audio questions
- Thread starter 2008 IQ is unacceptable
- Start date
I still don't get the urgency for uncompressed audio, video or textures. Compression algorithms today are phenominal in their ability to retaining source quality while delivering far smaller file sizes.
Why would we go back? I'd rather have 60 hours of 320kbps VBR audio rather than the 15 hours of uncompressed 44.1khz/16-bit two-channel WAV audio. And don't even think about the epic fail involved in trying to get 96khz / 24-bit uncompressed audio in that same kind of space -- you're talking like 4.5 hours of audio in the same space...
Why would we go back? I'd rather have 60 hours of 320kbps VBR audio rather than the 15 hours of uncompressed 44.1khz/16-bit two-channel WAV audio. And don't even think about the epic fail involved in trying to get 96khz / 24-bit uncompressed audio in that same kind of space -- you're talking like 4.5 hours of audio in the same space...
EasyRaider
Regular
Are you saying you can consistently tell the difference between lossless and Vorbis at ~256 kb/s in an ABX comparison? If so, with which source material?
I think he really is saying that, but I have significant doubts that he'd be able to sustain that seperation in a truly blind test.
That being said, I have found a single portion of a single track of a single CD where I can reliably make a 256kbps VBR file alias a bit, but the dynamic range in that particular track is so incredible that most "basic" home theater setups will experience clipping while trying to play it anyway. Flipping the encoding to 320kbps VBR solved the problem, and I did it only for that particular track.
Which is yet another beautiful thing about compression -- choose your compression rate per asset. That track really did need a 320kbps VBR encoding, but the entire rest of the disc was perfectly fine at 256kbps VBR (and it's quite likely that many of the tracks would have been fine at 192kbps VBR). Being able to choose is a fantastic way to trade quality for size when warranted, while still not being wasteful.
That being said, I have found a single portion of a single track of a single CD where I can reliably make a 256kbps VBR file alias a bit, but the dynamic range in that particular track is so incredible that most "basic" home theater setups will experience clipping while trying to play it anyway. Flipping the encoding to 320kbps VBR solved the problem, and I did it only for that particular track.
Which is yet another beautiful thing about compression -- choose your compression rate per asset. That track really did need a 320kbps VBR encoding, but the entire rest of the disc was perfectly fine at 256kbps VBR (and it's quite likely that many of the tracks would have been fine at 192kbps VBR). Being able to choose is a fantastic way to trade quality for size when warranted, while still not being wasteful.
You're really getting mixed up between dynamic range compression and the file space saving sort. They aren't particularly linked at all.
Similarly the redbook standard has nothing to do with dynamic range compression, all the redbook is is a standard set of specifications of what a CD is (from basic stuff like maximum length/number of tracks to all the detail like dimensions of the data layer and pits etc.)
Dynamic range compression is the act of taking a sound signal and proportionally boosting the quieter sounds to reduce the overall loudness variation of the signal, this isn't nessesarily a bad thing, for instance it rather needs to be done (a little) for radio play since FM can't handle the same DR as CDs. It can also help things sound a little better on poorer sound systems.
However it can also be completely overdone, and your average modern CD is hugely compressed in this sense (see 'loudness wars' on google/wiki). This isn't a result of any mp3s or filesize compression or anything like that, it's simply a case of poor mastering, rather in the way all the TVs in a shop have the colour severely boosted and audio systems from the more dubious types such as Bose and B&O will 'enchance' sound signals by 'brightening' them as to the normal person, in the short term, these things look and sound better.
Compressing an audio signal with mp3/wma etc will not usually result in dynamic range compression. Infact, if you wanted to you could encode a 24bit signal with mp3/wma and the resulting file could produce a larger DR than a CD. Heavy file size compression with a low bitrate will certainly result in the encoder ignoring the quieter things if the signal is complex, but even this doesn't really count as DR compression since you're simply losing the quieter sounds rather than making them louder.
Lossless compression (as wma or flac etc) will not affect the signal at all, you get out what you put in. Just because whatever modern games you've played have rubbish DR and use .wma doesn't make these linked, it just means the sound production was rubbish (or aimed at a market segment which didn't include you anyway).
and yes, whatever film soundtrack you have an old cd of will sound better than whatever game with horribly DR compressed sound you're comparing it to, but if you were to compress that film soundtrack into lossless .wma or flac it would still sound just as good. Infact it would still sound much better than the game even if you encoded it in some 320/256kbps VBR mp3/wma etc.
And as for PC games now vs the past, on the whole sound quality has gone up, I remember very few PC games that used pure CD music anyway, it simply wasn't practical since you couldn't do anything dynamic with it really, and before they used audio compression techniques they used MIDI for music and sound would have been .wavs but almost always reduced bit/frequency
Another reason radio stations compress audio is because of where people listen to radio the most: In their car. With a background noise level of 75dBa, listening to music where the difference between peaks and quiter sections is 25dB, you need well above 110dBa sound pressure, - and you would go deaf. With the music volume compressed to ~5dB you can play your music at 90dBa. Same goes with iPods, they are used where the background noise level is high.
So volume compression makes sense in some scenarios. However it completely ruins the experience when listening to a CD on a decent stereo system. The bass has no thump and the snares aren't nibbling at your ears the way they are supposed to.
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2008 IQ is unacceptable
Banned
I'd say going back to exact wav quality losslessly compressed via WMA Lossless is a lot better than ANY lossy methods.
And no, lossy TC algorithms suck; a lossless tc algorithm could be created and it could actually even have a higher compression rate than the lossy dxt format that's used today.
Dude, WMA lossless is worth the space; with games shipping in blu-ray in the future why should they use mp3's? Hell, why use lossy formats now? Games can be on more than 1 dvd.
Um, no, I've heard itunes plus and they're 256 kbps lossy and they sound nowhere near as good as the same tracks in wma lossless that I purchased from music giants.
BTW, WMA lossless sounds better than lossy compression plus it also has a variable bit rate.
There are no advantages to lossy compression, they can even take up more space than a lossless format can.
Lossy compression sucks, it serves no purpose with the existence of WMA Lossless.
EasyRaider
Regular
Now I'm intrigued...care to share the name of that title?
The CD is called "Time Warp", here's a link to Amazon. Read the reviews on there, and you'll see a number of people who repeated my comments 
It's a great CD for completely torturing a home audio system. And it's a great CD to listen to!
It's a great CD for completely torturing a home audio system. And it's a great CD to listen to!
2008 IQ is unacceptable
Banned
With 25 or 50 GB BD-ROMs, pc's with 3 TB of hdd space, and 15 mbps download speeds, no one with any sense should give a flyin' shit about how much space a wma lossless file takes up compared to an mp3.
320kbps mp3's are not worthwhile with all of the space and speed available today plus they sound nowhere near as good as 1100kbps wma lossless.
MP3's serve absolutely no purpose with all of the storage and bandwidth available.
I couldn't care less about a "double blind test" I've heard the difference between a high bitrate mp3 and a wma lossless file and the difference is real, and worth every single bit of storage space and seconds spent downloading/ripping.
15mb/s download isn't exactly standard speed in the states, my dsl connection is rated at 1.5Mb/s, in reality I get closer to 1.3mb/s, the fastest speed I can get is a wopping 3mbs. In my old nieghborgood though if you pay $56
a month (without any bundle) you get 15Mb/s though, but you cant get that kind of service everywhere, sadly.
I want FioS!
I was actually referring to you thinking a lossy audio format is going to be bigger in file size than a lossless one.
That has to to be the second or third time you've replied to something I've said totally misunderstaning me.
p.s only fools use 320kb's mp3s, VBR is much more effcient use of space.
a month (without any bundle) you get 15Mb/s though, but you cant get that kind of service everywhere, sadly.
I want FioS!
I was actually referring to you thinking a lossy audio format is going to be bigger in file size than a lossless one.
That has to to be the second or third time you've replied to something I've said totally misunderstaning me.
p.s only fools use 320kb's mp3s, VBR is much more effcient use of space.
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The CD is called "Time Warp", here's a link to Amazon. Read the reviews on there, and you'll see a number of people who repeated my comments
Thanks! At €8 (amazon.at) I'll give it a shot.
Don't know about those 2 tracks, but I've made the experience that prominent cymbals/hi-hat (especially on metal tracks) are generally quite prone to artifacting...
Uh mp3 players have limited storage (my touch only has 32gb, and most of that is reserved for video).
Bluray exists in less than 1% of homes last I checked...
I'd like to know a single person on this forum with 3TB of harddrive space on any single machine they personally own. I'd wager there might be one, or perhaps two... Now in your mind, think of how many hardcore enthusiasts DON'T have this kind of hardware versus how many dolts at home who won't have it either... My organization has almost 1200 production servers, and I can count on a single hand how many of those servers have that kind of disk space.
Available in an incredibly small number of places domestically, and would only apply to cable and fiber subscribers. I don't believe there is DSL anywhere with that kind of throughput, let along any GSM/GPRS/EDGE/3G/HSDPA networks, or satellite connections for those out in the boonies. There are a significant number of people in the united states who still use dial up, likely more so than there are high speed internet users.
Obviously you are so far off into LaLa land that any amount of reason will go right over your head.
Ignore +1
Qwest offers 20Mb service via existing "fiber to the node, copper to the home" infrastructure AKA, DSL.
I think we're nearing the cross-over point in terms of broadband usage though. This report shows just over 65 million broadband connections in the U.S. as of the end of Q2 this year. Unfortunately, I can't find statistics from this year on total internet connections, the best I can come up with is that in 2006 there were 132 million internet connections with 42.9 million (32.3 percent) being broadband.
