactly made you the arbiter as to when the sound can be altered or not? It seems completely arbitrary, for instance "I like some bass punch and if a track is really missing that I'll add some." How is that any more principled from someone who says "I like a full-bodied sound, generally speaking, and this speaker with a bit of coloration adds that. ?

As I wrote above it's perfectly valid to EQ bad recordings to get a more accurate listening experience. Yet there are also good recordings which sound perfect just as they are, and I don't want to EQ them. In these cases usage of an EQ (either deliberately or by using voiced equipment) results in less accuracy.

 

[MattHooper]

As I wrote above it's perfectly valid to EQ bad recordings to get a more accurate listening experience. Yet there are also good recordings which sound perfect just as they are, and I don't want to EQ them. In these cases usage of an EQ (either deliberately or by using voiced equipment) results in less accuracy.

Curious: When you say you can EQ for a more accurate listening experience, what do you mean by more accurate?

More accurate to what?

Thanks.

 

[LTig]

Curious: When you say you can EQ for a more accurate listening experience, what do you mean by more accurate?

More accurate to what?

Thanks.

Closer to what the mastering engineer heard with his speakers in his studio.

Let's assume his speakers are brighter (not neutral). He equalizes the recording to sound flat on his speakers so he will take down the upper mids. I have neutral speakers at home so I must push up the upper mids on this recording to get the same flat sound he heard. Doing this will give me a more accurate sound than without EQ which would sound darker.

 

[audiophile]

Closer to what the mastering engineer heard with his speakers in his studio.

Let's assume his speakers are brighter (not neutral).

The problem is that we never know whether the engineer’s speakers were bright, or bass-heavy, or neutral, or maybe his ears’ frequency response wasn’t flat, having peaks and dips at some frequencies.

 

[MattHooper]

Closer to what the mastering engineer heard with his speakers in his studio.

Let's assume his speakers are brighter (not neutral). He equalizes the recording to sound flat on his speakers so he will take down the upper mids. I have neutral speakers at home so I must push up the upper mids on this recording to get the same flat sound he heard. Doing this will give me a more accurate sound than without EQ which would sound darker.

Hmm, that seems guess work, where you can't really know you have eq'd in more "accuracy."

I mean, I have various albums from an artist where the production quality varies fairly wildly between the albums due to different engineers/producers - from big, deep, lush sound to thinner, brighter, more lively. In fact I have albums where the production quality can vary wildly between songs! One track starts off with what sounds like anemic sound, little bass, and a slightly dull top end, the next track...boom...low bass, clearer sound etc. How can I know this isn't simply production choices vs "oh, he must have used different speakers with different colorations, so I'll try to re-engineer the sound on that presumption." (Presumably the whole albums would have been at one point at least vetted through the same pair of speakers by the interested parties).

I'm certainly not arguing against your use of EQ! I was just wondering about how you actually determined "accuracy" in the context of your quote.

Cheers.

 

[Henry321]

Honest guy!

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

I find it hard to believe there's any reasonably professional recording engineer who would record an album based on a single pair of speakers. I'm also fairly certain there would be several different sets of ears involved in the recording process.

In the end, we have a recording hard-coded on a medium. The best we can do afaic is reproduce that recording as close to the way it exists on that medium as possible. I can't assume the intention was for the listener to try and figure out what unique tonality the engineer and producer had coming from their speakers and re-create it at home.

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

Presuming my blind tests were valid, that is just what I'd expect!

In which case, we don't need the blind test to prove the difference.

 

[MattHooper]

In which case, we don't need the blind test to prove the difference.

Correct, of course, in terms of demonstrating they produce a different signal. And you'd have to know whether what you managed to measure is audible or not.

But the context was blind testing, specifically for us individuals. Most people don't have the tools (and perhaps neither the knowledge) to measure the differences and also interpret what would be audible or not, and in what manner. It can be easier to set up a blind test, depending on the equipment.

Also, along the same lines, if they measured different, we'd still want to move on to "and what do these differences sound like?" which would take a subjective assessment as well.

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

Correct, of course, in terms of demonstrating they produce a different signal. And you'd have to know whether what you managed to measure is audible or not.

But the context was blind testing, specifically for us individuals. Most people don't have the tools (and perhaps neither the knowledge) to measure the differences and also interpret what would be audible or not, and in what manner. It can be easier to set up a blind test, depending on the equipment.

Also, along the same lines, if they measured different, we'd still want to move on to "and what do these differences sound like?" which would take a subjective assessment as well.

I totally agree with you about the difficulty of individuals setting up blind tests. That's why I look for "large scale" tests done by respected groups or organizations (or that are reasonably verifiable at least). Quite a few have been done and they haven't found that things like cables and what not make a difference (assuming basic functional engineering). There have also been some pretty fun tests such as the classic one that pitted a ****** dept store system against a boutique system and the ****** system was preferred. Or the ones that use potatoes and coat hangers against expensive cables and there still isn't a notable difference. lol

 

[Tks]

That's awesome. It's nice to see someone happy with their audio and music, and great to see a place like this can help.



Which, for me, brings up all the issues of "what do I want from my sound system?" Ultimately I want "good sound" and I think, at bottom, that's what most of us want. Even though we may diverge here and there on what gets us there.

There is a mindset, represented often here, that the goal is "accuracy." I just want to hear what's in the source with as little distortion - hence greatest accuracy - as possible. So one chases components with as little deviation from linearity etc as possible.

So..."once I know I have an accurate system I can relax, not worry about things, sit back and enjoy the music."

That certainly works for a particular mindset. And some seem to believe this is a sort of recipe for "getting off the gear treadmill of chasing 'sound' (associated with audiophile subjectivism) instead of 'accuracy.'" But, again, though that may work for some people, like different diets, it doesn't work for all.

After all: One can also "get off" the chasing equipment treadmill by simply lowering one's standards of what they demand as well. My wife is very "off the equipment treadmill" as she completely enjoys music from a laptop or our smart speaker, without any itch at all to upgrade to something "more accurate." So even going the "more accuracy" route will often keep someone quite gear-focused. And as accuracy increases, you have similar impetus to keep an eye on advances in gear and upgrade along the way. And there are plenty of subjectivist audiophiles who have been very satisfied owning the same gear for decades as well. One approach to finding satisfaction does not fit all; depends on the individual mindset in any case.

The thing is that "Sounds Good" can be separated from "Accuracy." Accuracy does not automatically entail "good sound." So if we have a choice...what would it be, and why? (That is not to suggest, btw, that "accuracy does not sound good," only that it is a separable subject from what people may find pleasing or "good sound.")

Personally, I'm settling toward a "what do I enjoy?" "What sounds good to me" approach. The reason is that accuracy as a goal, while a laudable north star, ultimately disappears down a rabbit hole in terms of actually achieving this. (You aren't going to truly escape the "circle of confusion," especially when you follow the logic "to what end do I care about accuracy in the first place?"). Though I retain a keen interest in how technology advances to lower distortion, with audible results.

This doesn't lead me only to wanting terribly coloured sound quality. I can enjoy speakers, for instance, that are "more accurate" and some that are "less accurate/more colored" depending if they push some of my joy-buttons. But while, in the case of enjoying a bit of a colored sound, I accept some compromise in accuracy, in my view it is not much of a compromise. The type of colorations I may enjoy are utterly swamped in sonic importance by the sonic signature of the artistic content. I'm hearing all the artistic choices on the track. And enjoying them.

In contrast, the accuracy-is-all-that-counts person accepts sonic compromises when the system "accurately" exposes the poor sound of a badly produced/recorded/mastered track.

Of course this person can always say "but I can just re-EQ those tracks if I want to, to make them sound better." Which is of course fine...but then don't say that you are all about "accuracy" if you are so ready to alter the sound to your taste ;-). You may do it with an EQ, I may do it with some slight coloration in a speaker or tube amp or whatever. (And the "but I can defeat the EQ at any time" rebuttal, making my system more flexible" really doesn't address the meat of the issue. Once you are introducing EQ to taste sometimes, you are altering the sound to taste. Even if you don't do this all the time, or often, on what principled grounds can you defend this against the preference-loving audiophile? "Well, I only alter the sound to taste *sometimes*. Well...who exactly made you the arbiter as to when the sound can be altered or not? It seems completely arbitrary, for instance "I like some bass punch and if a track is really missing that I'll add some." How is that any more principled from someone who says "I like a full-bodied sound, generally speaking, and this speaker with a bit of coloration adds that. ?

So I generally approach a system as to how much I enjoy it, and there tend to be sonic characteristics that I enjoy - for instance when I hear acoustic guitars or other acoustic instruments with a certain "right-to-my-ears" tonal quality, some body to the sound, dynamic life, etc, or just noticing that something is pulling me in to wanting to keep listening in a way some other system isn't.

I have a number of different speakers all of which have, in their own way, a bit of "magic tone" for me, that draw me in to sit down and spend long time listening. I just came back from a friend's house (reviewer) listening to 3 different expensive speakers. They were impressive in many ways, but I wouldn't take a single one if you gave it to me. None made me want to keep listening. They were tonally artificial and uninvolving for me. I came home, fired up my system and it was "aaaahhhh...." I couldn't stop listening.

Anyway, random thoughts from an audio-loving geek, which occasionally go against the grain here .

A small nitpick but, maybe accuracy isn't the proper word in the context you speak of? Otherwise..

There's conflation going on here, and a bit of strawmanning the implied objectivist in the examples you spoke of. First issue being, accuracy isn't desired in all cases all the time, from all pieces of gear. So for instance when someone like me says, I want accuracy, I actually mean fidelity. And when I say fidelity, I mean in my audio transmission chain (of course knowing that the speakers, or headphones, or IEM's will always be the bottleneck for the most part). So in a similar hypothetical example to yours, I will ALWAYS desire fidelity from my DAC and AMP. There is no exception to this desire EVER, regardless of the results. As for accuracy/fidelity in listening devices, if I am now listening to music that is more "revealed" due to a clean setup overall, then I don't need any colorations, if the music doesn't sound good, then I will simply not partake in listening to that sort of music anymore - tastes will simply change (in the same way I've stopped listening to lots of modern rock/alternative music a decade ago, and now sparingly listen to exceptional pieces.. why? The loudness wars ordeal, I simply cannot stomach any sort of music like the sort that I used to listen to back as a kid, that was just a constant volume level for the whole track for all instruments).

Also accuracy is overrated, if you're listening to music for something like a few hours, your ears are going to fatigue and what you heard out of the first song in the day, you will not hear it the same way after a long listening session if the song repeats in the playlist. So doing away with some treble, or adding crossfeed (or perhaps collapsing the music into a Mono output even), or bumping up the bass, isn't really "coloration" as much as it is "correction" for your state of being at the time. BUT this is only possible if you start off with a chain that preserves fidelity, and not a signal chain that has obliterated the original signal to begin with. Also at that point of fatigue, you probably shouldn't be listening to much of anything really..

There are also exceptions due to nostaligia (where I'll EQ all the music to sound like it's playing from a telephone with treble and bass totally filtered out) and make things sound like its playing from some old device (just to see what new, and well recorded music would sound like from a old device I may have once listened to as a kid). But this isn't of course normal listening, just experimentation of sound in general as a curiousity. Of course this goes back to the understanding that I am starting with a signal that is close to it's original recording.

But as I said prior, listening devices seem to be the bottleneck and the frontier of how good we can achieve sound (as opposed to the digital domain that DAC's deal with, for which has objectively been essentially solved for in terms of audible fidelity). "Accuracy" is too ambiguous, as I don't even know what constitutes accuracy in totality from speakers tbh (aside from the performance metrics being reviewed on this site somewhat), but in terms of knowing how close we are to audible accuracy for someone to where they would think real instruments are being played instead of a speaker - that I have no idea what it would take in terms of driver design. Though to me personally I feel we're close enough (to where if you have a good piece of audio being recorded, and you swap the mic and the musician, with a person and a speaker(or headphones if you record binaural), you might be able to fool some people in a blind test).

 

[Unclevanya]

Bob Carver used null difference testing to duplicate the Sonic signature of amplifiers. I wonder if the same techniques could be applied to show when there are differences in things that people think are the same. Not to reproduce the sound that was done via adjustments the raw output of the null difference tests won't be zero sum unless things are identical.

 

[jsy]

I'm confused...why would having a reduced frequency range of hearing mean that high-res recordings are wasted?

If your recordings are lossy, I'd agree that you won't notice the data lost when the compression algorithm chops away at the edges, as the bit depth gets lower. I think you'd still notice the loss of dynamic range in the whole recording, though.

As for bit rate, I've seen people of several ages correctly identify a higher quality recording, when playing two unknown digital versions of the same song. One was a lossless encoding, one was 126kbps AAC pulled from YouTube. The track was a random Kaskade song, nothing with particularly high DR or bass/treble fancy. Playback was in foobar2000 on Windows through a reasonable DAC (Topping D10 or Pro-Ject Pre Box S2, can't remember) with over-ear headphones. Relative volume between tracks was auto-normalized in foobar, and playback set to a comfortable volume. The track names were blanked out and folks were invited to flip back and forth between the comparison tracks as much as they liked. Not quite double-blind, but good enough conditions for a fair experiment, I think.

When people thought they had a preference, they passed the headphones to someone else, and told me what they thought. Every single person who tried this correctly identified the lossless track as sounding better to their ears, and maybe half of them managed to do it while hearing each track once. I'll bet all the money in my pockets that some of their hearing stopped at 16kHz, and there was still enough extra detail in the frequencies they were working with to pick a winner.

Maybe the high-res is still wasted on them because in the absence of a direct comparison, both encodings would sound good enough, but I thought the fact that they could all pick out the FLAC was pretty interesting.

 

[MattHooper]

A small nitpick but, maybe accuracy isn't the proper word in the context you speak of? Otherwise..

No problem. Happy to be nitkpicked!

There's conflation going on here, and a bit of strawmanning the implied objectivist in the examples you spoke of. First issue being, accuracy isn't desired in all cases all the time, from all pieces of gear.

Yes, that speaks exactly to the point I was making. Even people who make a lot out of accuracy don't actually desire it, or choose it, all the time.

However, there is often enough a theme in more objectivist-oriented forums running against any "colored" gear, along the lines "there, there, you can have your colorations and enjoy them all you want, but that's preference driving your choice. MY goal is accuracy/fidelity, and so I choose accurate gear!"

I just point out sometimes the issue is not so clear, for the reasons I already went through.

So for instance when someone like me says, I want accuracy, I actually mean fidelity. And when I say fidelity, I mean in my audio transmission chain (of course knowing that the speakers, or headphones, or IEM's will always be the bottleneck for the most part). So in a similar hypothetical example to yours, I will ALWAYS desire fidelity from my DAC and AMP. There is no exception to this desire EVER, regardless of the results.

Yes, I understand the reasons for that approach. They make sense.

I have similar feelings about auditioning equipment. Even though I use tube amps and play a lot of vinyl, I always want to hear speakers driven by solid state and a digital source. I want to be able evaluate if the speaker has colorations, and not add variables in the colorations from an amp or source.

As for accuracy/fidelity in listening devices, if I am now listening to music that is more "revealed" due to a clean setup overall, then I don't need any colorations, if the music doesn't sound good, then I will simply not partake in listening to that sort of music anymore - tastes will simply change (in the same way I've stopped listening to lots of modern rock/alternative music a decade ago, and now sparingly listen to exceptional pieces.. why? The loudness wars ordeal, I simply cannot stomach any sort of music like the sort that I used to listen to back as a kid, that was just a constant volume level for the whole track for all instruments).

Understood.

My approach has been to have a system that is revealing but easy to listen to. Subjectively, it seems to me, that some moves, like using my conrad johnson tube amplification, seem to help me achieve this. (As well as a number of other factors, of course). For me there is no type of music that doesn't sound good on my system, that I can't enjoy, so my collection is wildly varied. I'm talking about fairly subtle sonic zigs and zags here, not the "unbelievable differences" many audiophiles would claim. But subtle differences can, as we know, sometimes make or break an experience. It takes very little boost of the right high frequencies to make something off-putting to listen to over time. Or, an alternative analogy: anyone with a wife knows the slightest difference of inflection in how she answers you can tell you a lot about how your night is going to go

Also accuracy is overrated, if you're listening to music for something like a few hours, your ears are going to fatigue and what you heard out of the first song in the day, you will not hear it the same way after a long listening session if the song repeats in the playlist. So doing away with some treble, or adding crossfeed (or perhaps collapsing the music into a Mono output even), or bumping up the bass, isn't really "coloration" as much as it is "correction" for your state of being at the time. BUT this is only possible if you start off with a chain that preserves fidelity, and not a signal chain that has obliterated the original signal to begin with. Also at that point of fatigue, you probably shouldn't be listening to much of anything really..

There is a sense in which I want to agree "accuracy is overrated" but I'm very hesitant because there it can be taken to be promoting the idea "who cares about accuracy?" Well..pretty much all of us here care to one degree or another. It makes sense we want the artist to be able to transmit their work with some level of accuracy, and in principle sound quality increases as we increase the right capabilities in a system, and lower distortion...all the things good designers tend to be designing for.

On the other hand, just realizing that we can never truly get "there" can be freeing. It's still a compromise, so we all make our own compromises. Hence I'm not in to casting stones at the choices another person has made that results in their enjoying their system, be it someone zealously pursuing the lowest distortion gear as possible, or someone who finds some coloration in the system appealing.

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

I'm confused...why would having a reduced frequency range of hearing mean that high-res recordings are wasted?

If your recordings are lossy, I'd agree that you won't notice the data lost when the compression algorithm chops away at the edges, as the bit depth gets lower. I think you'd still notice the loss of dynamic range in the whole recording, though.

As for bit rate, I've seen people of several ages correctly identify a higher quality recording, when playing two unknown digital versions of the same song. One was a lossless encoding, one was 126kbps AAC pulled from YouTube. The track was a random Kaskade song, nothing with particularly high DR or bass/treble fancy. Playback was in foobar2000 on Windows through a reasonable DAC (Topping D10 or Pro-Ject Pre Box S2, can't remember) with over-ear headphones. Relative volume between tracks was auto-normalized in foobar, and playback set to a comfortable volume. The track names were blanked out and folks were invited to flip back and forth between the comparison tracks as much as they liked. Not quite double-blind, but good enough conditions for a fair experiment, I think.

When people thought they had a preference, they passed the headphones to someone else, and told me what they thought. Every single person who tried this correctly identified the lossless track as sounding better to their ears, and maybe half of them managed to do it while hearing each track once. I'll bet all the money in my pockets that some of their hearing stopped at 16kHz, and there was still enough extra detail in the frequencies they were working with to pick a winner.

Maybe the high-res is still wasted on them because in the absence of a direct comparison, both encodings would sound good enough, but I thought the fact that they could all pick out the FLAC was pretty interesting.

once again, with regard to lossy/lossless...we're specifically talking about high br
lossy being "good enough." Nobody really makes the claim that low br lossy like 128kb isn't identifiable. It becomes very very difficult to tell the difference over 256kbps. Even 192kbps is pretty tough to tell. But obviously, the lower the br the more likely you can hear a difference.

generally speaking, the most notable distinctions between lossy and lossless exist in the high frequencies. Therefore, someone who can't hear very high frequencies likely would have a more difficult time noting the difference. But it would have to be pretty severe hearing loss I'd imagine. I don't know how much dynamic range is really impacted by compression...at least in so far as higher bitrates are concerned.

Just by way of clarification, there's nothing wrong with wanting to have high res recordings to listen to. Most of my music is flac. If space isn't a concern, sure...go lossless. The issue I have is just that often in the audiophile community there's an attitude that allowing a 256kb mp3 to besmirch your system is grounds for having your Audiophile Club membership terminated. You've got these guys who have built up boutique systems for vinyl with crazy tube amps and whatnot and they find out you're listening to Spotify's extreme setting and all of a sudden it's "ohhhh, lossy! well there's your problem! The first thing you need to do is get rid of that shit and get some good sources!"

 

[jsy]

once again, with regard to lossy/lossless...we're specifically talking about high br
lossy being "good enough." Nobody really makes the claim that low br lossy like 128kb isn't identifiable. It becomes very very difficult to tell the difference over 256kbps. Even 192kbps is pretty tough to tell. But obviously, the lower the br the more likely you can hear a difference.

generally speaking, the most notable distinctions between lossy and lossless exist in the high frequencies. Therefore, someone who can't hear very high frequencies likely would have a more difficult time noting the difference. But it would have to be pretty severe hearing loss I'd imagine. I don't know how much dynamic range is really impacted by compression...at least in so far as higher bitrates are concerned.

OK. I'm not really sure what you mean by "once again", unless I missed some posts on this thread. I'm also not really sure what you mean by your high BR comment, since I wasn't making a claim that people can distinguish between high BR lossy and lossless. I agree high BR lossy is "good enough". I also don't get your point about lossy distinctions being mostly in high frequencies - I think I said the same thing, so we're agreeing again?

The original poster who I quoted said that a 44.1kHz (sample rate, I assume?) signal at 16 bits (bit depth, I assume?) would be more than adequate, so high res sound is a waste. That sounds like CD quality, unless I'm missing something, and I agree that's pretty solid ground if you have reduced hearing.

I was only trying to say two things, and I guess I did a bad job of it, so I'll try again:
- if we're talking about encodings in general, and lossy compression is on the table, then I think "high res" is still worthwhile even if you can't hear above 16kHz frequency
- if we're only talking about lossless encodings, then decreasing bit depth would also reduce dynamic range, so it'd still be worth keeping the extra bits even if you can't hear past 16kHz

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

yes, you've missed several posts in this thread in which it was stated that specifically higher bitrate lossy was the focus.
[The reason it matters to me is because there always seems to be a movement of goal posts in these lossy vs lossless discussions. It starts with "it's almost impossible to hear any difference between high br lossy and lossless." Then before too long someone will say "I did a blind test recently and I was able to identify the 128kb mp3 every single time no problem at all." At which point I say "yeah, ok...but that really isn't what we were talking about."]

the point being made here is that people have a very hard time in listening tests distinguishing between high br lossy and lossless. As far as distinguishing between cd quality and even higher resolutions, I don't think there's ever been any sort of evidence that anyone can reliably distinguish between the two, irregardless of how great their hearing is. I don't think there's any loss of dynamic range at all between super high res and CD...

16khz is good ears btw. That's really not bad at all...my own hearing tops out around 15khz (on a good day lol) now. I'd bet Steve Guttenburg's is sub 12khz. Neil Young's? Maybe 8 khz? lol...

 

[Unclevanya]

Also I suspect in real world environments few systems can reproduce high res 24bit dynamic range. We've certainly seen that very few amps test with SINAD high enough to reveal the difference between 16bit and 24bit. Aggregate SINAD will be worse as each item in the chain adds noise (much like uptime measurements look fantastic for individual components in an application, but aggregate rates are vastly lower.)

 

[jsy]

yes, you've missed several posts in this thread in which it was stated that specifically higher bitrate lossy was the focus.

The reason it matters to me is because there always seems to be a movement of goal posts in these lossy vs lossless discussions. It starts with "it's almost impossible to hear any difference between high br lossy and lossless." Then before too long someone will say "I did a blind test recently and I was able to identify the 128kb mp3 every single time no problem at all." At which point I say "yeah, ok...but that really isn't what we were talking about."

Ah, got it! Not one of those. I can't hear the diff between correctly encoded high BR lossy and lossless. Nobody can.