Record Industry crashes, dies

[SPACERACE]

actually it isn't a subjective or cultural thing; relative to the length of time on the discs, there is more audio information on a record. i know i probably shouldn't have tried to explain that by demonstrating it's lasting power, but i didn't just mean "i think it sounds better," i mean it does not have a sampling rate because it is analog, thus it is inherently a smoother wave with more detailed audio information. so, vinyl wins over digital for sound quality for objective reasons, though it's superiority over SACD is debatable.

whichever format people prefer is subjective and purely up to them, but they will lose negligible amounts of audio from the A/D conversion.

[RavingLunatic]

actually it isn't a subjective or cultural thing; relative to the length of time on the discs, there is more audio information on a record. i know i probably shouldn't have tried to explain that by demonstrating it's lasting power, but i didn't just mean "i think it sounds better," i mean it does not have a sampling rate because it is analog, thus it is inherently a smoother wave with more detailed audio information. so, vinyl wins over digital for sound quality for objective reasons

Eh, but how once you cut down the digital bits to sufficiently small pieces the difference between analog and digital is impossible for human ears to detect. I really doubt if you added an artificial analog hiss or tried to imitate the sound of a record on a CD and played it that anyone would be able to tell the difference between that CD and a record.

[SPACERACE]

uh, yeah, they would. pretty easily. the human ear can do a lot.

[RavingLunatic]

I'd bet anything that if you did a study, you would find that people cannot distinguish between say, 320 (or 192 or 480 or whatever) bitrate mp3's and CD quality stuff, meaning that you can compress something to a certain point without human ears noticing any decrease in quality. After that, the only thing you'd need to do to make a CD sound like a record is to imitate the hiss/warmth/whatever, which I'm sure wouldn't be that hard to do.

[SPACERACE]

i will make that bet gladly. i have several ABX programs. name your date.

$20. paypal.

[SPACERACE]

ok, so now i'm curious. i'm doing an ABX test with a flac file, a 320k mp3, and a V0 mp3. we'll see what happens.

[DanielBurns11]

I was messing around with bitrates this morning and found out that I cannot tell the difference between 128kbps and 320kbps. Either that or my computer speakers aren't good enough. Can you tell? Anyone?

[RavingLunatic]

ok, so now i'm curious. i'm doing an ABX test with a flac file, a 320k mp3, and a V0 mp3. we'll see what happens.

I tried that with 192k and FLAC and couldn't tell the difference, but I'm admittedly not an audiophile.

[titus a.]

We ought to just rename this thread 'music nerd cage match' and bring all the filesharing/anti digital/analog type fights here.

[Andrew_TSKS]

I was messing around with bitrates this morning and found out that I cannot tell the difference between 128kbps and 320kbps. Either that or my computer speakers aren't good enough. Can you tell? Anyone?

i can tell 128 from higher bitrates, but i stop being able to tell at 192.

titus, good call.

[SPACERACE]

it's a matter of diminishing returns with MP3s and CDs (i managed to pick the V0 mp3 out 7/8ths of the time, but then i have a rather nice stereo so it's not exactly fair, and besides, it wasn't easy) but once you compare a cd to say, SACD, or uh, a good heavy vinyl on a nice phono setup (not a dj turntable,) CDs don't seem as wonderful.

[Trousers and Pat]

thank you to alex for coming much closer to what I wanted to say than I was able to.

[alistarr*]

def can hear difference between cd and vinyl. what's causing it i couldn't say but it would make sense for the compression to cd playing a part.

[alistarr*]

but also that it just sounds different, i guess. depends on what the music wants to do whether this is a good thing or not. tigermilk definitely sounds better on vinyl; certain other stuff does not. anyhoo. just to throw my hat in the ring on the other end, i think i stop hearing the difference between cd and mp3 at about 256kbps compression. but clearly i have to listen really hard, because i'm happy with 192s on my mp3 player (trade-off between quality and battery life really for me, and the difference is small enough not to annoy).

re. the record industry crashing and dying, i need to now sadly register as someone for whom the effort involved in seeking out a record store i want to support has become too great for me to do it rather than buy online. i find myself wondering whether it's better for me to support high street record shopping by way of buying stuff at hmv, or support independent retailers by buying from their online stores, because neither of those options are very appealing.

[alex]

actually it isn't a subjective or cultural thing; relative to the length of time on the discs, there is more audio information on a record.

That's completely besides the point, though: Nobody's arguing that there is no difference between different technologies; the fact that you care about that difference is cultural though, as is the fact that one option sounds 'better' to you than the other, and that you equal more audio information with better sound.

anyway, not going to spend my Berlin visit getting into a virtual 'music nerd cage match', so whatever.

Oh, also:

After that, the only thing you'd need to do to make a CD sound like a record is to imitate the hiss/warmth/whatever, which I'm sure wouldn't be that hard to do.

I'm too lazy to look up the link right now, but there is definitely a plugin for ProTools that does just that - adding vinyl sounds to digital recordings. You can specify the amount of hiss, the age of the record player, the amount of scratches, etc. They advertise it as 'the ultimate lo-fi weapon', which I find rather hilarious.

[alistarr*]

in cubase there is one called "grungelizer" that does that.

but that's not what makes a record sound different. that's just the stuff that gets in the way. it's the difference between interference occasionally getting in the way of a good signal, and broadcasting a shitty signal in the first place but getting less interference.

hope you're having fun in berlin!

[mackro]

it's not that a freshly ripped Mp3 at 192 sounds different from the CD source (excepting Golden Ear Elite), it's the context in which someone acquired the mp3. 

Often enough, mp3s can be burned to CDRs which then get ripped to mp3s which then get burned to CDRs whcih then get ripped to mp3s which then get burned to CDRs when then get ripped to mp3s which then get shared with you for free, if you're on any free filesharing program... add that any interruptions to the uploads and/or downloads that could cause gaps or skips, and you don't have anything that sounds as good as the source. and that's not worth any money.  (you get what you pay or don't pay for, etc.)

I usually defer to CDs, iTunes, Beatport, etc. if I really love a song (or songs) and want to purchase.

Wrestler Music Nerd Name: The Encoder

[alistarr*]

can someone hurry up and create "music nerd cage match" already?

[SPACERACE]

actually it isn't a subjective or cultural thing; relative to the length of time on the discs, there is more audio information on a record.

That's completely besides the point, though: Nobody's arguing that there is no difference between different technologies; the fact that you care about that difference is cultural though, as is the fact that one option sounds 'better' to you than the other, and that you equal more audio information with better sound.

well in that case we may as well ditch the word "better" because it means absolutely nothing.

there are subjective points to this; someone might prefer the sound of a CD or a cassette or vinyl. that is subjective. but the quality, meaning how close the signal on the media is to the source recording and to the artist's and recording and mixing engineers' sonic intent (which is in fact perfectly clear and all one needs to see it is equipment that doesn't color the sound,) is better with vinyl. the amount of "audio information" on a media is an objective yardstick for its quality, the only one the audio world has, really. whether you desire less audio information and coloration is when it becomes subjective.

i'm sure you can argue that even the former is subjective, but then that washes away the meaning of every scientific concept introduced to audio recording in the past 50 years, so it would just be annoying.

[SPACERACE]

mackro, transcoding hurts files terribly, yes, but actually a "freshly ripped" 192k mp3 does sound significantly different from the source. again, try the phase reversal trick. all you need is a multitrack daw program. at 192k, what's removed basically sounds like the song in reasonable fidelity at 1/3rd volume.

also, iTunes store MP3 encoding is probably the worst in the industry.

[SPACERACE]

maybe this'll help. on the left you have analog. on the right, digital.

take your pick as to which will sound better.



(also, at higher frequencies, when there are fewer samples per each wave, they really can start to look that bad or worse.)

[Greg Nog]

The really amusing thing about that chart is that if you zoom in on Figures 1 and 4, you can see all the jaggedy-edge pixels.

[SPACERACE]

you're a jaggedy-edge pixel

[jebreject]

reese, i'm with you 100% re: analog vs. digital signals, but i have NO IDEA what i'm supposed to be looking at in that chart.

[Swimmy]

Integrals?