Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech - AUDIO

[itsmydamnation]

http://www.avsforum.com/t/350910/beware-wma-lossless-files-are-not just as an example, and it's not the only one.
There was one individual who insisted that simply copying the WAV from one hard drive to another resulted in "jitter" he could hear. This individual was not just some random guy, but a move professional, who insisted that he always received the same hard disk that the audio mix was created on.

We used to have some spirited discussions in the HD DVD days where folks would insist they could tell the difference between 5.1 PCM lossless and 5.1 dolby true-hd or 5.1 DTS HD MA.

story time. I was once transfering an Album to my iphone ( Hibria - blind ride) and as i was transfering ( no encode or anything was happening) a completely unrelated error poped up from another app. the sound that it made can now be heard in the file that was being transfered ( called nonconforming minds). i have checked the source and the sound isn't there.

so the question is how the hell does a sound end up in a compressed and encoded file while it is mearly being copied.

 

[RudeCurve]

http://www.avsforum.com/t/350910/beware-wma-lossless-files-are-not just as an example, and it's not the only one.
There was one individual who insisted that simply copying the WAV from one hard drive to another resulted in "jitter" he could hear. This individual was not just some random guy, but a move professional, who insisted that he always received the same hard disk that the audio mix was created on.

When using Windows Media Player to rip CDs to WMAs there is an option under devices to turn on/off error correction. Would that have an affect on the encoding and sound of the lossless WMA?

 

[Scott_Arm]

AdLib sound, or maybe AdLib Gold if it isn't too expensive.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Also, if you use "monkey coffin" speakers, even if you've spent thousands upon thousands of dollars, you cannot properly reproduce the fidelity of a CD, let alone DVD audio or whatever. It's all in the speakers, and speakers are massively flawed by design. That's why I don't worry too much about any of what goes on in the audio world regarding sources, cables etc. It all comes down to your speakers and whether you have an amp that can drive them properly. As long as the new consoles can do CD quality audio in 7.1, or whatever crazy setups people have now, then we're set.

 

[sebbbi]

I was out to dinner with my boss once. We were having a little wine with dinner when I commented that I didn't think much of the wine. He paused and said, "Well, then try this instead." He poured me another glass, and I thought it was MUCH better. It was from the same bottle.

Priceless

 

[DoctorFouad]

There are some folks on AVSForum who _insist_ they can tell the difference between lossless, and losslessly compressed audio, despite the two files being bit-for-bit identical when played.

When dealing with audio/video files comparison outputs, there are generally 2 considerations (it is very important to distinguish between both) :

1/ the psychological factor : audio/videophiles are affected a priori with the information they had about the file/hardware. something will look/sound better just because it should be, thats all. But try to put these same guys on blind tests and you will laugh

2/ the conditions of playing the file. If you have a harwdare playing WAV files in a certain manner but playing Flac files in another manner (lowering the volume - emphasize on certain frequencies...etc) of course you will hear a difference between lossless and original files. between flac and wav, or between pcm 5.1 and DTS HD 5.1....etc. Thats logical and nothing surprising here.

all the difficulty of testing high end audio/video hardware/files, comes down to the capacity of the reviewer to distinguish both effects :
1- freeing his mind from a priori judgements.
2- setting up a perfect testing system for an objective comparison.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Also, if you use "monkey coffin" speakers, even if you've spent thousands upon thousands of dollars, you cannot properly reproduce the fidelity of a CD, let alone DVD audio or whatever. It's all in the speakers, and speakers are massively flawed by design.

Same with cameras. It's all in the optics (and sensor tech) but people expect better images from more megapixels. In fact photos go optics>CCD>camera software> display, so the image data is completely messed up from reality, but people seem to prefer tweaked images over reality. I'm sure that's the case with audio too, save the few extreme 'purists' (who wouldn't touch a CD with a barge pole if they really wanted the original sound waves).

I see no point in changing audio compression format. I've never yet heard audio compression artefacts in a game. Audio processing for realism would be great (sounds traced bouncing off different materials, although I haven't the audio setup to really appreciate that ), but higher bitrate samples would be a waste of resources.

 

[Gubbi]

It's all in the speakers, and speakers are massively flawed by design.

QFT.

That and the volume compression of modern productions makes everything else moot.

I do wonder why we still convert to lossy formats. WMA lossless and FLAC has better than 50% compression ratios, that means 3 albums per GB or 100 albums in 32 GB, which costs.... nothing.

Cheers

 

[Rodéric]

Can't stand those colour filters in modern digital cameras that "enhance" reality....
It make me want to puke.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Can't stand those colour filters in modern digital cameras that "enhance" reality....
It make me want to puke.

AFAIK there's no such thing as an end-to-end standard in any media format that preserves the original. In cameras, the lens, the CCD, the processing, and then the display and the personal tweaks people make to its settings all change the picture from the source. Those 'Movie/Vivid/Natural' modes on TVs confuse me utterly, because they change colour representation. I've seen primary colours in games look like almost secondary colours on a TV with 'movie' mode engaged. With audio, there's microphone, preamps, amps, processing circuits, a digital copy, then home amp and speakers, all changing the qualities of the source material. There's no way to capture the source and play it back with the purity of the original. A piece of music I recorded was listened to by some cousins who felt the piano kinda drowned out the voice, but on other devices the voice drowns out the piano. I could only balance it for a decent mix on ordinary settings.

So at the end of the day, I consider the pursuit of pure captures pointless. Give the users whatever values they want to tweak to make it how they like it. If they want their colours off, or oversaturated, or their sound really bassy, or really thin and crisp, leave it to them to decide. Just don't pollute the source data with distortion due to low fidelity or noise.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Just about my only request would be a reasonable quality DAC for the analog stereo output. Most people using digital output are going to have a pretty high-quality DAC in their receiver, but it would be nice to have one in the consoles. To be honest, I don't have any problems with whatever they've put in the 360 or PS3. I imagine it isn't an expensive one, but it does the job.

 

[Rodéric]

I wonder if bandwidth increased enough we can afford to have FLAC instead of MP3.
Also wondering whether it's fine to play from optical media directly.

 

[Arwin]

I wonder if bandwidth increased enough we can afford to have FLAC instead of MP3.
Also wondering whether it's fine to play from optical media directly.

Don't some games do that already? And I am pretty sure some games did back in the previous generation too.

I don't know if we'd need more than the PS3 is capable of at the moment (lossless 7.1). The launch version could even do super audio. People with a good system would benefit from the Xbox scaling up sound options a bit next-gen though.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Just about my only request would be a reasonable quality DAC for the analog stereo output. Most people using digital output are going to have a pretty high-quality DAC in their receiver, but it would be nice to have one in the consoles. To be honest, I don't have any problems with whatever they've put in the 360 or PS3. I imagine it isn't an expensive one, but it does the job.

I remember using the PS3's analog out, and it was weird.
/edit : duh I wrote about it here, one year ago already

 

[bkilian]

QFT.

That and the volume compression of modern productions makes everything else moot.

I do wonder why we still convert to lossy formats. WMA lossless and FLAC has better than 50% compression ratios, that means 3 albums per GB or 100 albums in 32 GB, which costs.... nothing.

Cheers

Yes, that's fine until you get to my 120GB of mp3 (not counting the audiobooks - another 60GB) and iTunes being dumbass about using network drives, so we have three copies of everything (The central repository, and one each on my wife's and my computer for iTunes to play with). At FLAC/WMA lossless rates, that would be about 3 terabytes, and I have a ton of other stuff I could use 3 terabytes for. Since I don't hear mp3 artifacts, It really isn't in my interest to "upgrade" to lossless.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I wonder if bandwidth increased enough we can afford to have FLAC instead of MP3.
Also wondering whether it's fine to play from optical media directly.

I guess that depends on how the optical drive is being used to stream other content. If you're streaming assets other than audio, interrupting that streaming to move the head to the audio and back again will be prohibitive, I'd have thought.

 

[menmau]

Yes, that's fine until you get to my 120GB of mp3 (not counting the audiobooks - another 60GB) and iTunes being dumbass about using network drives, so we have three copies of everything (The central repository, and one each on my wife's and my computer for iTunes to play with). At FLAC/WMA lossless rates, that would be about 3 terabytes, and I have a ton of other stuff I could use 3 terabytes for. Since I don't hear mp3 artifacts, It really isn't in my interest to "upgrade" to lossless.

Once again it was space constraint.
So mp3 does its job quite well, so my question would be how "better than mp3" is justifiable?
Would it have any effect at all to post process it, could we get any benefit, like supersample, etc.

 

[bkilian]

Once again it was space constraint.
So mp3 does its job quite well, so my question would be how "better than mp3" is justifiable?
Would it have any effect at all to post process it, could we get any benefit, like supersample, etc.

Well, if you talk to the audio designer, they want full rate, 24bit or better samples, losslessly compressed. If you talk to the video folks, they believe audio is superfluous, and 64Kb XMA/MP3 is perfectly fine, since it gives them more space for high density textures. The end result is usually somewhere in the middle.

 

[tuna]

Once again it was space constraint.
So mp3 does its job quite well, so my question would be how "better than mp3" is justifiable?
Would it have any effect at all to post process it, could we get any benefit, like supersample, etc.

Do you mean in games or in general music playback?

 

[Blazkowicz]

I wonder about using 96KHz. yes, it's totally useless for playback, but in a game where you're doing lots of processing and mixing it would help for keeping signal's precision, maybe. music can safely stay at 48KHz, or do modtracker/midi if you want.