Zensō
Major Contributor
Has it been definitively demonstrated that 320kbps Ogg Vorbis and 256kbps AAC are audibly transparent? If so, I assume there is no real need for 16/44.1 and "hi-res" streaming?
Has it been definitively demonstrated that 320kbps Ogg Vorbis and 256kbps AAC are audibly transparent? If so, I assume there is no real need for 16/44.1 and "hi-res" streaming?
That's something you can easily find out for yourself. Get a few (or more) lossless files, encode them into whatever format you want to try and do a proper blind test with at least 10 trials per track, comparing lossless original and lossy encode. AFAIK Foobar 2k and its ABX comparator plugin are still the easiest ways to do it.
But the tl;dr answer to this question - it's extremely unlikely that you will be able to spot the difference. There are very few examples on the net of people successfully differentiating high bitrate lossy and lossless formats if compared properly.
I’m probably not using the right language. This is from the Hydrogenaudio wiki:I am sorry.
Really nothing is audibly transparent.
And even if it would be possible don't you think lossy compression will counter that claim?
I’m probably not using the right language. This is from the Hydrogen Audio wiki:
Informal listening test suggests Vorbis to be comparable to MPEG-4 AAC at most bitrates and Musepack at 128 kbps. Transparency is generally reached at about 150–170 kbps (-q 5) (with some exceptions). The encoder is reasonably young and unoptimized, so further improvements can always be expected.
But comparing MP3 to Vorbis/AAC is like comparing MPEG-2 to AVC.IIRC Amir himself can pick 320 MP3 from LPCM WAV, so in an absolute sense no, they're not transparent. I would be shocked if any normal listener can detect a problem in program material, though. Note that it's often necessary to transcode for things like BT headphones though, and the resulting output may be noticeably degraded.
The improvement in Spotify's user interface vs. the Tidal outweighs the audible improvement Tidal has over Spotify. I have both, and I keep going back to Spotify. *raises shield*
Please tell me a way of walking in the door and getting music playing on the system that is faster. If you have one, I will use it.Spotify is already pretty bad so Tidal must be absolutely horrific...
Please tell me a way of walking in the door and getting music playing on the system that is faster. If you have one, I will use it.
I walk in the door from work, crash on the couch , pull out my phone, turn on smart plug - system starts up, open spotify, push play and connect to ropieeXL. It takes all of 15 seconds. Tidal is close. But I'm not retired so I don't have time to fart around with Computer and Software source configurations.
That makes sense. It would be an easier decision if the Spotify UI and algorithms weren't more polished and useful than Tidal's, which I find lacking for various reasons. Always trade-offs...High-rate Vorbis is almost always transparent. It is, however, lossy. No matter how much you test, you can never be 100% sure that the next song won't contain something that trips up the encoder, causing an audible artefact. Given the option, choosing a lossless format eliminates this risk, however slim it may be. If the bandwidth is available, one may as well use lossless and rest easy.
That’s very interesting, thank you!Interestingly some people with impaired hearing can detect easier differences and need higher bitrates for transparency as due dips in their frequency response the psychoacoustic masking models used for compression don't work as well for them.
https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Kreuzverhoertest-287592.html (German test and article from 2000, you can use google translate or deepl.com for translation)
IIRC Amir himself can pick 320 MP3 from LPCM WAV, so in an absolute sense no, they're not transparent.