Entertainment For Lively Minds
What are your thoughts on music file formats and sound quality?
From the Digital Trends website:
[In an interview at the D:Dive Into Media conference] Neil Young explains his push for the music and tech industries to develop a new lossless audio format and a new type of iPod-like device to play it. He also addresses the lack of danger from piracy and talks about the late Steve Jobs. Quotes and full embedded video.
Do you care about your music format? Do you think there is a discernible difference in sound quality depending on what format is used? Does it matter?
In the comments section of that article someone talks about how these formats "strip out frequencies that the average person cannot hear anyway." So, what are they there for in the first place? Does the fuller sound serve a purpose that goes beyond merely hearing it? Can it be felt? If so, is this an integral part of the best listening experience?
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320kps mp3 vs cd vs vinyl
I must have lost some information when ripping my cds to 320kps mp3 files but I have to say I notice details while listening to my sony mp3 player that I have not noticed before - this though is probably due to the fact that I listen more often with earphones now rather than through my hi-fi speakers.
One thing that Neil Y may have got right though is that listening to cds (let alone mp3s) is more tiring on my ears than listening to vinyl!
Expectation bias.
Greg Milner's excellent book Perfecting Sound Forever deals with this in detail. He is a proper audiophile, Captain Analogue, Dr Vinyl, the whole lot.
His dreams are crushed in the final chapter when he does a proper blinded listening test and is completely unable to distinguish analogue from digital. Neither is he able to pick up digital compression until it drops to 127kbs.
Compressed digital formats lose fidelity from the top down. The older you are, the less able you are to pick up the scrambling.
Neil Young is a man in his mid-60's. Who has spent his adult life as a musician. Playing live music at frightening volumes. His hearing will be compromised to a quite startling degree. Who is he to be telling anyone how stuff should sound?
Neil Knows Best
It's obviously a case of having too many yes men around you. I would think that for most people of his age (let alone his exposure to damaging noise levels) his statements would prove an embarrassment.
I thought FLAC was fairly well
respected as a lossless format? You can't play the files on an iPod but most other non-Apple devices can handle the format.
I struggle to tell the difference between FLAC and 320kbs MP3 to be honest but if Neil Young wants a device that can handle it I recommend the Sandisk Sansa Clip+ range of mp3 players. The biggest capacity is 8GB you can insert a 32gb micro SD card and increase the capacity to 40GB.
I can second the view on the Sansa
As I’ve been using it as my main player for about a year. Just got a Cowon J3 which also does flac and just about any other format that you can throw at it and whilst I struggle with the difference between 320kbs to flac, I can certainly tell when I play some of my 'older' rips which are at 128kbs. In fact I can feel a need to re-rip coming on...
One thing I noticed when moving over to the Cowon was that I initially didn't like the sound but am now after four weeks raving about it. I guess it shows that we get used to hearing things a certain way. When people talk about burning in new speakers or headphones I wonder how much this relates to the ears of the listener and not to the actual device.
All in all, as storage space becomes cheaper why compromise by loosing anything if you don't have to?
My simple question
I want to know that if I begin ripping my CDs again (last done in 2005) to play on my iPod which format at which rate should I use without worrying about size of the file. I have an 80 gig classic iPod which I mostly use when walking or cleaning. I notice some terrible compression on some songs but not on others. I would say the worst sound is the music I actually paid to download through iTunes. I find that the quality of 'files' on the Krauss/Plant Raising Sands to render the songs pretty unlistenable. I have about 13 000 songs on my ipod but I am happy not to have everything on there. I am ready to start the massive job of ripping again but want to get it right.
No right answer
I'm sure you already know that there's no right answer. I did my rips back in 2005 and I'm quite happy with them. I've always used LAME with a quite high VBR preset. (This is how Emusic have done their downloads for sometime).
I believe that the best quality to file size ratio for an ipod is AAC but it's not a format that's recognised by everything and if you should move on to a streaming system for listening around the house you may run into problems using proprietary compression files (eg Sonos supports AAC now but it didn't used to).
If I was starting again, I would use LAME and set it to "-alt preset extreme". That format plays everywhere including the car stereo (car audio is notoriously slow at keeping up with new developments).
The other (non-sonic) thing about using MP3s is that you can use utilities like MP3tag to sort out the tagging rather than wade through iTunes "info" box.
I've posted a test file here before...
...which I'll dig up the URL for if you want it but it's easy enough to test this yourself. Just rip the same segment of music at different compression levels and have a listen. If you want to do it blind then get a mate to do it so you're sure you're not being influenced by knowing the quality.
For me, I rip everything at 320k, but to be honest I've yet to run the test for anyone who could actually tell the difference once the quality got above 192k. Obviously, as discussed here recently it will vary depending on age and the state of your hearing generally. Also presumably if you're going to listen through high-end kit.
Just listening with half an ear to Michael Nyman
on an iPad via Spotify at 320 kbps, into a Logitech Bluetooth receiver, ordinary phono lead to an Arcam 350 AV amp and nice B&W speakers. Sounds nice, perfectly adequate as snow falls outside, the FPO works on her laptop and I fritter away valuable weekend time on this blog ;-)
Though I do so wish I could get the wax out of my right ear-several days of olive oil hasn't done the trick and a tiresome trip to have it hoovered looms. Joys of middle age eh ?
Has to be lossless
I mean, I personally can't tell the difference, but my Labrador can.
I do believe it enhances her enjoyment of Tales from Topographic Oceans; you can tell by the way she wags her tail.
Interesting topic which has niggled me for some time
It's good that you've prompted me to check out the Import Settings tab, which I'd previously happily ignored. However, I decided to carry out my own test a few minutes ago, using Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight as the guinea pig.
When I originally ripped the CD it was at 128kbps, so I re-loaded it just now (without wiping the original) but this time using Apple Lossless (a whopping 859 kbps, it said).
Could I tell the difference, even concentrating hard and listening on good quality headphones? No I could not. This may be down to my own ears, although I reckon I've got pretty good hearing (knowing when the phone's ringing in the other room even if the telly's on and my wife can't hear it, etc).
Anyway, thank goodness for that, as I wasn't looking forward to re-ripping my collection of Throbbing Gristle live CDs to ensure maximum sound quality ...
Glad somebody posted re the Young comments
as had seen them somewhere else and not got round to it.
3 thoughts, not quite on topic but hey:
1. He's a famously fussy customer himself, recall the issue of his greatest hits as a two disk set, the second of which was a DVD-A. This had an amusing "LP revolving" schtick which I liked, seems to have been replicated in Air Studios AirVinyl iPad app
http://www.theappside.com/2011/12/19/air-studios-releases-airvinyl-app-f...
which I'm surprised we haven't heard more about here.
2. His comments about Jobs being also something of an audiophile seem plausible in the light of this famous photo.
http://3xc355.info/post/11084376819/steve-jobs-1955-2011
Can you spot the hifi, and indeed the LP ? I think it's Tea for the Tillerman, and the turntable is an Oracle, and possibly a Macintosh amp and big electrostatics ???
3. My own attitudes to ripping changed a bit after seeing John Dawson, founder of Arcam, do their standard demo of the Pink Panther at resolutions from quite low MP3 to very high. I was surprised that the "sweet spot" for me wasn't quite at the highest possible quality-and blogged about it on this site, just can't find it right now.
[edit: Found it, see http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/can-you-help-me-buy-some-new-hi-fi... . And thanks to the nameless upper, sometimes I'd love to know who, er, upped me ;-)]
However, I'd love to see the same dem with really natural sounding music, e.g. "Not Just Dowland" the live voice and lute recording of Carolyn Sampson that I have. Not on YouTube but this'll give you a flavour:
But back in the 80s, with my regulation Rega 2/A&R A60/Mordaunt Short LP system, I'd never have believed that one day most of my music listening would be on a mobile phone and noise-cancelling headphones ...