Compression versus Art

kin

Interesting half hour program about the use of compression on Radio 4 now

oaf

Yep, just heard it, was about to post but you beat me to it
You can listen here.

The comments about hi-res formats match my experience really. Great for mixing, ITB VSTs, etc but I have found little difference/improvement versus a well made CD when I'm playing it back on my stereo (Parasound amps -> B&W 800 series speakers).

Cirrus

Makes sense, a CD at 44.1k/ 16 bit is able to reproduce every frequency you can hear and has a dynamic range that puts the noise floor below the ambient noise of almost all listening environments. Anything beyond that is pretty pointless in a purely listening situation - obviously there can be advantages when processing and summing loads of tracks.

Most of the negative views of cd quality are really a result of cheap converters and engineers not really knowing how to master from it in the early days, then later on the loudness wars making people deliberately compromise the quality.

not_the_dj

Streaming it now, thanks.

oaf

Cirrus said:

Makes sense, a CD at 44.1k/ 16 bit is able to reproduce every frequency you can hear and has a dynamic range that puts the noise floor below the ambient noise of almost all listening environments

Yep that's the bottom line for me. Some of the hi-res material I have DOES sound very good but I've a feeling that's more down to the effort made when putting it together (great mix, sympathetic mastering etc) rather than the improved resolution. I'd be very, very surprised if anyone could reliably ABX hi-res versus properly dithered 44.1/16 tracks under anything near "normal" listening circumstances. (Perhaps more controversially I'd go further and say that at even moderately high bitrates most people will struggle to ABX well-encoded lossy codecs versus lossless, barring the odd killer sample!)

Cirrus

oaf said:(Perhaps more controversially I'd go further and say that at even moderately high bitrates most people will struggle to ABX well-encoded lossy codecs versus lossless, barring the odd killer sample!)

Yeah, I'd agree too. Actually it can be a strange one in that with short, quick A/B switching it can be quite hard to tell which is which, whereas if you're intently listening to an entire song or album, when you get to the end one might seem more real, draw you in more emotionally, and you might not even be sure why.

Of course, this is supposing an excellent playback system and the listener having the time and inclination to get lost in the music. If they're driving to work or listening on little earbuds on a train there's not a chance in hell it'll matter.

markv

Thanks for the heads up on the R4 program.

Surely been posted before but this is interesting reading with respect to bit rates: https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

steamabacus

Excellent. Listening now.

Sporky

markv said:

Thanks for the heads up on the R4 program.

Surely been posted before but this is interesting reading with respect to bit rates: https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

That's a marvellous link - very clearly explained. Shame that audiophiles hate science.