Are you an audiophile?

Like PiccoloNamek, I can hear all kinds of artifacts up until the -V 1 range (+224kbps VBR mp3.) Though only when I'm using my headphones =p. Its kind of like the one Arainach mentioned, except imagine the detailed flats with a more upfront sound. Its a shame the HD-595 costs so much or else I would recommend it to all my non-audiophile friends .

I would like to use a lossless source like flac or ape; but taking up over 3 times the space of a mp3 just can't be justified. But I do make exceptions here and there.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by TubeRacer

You guys are also guilty of turning me into an audiophile as well. I deleted 60 gigs of music; everything except a couple soundtracks that are in 160kbps. Now I will only listen to audiophile-quality mp3s on my laptop.

Please, at least tell me you listen to music on your laptop through earphones. Still, listening to music through a onboard soundcard (through a laptop no less) can't sound that good to any audiophile.
I only say this as my laptop's speakers sounds terrible compared to my desktop sound setup =/.

Originally Posted by eriol

That's scary, how come you deleted the collection of, omg, 60 gb so easily? I would cry if that happens to my hdd.

Haha, I regularly delete my entire collection off of my hdds (I format my music drives every now and then) and keep dvdr copies as backup. I'm crazy, I know.

But to permanently delete stuff from my collection.. I think I would shed a tear too .

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Humans can't hear the difference between a 128kbps mp3 file and a higher bitrate file? I'm afraid you are mistakened Takeru.
Maybe I should help elaborate more on the why.



To put it simply, the more complex the audio/waveform is the more resolution you'll need in each frame in a mp3 to retain the overall sound quality. Kinda like a movie frame being shown in 640x480 pixels as compared to a higher resolution movie frame like 1024x768 pixels. Of course you'll see the difference, the same would go for audio resolution in a mp3 file.

Sampling rates are a different story but is still one of the major factors in the filesize. Sampling rates set the frequency range at which the file will encode at. If the mp3 file had a sampling rate of 96kHz it will be able to capture more sounds (ie stuff outside of your hearing threshold) for you but at the cost of larger frames per second. Not that you're not increasing the resolution rather you're adding more details at that resolution... did that make sense? Umm its like adding more colors to each frame in a movie, thereby requiring more space.
Keep in mind encoding a 44kHz music CD into a 96kHz mp3 file will not make it sound better! True, the file will be bigger but that's because you're stuffing redundant data in the same frame. At best music files can only sound as good as its source.

All I'm really saying is a average person listening to their favorite song in mp3 at 128kbps will hear some differences (if not alot) compared to a 192kbps+ mp3 file. If they don't they either don't care or have poor hearing to begin with .

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by LiquidAcid

Replace 'resolution' by bits. The problem is entropy : you need a certain amount of bits to represent a block of information. This is a result of information theory, which always applies if you want to represent information.
That's also the reason why you can't compress data (lossless) to arbitrary sizes.

That's minus 10 points from my exam ;_;

Well technically I'm at least half correct in saying higher audio resolution requires more bits.

Originally Posted by LiquidAcid

But we're talking about bitrate here, not resolution. The effect of low bitrate in a movie keeping the resolution constant are pixel errors, like macro block artifacts, ringing, etc. - also sharpness reduces and the image looks blurrier then the original. But the blur is a specific effect of MPEG encoding, more specific: the cosinus transformation.

It was a example. I know I was comparing apples to rocks but the theory was similar enough .

Originally Posted by LiquidAcid

The enlarged frequency range is a nice sideeffect but you also get more precise signal reconstruction in the lower frequency range. So it's not only a waste of bits but does have its purpose.

Hah, exactly my point. I'm not sure what the benefit is when a person sets a higher 'maximum' frequency than the source's maximum frequency.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?