garym;487335 Wrote: > There's plenty of discussion of this on the web by very informed folks > (in this forum and other places), so I don't want to turn this thread > into a repeat of all that info. You may have amazing hearing, but there > is lots of scientific evidence that clearly indicates that it is fairly > rare for any individual to be able to ABX in a blind test the difference > between a properly encoded 128 mp3 with the original CD. If you were > posting over at Hydrogenaudio.org the folks would demand that you post > your blind ABX test results to back up your statement about detecting > differences (one of their terms of service). Of course, we're not over > there and things are much looser here. > > I can't speak to streams from pandora as there are so many more > variables in the mix other than just the actual source file (and not > sure how to easily do an ABX test with pandora stream since you don't > have the source file in another format). Keep in mind that even > extremely small differences in volume can make one source sound better > than another (again, lots of hard evidence on this). > > Bottom line, Pandora may very well not sound as good as your local > files, but in general, 128 (created with a modern, quality encoder) is > typically transparent for most users on most music. Your statement that > the reverse is true flies in the face of lots of controlled experiments. > I'm not trying to pick a fight by the way, I just hate to see myths > about lossy encoding quality be perpetuated. That said, there are lots > of reason to rip music to FLAC (or other lossless format), and I do so > with all my own CDs.
I agree with you that for the 'average joe' who thinks that an AM radio sounds "great" there is no need to go higher than 128kbps. However.... It doesn't take amazing hearing to be able to tell the difference between 128 CBR MP3 and VBR MP3 that are both LAME encoded. All it takes is some musical knowledge and decent equipment. Most of the listening test I've seen that show that users can't pick apart 128kbps vs 192kbps mp3 are usually performed using $5 computer speakers. Color me shocked on those numbers. You might be mixing things up here and imply that 128 AAC (which is pretty much superior to LAME at the same bitrate) is "good enough" for most users. All I can tell you is that to me it's pretty evident which I am listening to, at least with the Pandora service (and who knows how the music is encoded). They obviously offer the 192 kbps streaming for their paying customers for some reason, I doubt they would spend the money on placebo affect. -- jmpage2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ jmpage2's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=41 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=71602 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
