I know there's been a nice summary recently showing hires is really audibly better in the AES journal. Is there any similar meta analysis available comparing lossy to redbook?Good watch. It is another piece of evidence that most people can't even hear the difference between compressed and uncompressed music let alone all the esoteric things we throw money at.
256 kbps AAC sounds superb and the MP3 version that Amazon uses close to it. So not surprising that people fail to tell the difference from original.
I plan to do a comparison one day like they have done. It is possible that what we think is lossless may not be on Tidal (although seeing the .flac designation tells me it should be).
Oh yes. There has been plenty of listening tests published although interest in the last decade has been in very low bit rate codecs for cellular streaming (e.g. HE-AAC). The results are always the same. Fidelity approaches lossless source but never gets there across all content and all listeners. Here is one graph I have handy to show the former:I know there's been a nice summary recently showing hires is really audibly better in the AES journal. Is there any similar meta analysis available comparing lossy to redbook?
I had to sell my golden ears to pay my bar tabThomas
You're not alone being a crap audiophile ... I took the online thing from the Harman people and am fairly good at hearing artifacts ... on small segments and on known music ... If I am just listening to the music for the most part I am consistently fooled by anything above 192 Kb/s ..
The other day I played a cruel joke on a golden eared audiophile friend. I took a 128 Kb/s and burnt it on a CD as an audio CD ... Suffice to say he was as fooled as anybody ...
"Folks, get the cheapest music possible, it doesn't matter".
ROTFLMAO,
Thanks Dallas
No argument there Tim, I just found the host comments funny as hell.The entry level for music streaming should be $20/mo, with increases for high use (maybe start at greater than 100 hours/mo). And every dollar of that increase should go to the writing and performance copyright holders. Should people pay a premium for "hi res?" Sure, why not? We pay a premium for all kinds of unnecessary things.
Tim
Spotify is the cheapest. Spotify pays out the most money to artists because it has the most customers. Tidal is the most expensive. Tidal pays out next to nuthin because it has a handful of customers by comparison. People will always listen to music and will mostly select the cheapest and most convenient method.The entry level for music streaming should be $20/mo, with increases for high use (maybe start at greater than 100 hours/mo). And every dollar of that increase should go to the writing and performance copyright holders. Should people pay a premium for "hi res?" Sure, why not? We pay a premium for all kinds of unnecessary things.
Tim
Spotify is the cheapest. Spotify pays out the most money to artists because it has the most customers. Tidal is the most expensive. Tidal pays out next to nuthin because it has a handful of customers by comparison. People will always listen to music and will mostly select the cheapest and most convenient method.
I succumbed to the convenience and polish of Roon recently and I really like the Tidal integration. I have done zero testing that would be acceptable here in terms of being objective but subjective listening does show a range of different experiences when comparing my local digital library to Tidal's files.
Most often Tidal beats my files that I ripped twenty years ago and have been moved through a dozen hard drives since then. They have obvious ripping errors or file corruption that are repeatedly audible at the same positions in a track. In the wisdom of my youth I decided to rip all my CDs and then sell them all when I moved countries - that was about 5000 tracks that I ripped at 160 Kbps MP3 or 128 Kbps AAC (no idea why I mixed the formats!)
There's a number of other lossy tracks I've obtained since then that I can hear significant differences in sound when comparing to Tidal's versions (or lossless rips). Almost always the major difference for me is the sound of cymbals, saprono level woodwind/brass notes and acoustic guitar along with other higher frequency sounds. The giveaway to me is a sort of warble effect on the note. Hard to describe the sound really - like a phase effect or being played underwater or a combination. This happens almost always with 192 Kbps or lower but I have found a couple of 256 and 320 Kbps tracks that exhibit the same sound but I put this down to the rip being done poorly.
Tldr; Tidal rocks when used with Roon and sounds better than a lot of my crappy rips. However, if Roon supported other lossy streaming services I'd jump ship immediately.
Phew, my first post here out of the way!
Welcome to the forum Astro! What you described is precisely the type of content that gives lossy codecs a hard time. Great to see that you intuitively managed to spot all of this.There's a number of other lossy tracks I've obtained since then that I can hear significant differences in sound when comparing to Tidal's versions (or lossless rips). Almost always the major difference for me is the sound of cymbals, saprono level woodwind/brass notes and acoustic guitar along with other higher frequency sounds.
Definitely something interesting - I had a look for the group mentioned by Ray, http://audiosciencereview.com/forum...-listening-to-right-now.40/page-21#post-21477, and was able to pull down an audio track again at 321 Kbps AAC - and it sounds like it. Very, very clean, punchy sound, "CD quality", ... will keep checking this out ...There may be something interesting going on with YouTube ... a very recently uploaded video seemed to show superior quality at 1440p, and I have just looked at some audio derived from a clip which states 321 Kbps AAC. Will do some further investigation, to see if this is a 'real' quality upgrade, or not ...