audio questions

It very much depends on the source, but it also very much depends on the encoding. There are multiple ways to encode a compressed audio stream; a 64kbps CBR MP3 is radically different than a 320kbps VBR Vorbis file.

And since this entire argument started with "games" encoding their sound using lossy formats, I don't think specialty tracks picked exclusively for the exercise of finding flaws in compression technology are quite the same. In nearly all cases, game audio isn't bad because of the compression technology -- it's bad because of an art or design decision.
 
The weakest link in any audio reproduction is the speakers/headphones by a landslide. There isn't a single speaker or headphone that I know of that can reproduce music in the range of CD quality with 100% accuracy. It just isn't possible, at least not according to any speaker testing I've read that does actual measurements. When you're talking about sources, probably the biggest difference you're going to hear is in the engineering/mixing of the music. Hell, the new Metallica album sounds better on Guitar Hero (mp3) than it does on CD, according to most audio types. When you're comparing DVD-A to SACD to CD to mp3 to WMA, it's really hard to know if you're actually comparing the same mix of an album or song. And if you're switching back and forth between formats, how to you know you're comparing at exactly the same volume? One may be encoded slightly louder, and the the louder track is going to sound "better" to the vast majority of ears. It's like the trick audio shops will use to audition amplifiers. They'll hook the same speakers and source up to an amplifier and get you to listen to see what you think sounds best. Well, how do you know that they volume is 100% the same? The one that's louder will sound better, and that's all you're going to hear.

I'm telling you, even if you're sure that that your WMA sounds a bit better than your mp3, the point is moot when you consider the difference in sound quality you'll get by investing in good speakers and an amp that can drive them. 7.1, 5.1 etc is all a waste, in some regards. You usually have a fixed budget for these things, so you end up with more speakers of lesser quality. Your best bet is 2 channel and get the best speakers you can afford and that your amplifier is capable of driving. If you're absolutely in love with positional audio in movies and games, then you're going to have a hard time with this, but if your primary concern is music playback, then it's the only way you're going to get the "best" music playback.
 
Davros said:
Theres actually a reason for that. The record company applied some kind effect*(not sure the right term) to make the cd version sound lounder
here:
http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/2008/09/metallica-death-magnetic-sounds-better.html

theres also an online pettition to get it remastered
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/re-mix-or-remaster-death-magnetic.html
Click to expand...
I'm well aware of the controversy surrounding it- it's because of the Loudness Wars, something I know about since I am a wannabe audiophile.
It's not that really an an effect per say , it's that they overcompressed the album so there is almost no dynamic range at all- compression in this case refers to the compressing of dynamic range.
All music these days has the dynamic range compressed, as to control peaks in the music and also to raise the perceived volume . In drum production compression is required as the drums otherwise the snare and bass drum would create huge peaks in the signal(and therefore limit the overall volume of the track since you can only make it so loud before it clips), so they are compressed. This also makes them sound different, which may be desired in certain music- like metal, but misuse of it creates BAD sounding albums like death magnetic.
The difference is that certain albums(like death magnetic) have been compressed to hell and back(and actually have digital clipping in it as you know), in order to make them as loud as possible so they stand out(on the radio for example) and also because something that is louder is perceived as sounding better to most people ears.

The Guitar Hero version of death magnetic uses a completely different mix that is much less compressed and therefore not as loud, the degree of which is astounding infact.
 
Not in the mastering process actually, dude who mastered it said it was already (dynamically)squished when he got it
 
radeonic2 said:
Not in the mastering process actually, dude who mastered it said it was already (dynamically)squished when he got it
Click to expand...

I read that and I didn't really understand. It seems like something you'd do last. I'm not very well versed on the steps in the process from recording to production.
 
I simply conclude that it's ridiculous that pc games' audio this entire decade has been in lossy format. I'm so pissed that today's pc-dvd-rom games can't come with the audio files in wma on one disc, and the rest of the game of the other disc(s.) The tunes in the upcoming prince of persia will probably be awesome, but they'll be totally ruined by being mp3's. The ambient sound fx would sound better too. But it's not going to happen, and it's one thing money cannot buy.

I honestly don't understand why sega saturn games from 1995, (i.e., 13 years ago,) are in redbook, yet pc games today don't use lossless audio, which takes up less space and requires less horsepower than redbook, while sounding way better than any lossy format. Dynamic range in today's games, especially in bgm, is none existant. And no it's not the composition. I can tell; I'm not hearing-impaired nor am i imagining a difference; it's real; music giants wouldn't exist if everyone was satisfied with itunes.

Contrary to what some may say, you CAN tell the difference between mp3's and wma lossless. I've heard the difference.

Speakers definitely matter, and I need some better ones, but you can still tell a difference between lossy and lossless, regardless of how lousy ones' speakers may be.
 
Funny enough I generally turn the music off in games
It masks the sounds i need to hear like enemy footsteps ect.
 
2008 IQ is unacceptable said:
I simply conclude that it's ridiculous that pc games' audio this entire decade has been in lossy format.
Click to expand...
Same shit you always spew.

99% of the gaming public wouldn't be able to tell the difference, that's why they don't spend the money to do it. It doesn't make business sense, nobody (except a few deluded souls such as yourself) is even asking for it. Do you get it yet? Let me make it blunt: nobody fucking cares because nobody could tell the difference on their consumer-grade audio hardware.

I honestly don't understand why sega saturn games from 1995, (i.e., 13 years ago,) are in redbook, yet pc games today don't use lossless audio
Click to expand...
Here's a hint -- it wasn't about audio quality.

Can you guess? Come on, I know you can guess. You can't? Let me help you: what processors were around 13 years ago in consoles? In fact, let's not even get that technical, let's be really simple about it: how much processing power was in the Sega Saturn? Was it enough to do 3D scenes? Yeah. Was it enough to do some really simple physics? You bet.

Was it enough to do all of that, plus playback of highly compressed, variable bitrate audio in 16-bit, 44khz two-channel format? NO THERE WAS NOT

Would it be too much to ask for you to actually THINK about the garbage you're spewing?
 
Even diehard audiophiles will tell you that to really appreicate lossless, you not only need the right equipment (yours is SHIT and so is your new stuff) but also need the room properly treated and have your attention be set for listening.

Playing games, where you're senses are split and fighting for attention, lossless is the last thing you need.

Get real equipment first. Then get your room treated and everything properly calibrated and balanced. Then come back and talk. You're wasting people's time.
 
Albuquerque said:
Same shit you always spew.

99% of the gaming public wouldn't be able to tell the difference, that's why they don't spend the money to do it. It doesn't make business sense, nobody (except a few deluded souls such as yourself) is even asking for it. Do you get it yet? Let me make it blunt: nobody fucking cares because nobody could tell the difference on their consumer-grade audio hardware.


Here's a hint -- it wasn't about audio quality.

Can you guess? Come on, I know you can guess. You can't? Let me help you: what processors were around 13 years ago in consoles? In fact, let's not even get that technical, let's be really simple about it: how much processing power was in the Sega Saturn? Was it enough to do 3D scenes? Yeah. Was it enough to do some really simple physics? You bet.

Was it enough to do all of that, plus playback of highly compressed, variable bitrate audio in 16-bit, 44khz two-channel format? NO THERE WAS NOT

Would it be too much to ask for you to actually THINK about the garbage you're spewing?
Click to expand...
Saturn games' music was in redbook. which is uncompressed 16 bit 44.1 khz stereo. not compressed.

No, it's actually because pc games are confined to 1 DVD, so there's not enough room for it.

Some PS3 games use LPCM 5.1 and it's superior to dd, regardless of how high end your speakers are.

And you can't speak for 99% of the gaming population. If you can notice a difference in music and movies between lossy and lossless, then you can notice the same exact difference in games.
 
PC Games are confined to 1 DVD? Just leave, please. I can only imagine the reason you haven't been banned yet is to keep the mods laughing.
 
2008 IQ is unacceptable said:
Saturn games' music was in redbook. which is uncompressed 16 bit 44.1 khz stereo. not compressed.
Click to expand...
Are you serious? No, not about the audio "quality", I mean are you seriously defending this with THAT STATEMENT?!? Please explain to me why compressed audio takes less CPU cycles to play back than uncompressed. When you discover that you cannot make that argument, you'll discover why severely underpowered processors used CD audio playback instead of compressed audio.

And no, you were not getting 16-bit 44.1khz two-channel audio on anything other than their CD games -- and take a wild guess how they were doing it! Or maybe I shouldn't allow you that right, because you'll screw it up. it's called CD playback, it wasn't being processed at all, and if that's what you want games to go back to, then maybe you'll never understand why you've become the most recent laughing stock of the forum.

And you can't speak for 99% of the gaming population. If you can notice a difference in music and movies between lossy and lossless, then you can notice the same exact difference in games.
Click to expand...

News flash: you can't tell the difference, no matter how much you want to yell and scream over this forum about how you can. In fact, I am so convinced that you can't tell the difference, that I'm going to let you prove it to all of us. In about an hour, I'm going to post FOUR ~45sec sound samples taken from CD and compressed (or not) and all reconverted back to PCM WAV format. And then you're going to astound us by telling us all which ones are compressed and which aren't.

Details will be posted shortly...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Here's the challenge to "2008 IQ is unacceptable"

One of my favorite contemporary pianists is George Winston. Under the concept of DMCA "Fair Use", I am borrowing the first 45.7 seconds of his song titled "Woods" from his CD titled Autumn. It is Copyright 1980 by Windham Hill Records and distributed by BMG.

Using the free-to-try-for-a-while audio editor GoldWave v5.25, I digitally captured those first 45.7 seconds directly from the original CD in uncompressed 16-bit 44.1Khz stereo PCM format using a TSSTCorp CDDVDW drive model SH-S203B with a serial ATA interface. I edited the very last three seconds of that selection to give it a "fade out" effect for easier listening. I then saved that file in it's raw PCM format to my uncompressed unencrypted data drive and named it "George Winston - Woods - Mod0.wav"

I then reopened that wav file, and saved four new copies -- each of these four new copies are compressed in the following horrifically lossy ways (listed in my view of how easy it should be to distinguish from the original art):

Copy 1: Easiest - 44100hz 128kbps CBR MP3 LAME format
Copy 2: Not as easy - 44100hz 256kbps CBR MP3 LAME format
Copy 3: Hard - 44100hz Quality 90 VBR WMA 9.2 format
Copy 4: Unlikely - 48000hz 500kbps 1.0q OGG format

I then converted ALL of these back into PCM format! Yes, that means the potential for even MORE sound aliasing -- oh noes! I now have a total of five 16-bit, 44100hz stereo PCM files. Four of them have compression artifacts, one of them doesn't.

I have massaged the names a bit as to alleviate any confusion (or hope of guessing). And to avoid any foul play, I have PM'd the "answers" to this challenge to Scott_Arm who has participated in this thread a bit and hopefully doesn't mind being the keeper of the answers (I didn't ask permission beforehand, sorry!) If he doesn't like being in that position, I'll find someone else hopefully before you post your own answers. If it all somehow goes south, I'll re-upload a new set of samples and resubmit the answers to someone else so we can try again...

So, five total samples: four compressed, one uncompressed. Tell us all which one is which, and Scott will hopefully come in and tell you if you're right; I'd even love it if you can find the uncompressed one just by itself :) With someone equipped with ears so discerning as yours, this will be an absolute cakewalk. The compression artifacts should be painful on those 128 and 256 CBR ridiculously lossy files!

ymsig.wav
lepno.wav
axkfa.wav
chmjv.wav
zqrtf.wav

Good luck!
 
I listened to them and could hardly beleive my ears
but then again neither could anyone else as they're two foot long and coverd in fur
 
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