320 is pretty good but you can still hear it occasionally. Transient instruments like bells, xylophones, Glockenspiel - especially if its a single note - are very obvious in the decay part of the recording. Once the algorithm thinks you shouldn't hear the decay it mutes it. But often you can. So instead of a nice sustained decay on you get an abrupt ending after a second or two. Another place where its obvious is orchestral works. The lead sections will be perfect in both 320 and uncompressed. But any second sections playing at reduced volume in the background at the same time as the lead sound radically different. Myself and anther engineer have listed to the same recording over and over on tidal 320 vs flac. We both noticed the second section in the background sounded plastic, fake and uninteresting on 320. Whilst on flac it sounded great and the main and second section playing together at different levels gave the performance great depth. My personal conclusion. high res compressed recordings are good. And way better than they were ten years ago. But they are not YET good enough if you have complex music, strong transients or significant dynamic range differences.
And, if we are being honest, is not necessary. The vast majority are not engineers, do not have the ears, nor the brain (the psymodels ARE fantastic) nor the equipment to hear it that much. "Plastic, fake and uninteresting" are terms that are debunked so often as simple placebo. Of course, people who are (or call themselves) "[audio] engineer" would never admit that. Or they skew their ABX listening tests with repeat of the same material over and over which is an absolutely unrealistic setting or having to "squint" the ears. Nobody (maybe
I often use an Onkyo AV Receiver that splits music between 6 speakers and you can really hear the difference between FLAC and MP3 through that but on my phone with earbuds I can't really hear much difference.
You sort of do, AAC bluetooth with the right AAC music file will not lose anything from file to headphones because it wont re-encode the audio, just fire it from file to speaker. Also generational loss is a thing, having artifacts from lossy compression compounded through the decode->compress->re-encode->decode->playback will still add more distortion and artifacts depending on the particular sounds in the song (speech and low complexity music is easy to compress and hard to miss, more complex music suffers more). Also some bluetooth codecs are really really high bit rate like APTx and LDAC if you have an Android phone (because Apple doesn't support anything other than the bottom tier codec SBC and their darling AAC).
It seems to me you are correct: a 256k stream is likely indistinguishable from a lossless format without a top notch, well set up stereo set and a listener who habitually listens to well recorded material on such a set.
If you have really high quality speakers and amplification the difference isn’t quite night and day, but it is noticeable for sure. I can even hear a difference between plain old lossless and hi res lossless but it’s not as apparent as lossy vs lossless.
Sorry, did I miss something here? I quote... "For every second of uncompressed, CD-quality audio, there's approximately 1600 bits of data". This is not correct. CD-quality means 44.1 kHz, 16 bit, stereo. And that means 1.4 million bits of data per second. If you corrected this in a later video, ignore my comment, Kyle. Loving your videos, mate! I've been a working studio engineer for over 35 years and a lot of what I've seen on your channel is stuff I already know, but it's fun to watch/listen anyway! Keep up the good work. And kudos for the assertion that correct speak placement will improve the listening experience far more than swapping streaming service. Bang on, my man!
I love observing differences. I took this challenge about a year ago with a different headphone system and got 5 out of 6 correct for picking the uncompressed file. Today I took the test with a much less expensive headphone system and I got 3/6 but I could still easily tell the difference between the 128 vs the other options. Fun fact: I find the "cheap" headphone system much more enjoyable with current popular music and the songs that I selected 320 instead of uncompressed were the current popular songs. ALSO, COLD PLAY could be played back at 64kps and there would be no change to the sound haha. Reveling system: Iphone > dragonfly colbalt > Dan Clark Audio Aeon RT Enjoyable system: Windows > modi 3 > magni heresy > Sennheiser HD560
IMO, lossless can be much easier to listen to at higher volumes than lossy, and slightly more detailed and better sound stage, depending on recording quality and genre. Some tracks aren't worth it but most of what I listen to are. The recording has to be made with high bit rate in mind. Nice channel and delivery!
As a soft/hardware eng. People really miss why we use compression its to create BETTER results within the same bandwidth and/or storage. I know people will yell at me for this but its true. Lossless vs lossy is just the next step for some content we can remove more because we know the savings in bandwidth can be either used for better (upping the quality) or reduce the bandwidth. Given the same bandwidth compression is always better than uncompressed why else do it since it costs time, cpu, battery. Its not that i dislike this video at all but the starting point really is can anyone hear the difference even if reduce the bandwidth by xx amount since we feel it matches 'good enough' and the fact is most people can't and even if they do other changes in the audio chain will for sure have a bigger effect (like some of the things you pointed out).
I did the audio test on the NPR article and got 3/6 right, the other three I chose the 320 mbps vs the 110 or whatever it is. At the end of the day it's pretty difficult for most people to actually hear a difference. And even if you do, you have to try really hard. I had to listen to each sample 8-10 times.
Speaker placement is easy: headphones come on the head. I hear no difference between lossless CD and aac at VBR5 level (through very good headphones: Sennheiser HD600). I do hear the difference file I can make between both with audacity, so I know my hearing or my system are not the limitation. This missing audio is within my hearing ability but it doesn't matter. I cannot distinguish both files from one another when switching between them. At all. And if I could, the difference would be in the shimmer of cymbals or the sharpness of percussions. None of this changes the character of the music, only that audiophile "presence" thing that conveys an impression of space or room. Not something worth going after. I want to hear music, not sound.
i was actually genuinely impressed with myself that quiz was a lot of fun i'm running hd600s out of a fiio dac and i was surprised i got 6/6 correct. if you are listening at low volumes compressed doesn't sound terrible and isn't that noticeable but once you turn up the volume i find it pretty noticeable.
When you turn down the volume on a PC, you are actually decreasing the audio resolution. The sound gets more aliased. This can be seen on a 2D spectogram, where X is time and Y are the different audio frequencies. To not decrease the resolution you would have to lower the volume with an analog knob, like on the fiio dac.
@@kon_radar yes you are correct but when listening to compressed audio depending on the quality increasing volume will just make the compression more apparent. also depends on your sound card.
Some reasons why i prefer apple music: 1. It's cheaper (student account) 2. I can create my playlist's picture with my own picture 3. The sound is louder than spotify (easier yo drive) The only reason why i still keep my spotify: Music recommendation's Algorithm is awesome.
Darko put his finger on it AND you’ve hit the same notes! MOST people don’t have their set ups anywhere near set up correctly. Proper speaker placement and properly matching equipment..ect. As for “hi res” is better than red book 💿..that’s Crap. New record day did his review of the Halo May DAC with 💿..and was blown away. Thanks for this Informative video 🥃
MQA - marketing for making more money or true technology; what's your take on it? I do use MQA (Tidal) but frankly does not sound much better than Flac, just louder.
man! you are awesome, thank you so much. a lot of new things I learned today. I hope you can reach more subscribers and views… you are why youtube continuos to be the best way to learn new things!!!!
Funnily enough, I tended to choose the 128kbps version more often than the uncompressed in the test ☠ Really shows how accustomed I am to lower quality audio Nice video anyway!
I've found lossless to be double edged. It can really expose the production quality of the original recording, so while some recordings sound like you are in the best seat in the performance hall, others sound like you're the microphone that was put right next to the drummer or bass. Lossy encodings from the original tend to smooth out not as good recordings making them sound better, or while you don't have the best seat in the performance hall, you're only sitting a few seats behind. To hear these differences you need a top notch sound system.
3:56 university? Yeah, right… you haven’t even considered that people used to listen to the music on re-recorded tapes or simply through radio where in both cases audio quality was not the same as plain CD or WAV file.
THIS is such an understated reason. I am active in a forum that is about LPs and they share some of it and they always religiously want FLAC. When I tell them that their 40-year old, surface-noise riddled recording that has a hum added through the cables they used changed the audio so much compared to the master tape that lossy encoding is the absolute least of their problems they go mad and angry. . .
I did the test with my $15 Takstar headphone, lol. In Katy Perry and Coldplay I can somewhat tell which one is the 128. but can't tell between 320 and lossless. For the rest of samples I can't tell the difference.
from what ive personally found is really anything over 120 is fine and even spotify free and youtube music free and basically all other music services go above that i have premium so i can go to that 256 though
The biggest difference I notice between lossy and lossless is in reverbs and delays. In lossless, I swear it feels like every track has room to breathe - the hi hat, each vocalist, every guitar, the bass, etc. etc. In lossy, it just doesn't quite feel like each instrument has it's own space like that. To me, it's like the difference between looking outside through a window (lossy) vs. looking outside with nothing between your eyes and the great outdoors -- the glass of the window could be exceptionally clean and clear, or it could be discolored and spotty, but either way there is still that buffer there not quite letting you experience the real thing.
Hi, I'm jus curious cause few days ago, I went back on Spotify cause they offered a 2 months free trial, anyway, I was a fan of Spotify but then apple came and I was enroll into apple one family for people around blablabla. so I went back on Spotify and the sound, even if it's not lossless or what they could call "hi res" or whatever, the sound seems to be way better, the signature of the sound seems more deep, as a result, when I'm listening into the car, I can feel more bass, more lows and up, I can push the volume up way more than apple music. about Apple Music, the sound seems to be more flat, less charming and at the end, feels less valuable, rough ... is it normal ? I mean, on paper, Apple Music is giving us more "quality" but really the sound is more rich, warm, deep when I'm listening with Spotify... is other users experiences the same ?
Did he say lossy audio is transmitted over Bluetooth even if it's a lossless file? If that is true why are we paying £250 for Apple Airpod Pros and high end buds?
Currently, that's right, Dave. Bluetooth doesn't support lossless audio. Here is a quote from the Apple website: "Can I listen to lossless audio over Bluetooth? We will deliver music using lossless audio compression to your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. Lossless will play back normally on Bluetooth speakers and headphones. However, Bluetooth connections don’t support lossless audio." - Apple.com FAQ support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183
Greetings from geir Røssaak, jessheim Norway! I have tried cd-sacd and all sorts of streaming, also high resolution. All these formats do not outperform the cd-sacd formats!
Then there's the debate I had years ago with a manager of an FM radio station who only wanted to store .WAV files on the computers because they don't limit the high-frequency content the way .mp3 files do. My position was that regardless what you play and from where you play it, anything above 15 KHz gets filtered out by a very steep-sloped low pass filter. This is to avoid any audio energy interfering with the 19 KHz pilot tone in the FM transmitter. If the top end of an .mp3 file is 16 KHz, you won't hear it over the air anyway, and it will sound just as good as a .WAV file whose top end is 22 KHz or so.
This is what I have wondered for so long... analog to digital at the three main sampling rates to a wav. File then... use every main compressed format... then play it back on a entry level sound system.. middle of the road [about 10k] and a > 25k system... all three in a good room design that would be a great white paper experience.
Took the NPR Test - got 4x WAV and 2x 320kBit - never experienced the 128kBit mp3 as the best. Tested with decent headphone and listening to selected parts of the samples multiple times. So my conclusion - with decent equipment 128kBit mp3 is differentiable... 320kBit is usually good enough - esp for background listening or in a less than optimal environment (e.g. driving your car). But as disk-space is no issue today - if possible I will try to buy FLAC - resp. I archived my CDs already in FLAC. I also try to get 24bit - as in another test this also was something I could differenciate pretty reliable. I did not hear the differrence between 44.1/48 & 88.2/96 kHz though. But Spotify Premium convenience wins over Tidal lossless for me for casual listening.
There's something to be said about lossy encodes because so many of them actually sound okay while others sounds like crap. Napster downloaded stuff sounded awful. Later, when better mp3 encoders and AAC were introduced, that really made it easier to stream content. I use HE-AAC to stream from my home and it's actually okay down to 32kbps. It's about the best one can get with limited internet bandwidth. mp3 had tons of artifacts in the L-R domain. HE-AAC is just grungy on the high end where the SBR section is located. Still better though.
@@ikanderson I have the ability to stream Opus on my encoder and it does work pretty well. Due to excessive work hours, I've stopped working on this sort of thing.
Okay so one benefit of lossless a lot of people aren't talking about is the benefit for people who have subwoofers and tweeters, lossy audio seems to degrade the low sub bass and the upper highs the worst, so I can definitely tell a major difference, anyone with a full range system should notice the same thing
The 320kbps MP3 file setting I use for car audio. The environment of a car is far less critical than the home or the studio setting. I prefer lossless of the highest rate if I am going to stream, otherwise why bother. I have vinyl, CDs and cassette tapes. I can hear them now, cassette tapes. Through a high end system and the two Revox B215s or the NAD 6300 is not like the garden variety cassette decks. These decks can rock it. They’re not standard either. Upgraded components and rewired, they are far from ordinary. Reels are a bit much. Too expensive for working folks. I would if I could. Believe that!
I tried the test. Only got the Toms Diner incorrect. I really really really had to listen. Hard to hear any difference in the difference itself was so minimal.
Excellent presentation. I have a question. When I played lossless from my macbook pro through my wired headphones, i found lossy sounding better than when i selected lossless.... why???? I was hoping it will sound better. Do i have to configure something in my macbook pro? And the songs i selected have the lossless symbol so i know that these are available in lossless format.
Cd beats very high quality on Spotify but it’s not a huge difference for me. I use Spotify 99% of the time at 320kbps because I work everyday and the only CD player I have is in my PS3. PS4 dropped the CD player which proves just how much the music industry has shifted. Hifi is not worth it for me, but I also use Bluetooth most of the time and that is capped at 320kbps on my system anyway. 🤷♂️
@@a.d.c7941 Regular Bluetooth is capped at 320 kbps but 320 sounds really good. A wired connection might be better. Google what bit rate an six cable supports. That will help you! I am fine with 320 kbps but love my CDs because they are lossless.
@@MySpaceDxC_Suffo_AtTheGates Thanks for your reply! So my issue is, I have Spotify and love it, but the sound quality is just kind of poor. I mostly listen bia bluetooth from my iPhone to my car speakers. I have good speakers in my car. I realize the sound is capped now because of bluetooth but if that is so, why does a TH-cam video sound louder and better in my car then my Spotify music?
Lossless audio is the only reason I really want a 256gb iphone instead of the 64gb option. Apple should market the larger phones with that in mind, would pair well with advertising the new lossless apple music service.
Edit: I redid the test on my cellphone, and i was pretty much able to place all lossless vs 320k vs 128 k in the right order (except for one were I picked 320k over lossless.) Conclusion: the dac on my laptop is pretty crappy. Original Post: I did the MPR test. Two things were surprising. A. 5 out of 6 I was able to find the lossless version. But also 4 out of 6, the 128k was the scond best or indesguishable from 320. B. On the last song, the speed of sound, I picked the 128k, because the other two versrions intruduced some artificial noise into it. I was using Grado 80SR and my generic lenovo laptop. I blame the dac on my laptop for the distortion. I will retry the last song using my external dac at home to see if the distortion disappears.
i did the test and failed every time. Reminded me of school. but anyways the takeaway is that I cant distinguish between 320kbps and wav. i think my ears are spoiled and thinks 320kbps is better than wav
Removing ultrasonic content or simply masked sounds saves audio bandwidth. It's not that they [the Fraunhofer Institue] said: "Okay, let's make MP3/AAC to be as obvious as possible". No, they researched what our ears AND BRAIN can NOT hear/distinguish. For example, people complain about the lack of fidelity in the very high frequencies of MP3. But the absolute vast majority of music is around 10 kHz - far, far away from where MP3s become problematic (by design, MP3 has trouble/is being inefficient storing very high frequency bands and rather tries to remove it fully if it has to decide). So apart from the fact your ears most probably can't hear anything above 16/17 kHz anymore due to age, it is not even necessary. Much stuff looks very bad on paper, but listening tests prove that lossy encoding is incredibly good for the low bitrates they come with.
No. Lossy encoding like MP3 and AAC are based on research on what your ears and brain can hear/process - or rather, what it CAN NOT. Sound masking (as he even told in the video) is a great way to remove quasi-ultrasonic content. Then our brain is also terrible at perceiving things. For example, a reverse cymbal can lose some quality/fidelity but our brain still fills these gaps with experiences how it should sound. (Almost like when you see faces in randomized structures - our brain is constantly trying to find patterns both visually and in audio). Lossy audio is amazing for what it does. It basically is lots of trickery and removal of things that are simply not relevant for our human hearing system. Some people love to see their bitrates explode and the placebo starts to tell them that NOW they hear "everything", but you listen with your ears, not your eyes. For very sophisticated people, lossless is the way to go, but so far, even those people say that 320/V0 MP3 are very good and perfectly fine to listen to, but of course they strive for better. Something we normal people don't.
I would like to see a linear Spectogram comparison of 256 kbps AAC from Apple Music and Spotify. It is said that Apple's AAC compressor is superior to the one from Spotify. Maybe Apple is using some trick with a surround effect to make the sound more vibrant? Maybe this is why Spotify is sounding more flat? When opening a lossless audio file with a music player like Foobar2000, there are different AAC encoders you can choose from when you want to convert an audio file. One says "AAC (Apple)", the other "AAC (FDK)", then the "AAC (Winamp FhG)".
96 Khz Makes sense for ultimate audiophiles. But 192 KHz is absolut nosense. 44.1 / 16 Bit is 22,05 KHz or so. I think This is still best for mainstream records. Funny alot of Apples music 192 Khz Files are Not really 192Khz…. There is a cut. In The spectrum
96kHz makes NO sense except during the mixing/mastering stage for the headroom. But as you say, CD is 22 kHz (so are 256 kBit/s+ MP3 btw), with the human hearing ending waaay earlier (16-18 kHz if you are young!). So all of that 96 kHz nonensense is ULTRASONIC content. Your dog or some bat might like it, but you, as a human, won't.
The better the system the easier is to tell the difference. On denons d9200 it was always 5/6 for me no matter how many times I did the test which is weird. I think its poor selection of tracks. If you would get stuff like "they are billions" soundtrack I can guess them even on cheap system.
got 5/6 correct. sound chain: iPad mini -> airpods 3 😂 most of the difference for me were in the upper mids to higher frequencies.. clarity was just better with the higher bit rates.
high resolution audio more like a vessel or container to me, nake better sound or not ,all about the track how to produce,recording,mixing, techniques, lot of big name producers 50-60 years old today,getting older hearing ability start to losing ,no reverse, cant get back, back then or now ,no matter analog or digit,tape or not, high res yes frequency can go higher and lower, way beyond human hearing ability ,for those producer more like feel thing than care about some frequency you haer,im not saying high resolution useless, i mean sometimes no need so focus on is high res ,dsd,mqa, lossless type of format, just be reasonable,320kbp lot of people cant hear different, and hear different doesn't mean better sound, just different, high resolution just wider range, can catch more data, even some noise you dont want, no right or wrong, this argument since 1669 to 2021 still going, never stop. nowsday high res more gimmick, put a high res sticker, make sound 69% better,work on guitar too, now my tele neck pickup sounds like tele.
I started this journey with my kz zs10 pros and my phone. I did the npr test as well as the abx digital feed tests. I could not tell the difference. I kept thinking maybe I could, but as time went on I know for sure I could not. So I figured, maybe it's a hardware limitation. So I got a dac, the fiio btr5. Listening to that vs my phone, there is maybe a minute difference in general. Idk. I did the tests again with no change.aybe it's the headphones, so I got some senn hd600s. Still no difference. I cannot hear the difference whatsoever. Ive done way too much research with everyone saying the same thing. Listen to the highs, the s and th sounds, cymbals, etc. No difference. I want there to be a fucking difference so bad to justify the money I just wasted, but there isn't. I might return everything unless there is anything else I might still be able to do, but as of right now I went down the rabbit hole waaaay too deep to find horse shit at the end.
Why is there a picture of a JBL Flip 5? JBL Flip 5 supports only SBC. And SBC can only support 345 kbps. No way you can listen to lossless music with that piece of junk! 😂
![If you can't hear this then you're not an audiophile [See description for link to followup video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/48PxwspDvrE/mqdefault.jpg)
320 is pretty good but you can still hear it occasionally. Transient instruments like bells, xylophones, Glockenspiel - especially if its a single note - are very obvious in the decay part of the recording. Once the algorithm thinks you shouldn't hear the decay it mutes it. But often you can. So instead of a nice sustained decay on you get an abrupt ending after a second or two. Another place where its obvious is orchestral works. The lead sections will be perfect in both 320 and uncompressed. But any second sections playing at reduced volume in the background at the same time as the lead sound radically different. Myself and anther engineer have listed to the same recording over and over on tidal 320 vs flac. We both noticed the second section in the background sounded plastic, fake and uninteresting on 320. Whilst on flac it sounded great and the main and second section playing together at different levels gave the performance great depth. My personal conclusion. high res compressed recordings are good. And way better than they were ten years ago. But they are not YET good enough if you have complex music, strong transients or significant dynamic range differences.
Thanks for sharing this perspective with us, Seiskid!
Transient instruments ? What does that mean? XD
And, if we are being honest, is not necessary. The vast majority are not engineers, do not have the ears, nor the brain (the psymodels ARE fantastic) nor the equipment to hear it that much. "Plastic, fake and uninteresting" are terms that are debunked so often as simple placebo. Of course, people who are (or call themselves) "[audio] engineer" would never admit that. Or they skew their ABX listening tests with repeat of the same material over and over which is an absolutely unrealistic setting or having to "squint" the ears. Nobody (maybe
I often use an Onkyo AV Receiver that splits music between 6 speakers and you can really hear the difference between FLAC and MP3 through that but on my phone with earbuds I can't really hear much difference.
@@Woodsarasare they used to make hobo songs? They are pretty transient folk...
“All Bluetooth audio is lossy”
And that’s when I realized I don’t have a horse in this race
You sort of do, AAC bluetooth with the right AAC music file will not lose anything from file to headphones because it wont re-encode the audio, just fire it from file to speaker. Also generational loss is a thing, having artifacts from lossy compression compounded through the decode->compress->re-encode->decode->playback will still add more distortion and artifacts depending on the particular sounds in the song (speech and low complexity music is easy to compress and hard to miss, more complex music suffers more). Also some bluetooth codecs are really really high bit rate like APTx and LDAC if you have an Android phone (because Apple doesn't support anything other than the bottom tier codec SBC and their darling AAC).
That's why I never quit wired headphones. I'm listening to this on a Samsung A52s and wired 3.5mm KZ PR2 headphones
It seems to me you are correct: a 256k stream is likely indistinguishable from a lossless format without a top notch, well set up stereo set and a listener who habitually listens to well recorded material on such a set.
If you have really high quality speakers and amplification the difference isn’t quite night and day, but it is noticeable for sure. I can even hear a difference between plain old lossless and hi res lossless but it’s not as apparent as lossy vs lossless.
Sorry, did I miss something here? I quote... "For every second of uncompressed, CD-quality audio, there's approximately 1600 bits of data".
This is not correct. CD-quality means 44.1 kHz, 16 bit, stereo. And that means 1.4 million bits of data per second.
If you corrected this in a later video, ignore my comment, Kyle. Loving your videos, mate! I've been a working studio engineer for over 35 years and a lot of what I've seen on your channel is stuff I already know, but it's fun to watch/listen anyway! Keep up the good work.
And kudos for the assertion that correct speak placement will improve the listening experience far more than swapping streaming service. Bang on, my man!
Good catch, Bruce! Can't believe that was missed. Thanks for pointing it out, though. I've edited the video to prevent confusing future viewers.
Thank you for explaining in a way that’s easily understood!
I love observing differences. I took this challenge about a year ago with a different headphone system and got 5 out of 6 correct for picking the uncompressed file. Today I took the test with a much less expensive headphone system and I got 3/6 but I could still easily tell the difference between the 128 vs the other options.
Fun fact: I find the "cheap" headphone system much more enjoyable with current popular music and the songs that I selected 320 instead of uncompressed were the current popular songs.
ALSO, COLD PLAY could be played back at 64kps and there would be no change to the sound haha.
Reveling system: Iphone > dragonfly colbalt > Dan Clark Audio Aeon RT
Enjoyable system: Windows > modi 3 > magni heresy > Sennheiser HD560
Thanks for sharing this story, John. Very interesting results!
IMO, lossless can be much easier to listen to at higher volumes than lossy, and slightly more detailed and better sound stage, depending on recording quality and genre.
Some tracks aren't worth it but most of what I listen to are.
The recording has to be made with high bit rate in mind.
Nice channel and delivery!
Nice info but what's up with all the background noise in your video? Specially near the beginning
As a soft/hardware eng. People really miss why we use compression its to create BETTER results within the same bandwidth and/or storage. I know people will yell at me for this but its true. Lossless vs lossy is just the next step for some content we can remove more because we know the savings in bandwidth can be either used for better (upping the quality) or reduce the bandwidth. Given the same bandwidth compression is always better than uncompressed why else do it since it costs time, cpu, battery. Its not that i dislike this video at all but the starting point really is can anyone hear the difference even if reduce the bandwidth by xx amount since we feel it matches 'good enough' and the fact is most people can't and even if they do other changes in the audio chain will for sure have a bigger effect (like some of the things you pointed out).
Thank you so much. I was looking for these answers , and you explained it great
Thx for the video. Exactly i dont think people can tell the difference between both
I did the audio test on the NPR article and got 3/6 right, the other three I chose the 320 mbps vs the 110 or whatever it is. At the end of the day it's pretty difficult for most people to actually hear a difference. And even if you do, you have to try really hard. I had to listen to each sample 8-10 times.
Speaker placement is easy: headphones come on the head.
I hear no difference between lossless CD and aac at VBR5 level (through very good headphones: Sennheiser HD600).
I do hear the difference file I can make between both with audacity, so I know my hearing or my system are not the limitation. This missing audio is within my hearing ability but it doesn't matter. I cannot distinguish both files from one another when switching between them. At all.
And if I could, the difference would be in the shimmer of cymbals or the sharpness of percussions. None of this changes the character of the music, only that audiophile "presence" thing that conveys an impression of space or room. Not something worth going after. I want to hear music, not sound.
i was actually genuinely impressed with myself that quiz was a lot of fun i'm running hd600s out of a fiio dac and i was surprised i got 6/6 correct. if you are listening at low volumes compressed doesn't sound terrible and isn't that noticeable but once you turn up the volume i find it pretty noticeable.
When you turn down the volume on a PC, you are actually decreasing the audio resolution. The sound gets more aliased. This can be seen on a 2D spectogram, where X is time and Y are the different audio frequencies. To not decrease the resolution you would have to lower the volume with an analog knob, like on the fiio dac.
@@kon_radar yes you are correct but when listening to compressed audio depending on the quality increasing volume will just make the compression more apparent. also depends on your sound card.
Hi audio university, you have some unwanted noise on your mic recording in the face to cam parts. You may want to check your cables. Peace and love.
Some reasons why i prefer apple music:
1. It's cheaper (student account)
2. I can create my playlist's picture with my own picture
3. The sound is louder than spotify (easier yo drive)
The only reason why i still keep my spotify:
Music recommendation's Algorithm is awesome.
@@aycaiix well, it's a new thing
apple music is fine if your in the apple ecosystem
Turn off volume nomalization on setting if you use Spotify
I can’t wait for Spotify to bring this
Keep waiting as it looks like they’re not doing it any time soon
Darko put his finger on it AND you’ve hit the same notes!
MOST people don’t have their set ups anywhere near set up correctly.
Proper speaker placement and properly matching equipment..ect.
As for “hi res” is better than red book 💿..that’s Crap.
New record day did his review of the Halo May DAC with 💿..and was blown away.
Thanks for this Informative video 🥃
Thanks, Carmine!
@@AudioUniversity You’re welcome 🎧👍
Thank you for making this video.
MQA - marketing for making more money or true technology; what's your take on it? I do use MQA (Tidal) but frankly does not sound much better than Flac, just louder.
man! you are awesome, thank you so much. a lot of new things I learned today. I hope you can reach more subscribers and views… you are why youtube continuos to be the best way to learn new things!!!!
Funnily enough, I tended to choose the 128kbps version more often than the uncompressed in the test ☠
Really shows how accustomed I am to lower quality audio
Nice video anyway!
I've found lossless to be double edged. It can really expose the production quality of the original recording, so while some recordings sound like you are in the best seat in the performance hall, others sound like you're the microphone that was put right next to the drummer or bass. Lossy encodings from the original tend to smooth out not as good recordings making them sound better, or while you don't have the best seat in the performance hall, you're only sitting a few seats behind. To hear these differences you need a top notch sound system.
What is a song title that this applies to? Thanks just curious to check this type a thing out
3:56 university? Yeah, right… you haven’t even considered that people used to listen to the music on re-recorded tapes or simply through radio where in both cases audio quality was not the same as plain CD or WAV file.
THIS is such an understated reason. I am active in a forum that is about LPs and they share some of it and they always religiously want FLAC. When I tell them that their 40-year old, surface-noise riddled recording that has a hum added through the cables they used changed the audio so much compared to the master tape that lossy encoding is the absolute least of their problems they go mad and angry. . .
I did the test with my $15 Takstar headphone, lol.
In Katy Perry and Coldplay I can somewhat tell which one is the 128. but can't tell between 320 and lossless. For the rest of samples I can't tell the difference.
@JohnNada-ch8yz Noted. When I can afford it all I'll know what to do.
NPR test on cheap ear buds in my computer got 5/6 uncompressed correct but mistook 1 song 320kBit for uncompressed.
Great video! 256 bitrate mp3 is all I need.
Thanks for watching, @lostandfound!
Pirate.
@@yukikora5148 since when? 256kbps is just a data rate.
from what ive personally found is really anything over 120 is fine and even spotify free and youtube music free and basically all other music services go above that i have premium so i can go to that 256 though
What is that background sound?
I know mad annoying with headphones especially
The biggest difference I notice between lossy and lossless is in reverbs and delays. In lossless, I swear it feels like every track has room to breathe - the hi hat, each vocalist, every guitar, the bass, etc. etc. In lossy, it just doesn't quite feel like each instrument has it's own space like that.
To me, it's like the difference between looking outside through a window (lossy) vs. looking outside with nothing between your eyes and the great outdoors -- the glass of the window could be exceptionally clean and clear, or it could be discolored and spotty, but either way there is still that buffer there not quite letting you experience the real thing.
Hmm sounds similar to stereo vs mono. The reverb somehow can disappear in mono, very strange (thom Yorke solo stuff)
Hi, I'm jus curious cause few days ago, I went back on Spotify cause they offered a 2 months free trial, anyway, I was a fan of Spotify but then apple came and I was enroll into apple one family for people around blablabla. so I went back on Spotify and the sound, even if it's not lossless or what they could call "hi res" or whatever, the sound seems to be way better, the signature of the sound seems more deep, as a result, when I'm listening into the car, I can feel more bass, more lows and up, I can push the volume up way more than apple music. about Apple Music, the sound seems to be more flat, less charming and at the end, feels less valuable, rough ...
is it normal ? I mean, on paper, Apple Music is giving us more "quality" but really the sound is more rich, warm, deep when I'm listening with Spotify... is other users experiences the same ?
I'm with you. I have compared apple lossless with spotify, and the latter is much better.
exactly.. people tend to fall in to this lossless trap, also some audiophiles too..
Did he say lossy audio is transmitted over Bluetooth even if it's a lossless file? If that is true why are we paying £250 for Apple Airpod Pros and high end buds?
Currently, that's right, Dave. Bluetooth doesn't support lossless audio. Here is a quote from the Apple website:
"Can I listen to lossless audio over Bluetooth?
We will deliver music using lossless audio compression to your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. Lossless will play back normally on Bluetooth speakers and headphones. However, Bluetooth connections don’t support lossless audio."
- Apple.com FAQ support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183
As always - an excellent video, but you have one verbal slip on the uncompressed data rate.
great video my g
great explanations
Thanks, @MrNaufan!
Can you do a video on sound wall foams?
Great idea! Thanks!
Greetings from geir Røssaak, jessheim Norway! I have tried cd-sacd and all sorts of streaming, also high resolution. All these formats do not outperform the cd-sacd formats!
Then there's the debate I had years ago with a manager of an FM radio station who only wanted to store .WAV files on the computers because they don't limit the high-frequency content the way .mp3 files do. My position was that regardless what you play and from where you play it, anything above 15 KHz gets filtered out by a very steep-sloped low pass filter. This is to avoid any audio energy interfering with the 19 KHz pilot tone in the FM transmitter. If the top end of an .mp3 file is 16 KHz, you won't hear it over the air anyway, and it will sound just as good as a .WAV file whose top end is 22 KHz or so.
It's a bit ironic to me that this entire (though otherwise excellent) presentation is accompanied by what sounds like a constant wind noise.
also need a bit of de essing
This is what I have wondered for so long... analog to digital at the three main sampling rates to a wav. File then... use every main compressed format... then play it back on a entry level sound system.. middle of the road [about 10k] and a > 25k system... all three in a good room design that would be a great white paper experience.
Took the NPR Test - got 4x WAV and 2x 320kBit - never experienced the 128kBit mp3 as the best. Tested with decent headphone and listening to selected parts of the samples multiple times.
So my conclusion - with decent equipment 128kBit mp3 is differentiable... 320kBit is usually good enough - esp for background listening or in a less than optimal environment (e.g. driving your car).
But as disk-space is no issue today - if possible I will try to buy FLAC - resp. I archived my CDs already in FLAC. I also try to get 24bit - as in another test this also was something I could differenciate pretty reliable. I did not hear the differrence between 44.1/48 & 88.2/96 kHz though.
But Spotify Premium convenience wins over Tidal lossless for me for casual listening.
There's something to be said about lossy encodes because so many of them actually sound okay while others sounds like crap. Napster downloaded stuff sounded awful. Later, when better mp3 encoders and AAC were introduced, that really made it easier to stream content. I use HE-AAC to stream from my home and it's actually okay down to 32kbps. It's about the best one can get with limited internet bandwidth. mp3 had tons of artifacts in the L-R domain. HE-AAC is just grungy on the high end where the SBR section is located. Still better though.
Opus just edges out HE-AAC on listening tests, and it has much wider support. It's the successor to ogg vorbis. Might be worth checking out 🤔
@@ikanderson I have the ability to stream Opus on my encoder and it does work pretty well. Due to excessive work hours, I've stopped working on this sort of thing.
Okay so one benefit of lossless a lot of people aren't talking about is the benefit for people who have subwoofers and tweeters, lossy audio seems to degrade the low sub bass and the upper highs the worst, so I can definitely tell a major difference, anyone with a full range system should notice the same thing
The 320kbps MP3 file setting I use for car audio. The environment of a car is far less critical than the home or the studio setting. I prefer lossless of the highest rate if I am going to stream, otherwise why bother. I have vinyl, CDs and cassette tapes. I can hear them now, cassette tapes. Through a high end system and the two Revox B215s or the NAD 6300 is not like the garden variety cassette decks. These decks can rock it. They’re not standard either. Upgraded components and rewired, they are far from ordinary. Reels are a bit much. Too expensive for working folks. I would if I could. Believe that!
I tried the test. Only got the Toms Diner incorrect. I really really really had to listen. Hard to hear any difference in the difference itself was so minimal.
Excellent presentation.
I have a question. When I played lossless from my macbook pro through my wired headphones, i found lossy sounding better than when i selected lossless.... why???? I was hoping it will sound better. Do i have to configure something in my macbook pro? And the songs i selected have the lossless symbol so i know that these are available in lossless format.
Uh oh your brains been compressed!
hey bud, there's rumble / noise in your audio ! i'm listening on studio monitors.
hope you make more video thank you
I want cd audio quality but I wanna listen off my iPhone. How do I do?
Thanks man
There's some loud noise going on with your voice audio here, like wind 💨 blowing across your microphone. Cobblers shoes perhaps.
I am really shocking to see the likes and comments of these helpful videos.
i learned a lot, thank you :)
Cd beats very high quality on Spotify but it’s not a huge difference for me. I use Spotify 99% of the time at 320kbps because I work everyday and the only CD player I have is in my PS3. PS4 dropped the CD player which proves just how much the music industry has shifted. Hifi is not worth it for me, but I also use Bluetooth most of the time and that is capped at 320kbps on my system anyway. 🤷♂️
So listening to apple music through bluetooth in my car, is not gonna have any sound difference at all from Spotify because the sound is capped?
@@a.d.c7941 Regular Bluetooth is capped at 320 kbps but 320 sounds really good. A wired connection might be better. Google what bit rate an six cable supports. That will help you! I am fine with 320 kbps but love my CDs because they are lossless.
@@MySpaceDxC_Suffo_AtTheGates Thanks for your reply! So my issue is, I have Spotify and love it, but the sound quality is just kind of poor. I mostly listen bia bluetooth from my iPhone to my car speakers. I have good speakers in my car. I realize the sound is capped now because of bluetooth but if that is so, why does a TH-cam video sound louder and better in my car then my Spotify music?
I couldn’t find any difference between 44 and 192 khz. CD quality is more than enough. Let’s enjoy music, not the paraphernalia.
Lossless audio is the only reason I really want a 256gb iphone instead of the 64gb option. Apple should market the larger phones with that in mind, would pair well with advertising the new lossless apple music service.
The biggest cost-benefit in file size and without loss of quality is FLAC at 16bits 44.1khz
I got 4/6 on the test
thank you
Thanks for watching, Daniel!
Edit: I redid the test on my cellphone, and i was pretty much able to place all lossless vs 320k vs 128 k in the right order (except for one were I picked 320k over lossless.) Conclusion: the dac on my laptop is pretty crappy.
Original Post:
I did the MPR test. Two things were surprising.
A. 5 out of 6 I was able to find the lossless version. But also 4 out of 6, the 128k was the scond best or indesguishable from 320.
B. On the last song, the speed of sound, I picked the 128k, because the other two versrions intruduced some artificial noise into it. I was using Grado 80SR and my generic lenovo laptop. I blame the dac on my laptop for the distortion. I will retry the last song using my external dac at home to see if the distortion disappears.
I got 4 out of 6. Can't tell the difference with the Neil Young and Suzzane Vega songs.
What was the difference. Volume clarity??
Damn good content!
i did the test and failed every time. Reminded me of school. but anyways the takeaway is that I cant distinguish between 320kbps and wav. i think my ears are spoiled and thinks 320kbps is better than wav
Removing ultrasonic content or simply masked sounds saves audio bandwidth. It's not that they [the Fraunhofer Institue] said: "Okay, let's make MP3/AAC to be as obvious as possible". No, they researched what our ears AND BRAIN can NOT hear/distinguish. For example, people complain about the lack of fidelity in the very high frequencies of MP3. But the absolute vast majority of music is around 10 kHz - far, far away from where MP3s become problematic (by design, MP3 has trouble/is being inefficient storing very high frequency bands and rather tries to remove it fully if it has to decide). So apart from the fact your ears most probably can't hear anything above 16/17 kHz anymore due to age, it is not even necessary. Much stuff looks very bad on paper, but listening tests prove that lossy encoding is incredibly good for the low bitrates they come with.
cds are still the best
Outstanding content and explanations
Thanks, Alex!
anyone else hearing the static sound?
i can't concentrate on that you saing, cause im hearing a noise added
i didn't get a single answer right on the npr test lol 😂 is this just snakeoil?
No. Lossy encoding like MP3 and AAC are based on research on what your ears and brain can hear/process - or rather, what it CAN NOT. Sound masking (as he even told in the video) is a great way to remove quasi-ultrasonic content. Then our brain is also terrible at perceiving things. For example, a reverse cymbal can lose some quality/fidelity but our brain still fills these gaps with experiences how it should sound. (Almost like when you see faces in randomized structures - our brain is constantly trying to find patterns both visually and in audio).
Lossy audio is amazing for what it does. It basically is lots of trickery and removal of things that are simply not relevant for our human hearing system. Some people love to see their bitrates explode and the placebo starts to tell them that NOW they hear "everything", but you listen with your ears, not your eyes. For very sophisticated people, lossless is the way to go, but so far, even those people say that 320/V0 MP3 are very good and perfectly fine to listen to, but of course they strive for better. Something we normal people don't.
Lossy audio and sound artifacts are the reason I can't stand some streaming sources. I can't stand listening to SiriusXM.
2/6, guess there’s no point in redownloading my library in flac lol
Talking about audio and your microphone has a horrible stratching noise in the background, Jesus christ.
I would like to see a linear Spectogram comparison of 256 kbps AAC from Apple Music and Spotify. It is said that Apple's AAC compressor is superior to the one from Spotify. Maybe Apple is using some trick with a surround effect to make the sound more vibrant? Maybe this is why Spotify is sounding more flat?
When opening a lossless audio file with a music player like Foobar2000, there are different AAC encoders you can choose from when you want to convert an audio file. One says "AAC (Apple)", the other "AAC (FDK)", then the "AAC (Winamp FhG)".
96 Khz Makes sense for ultimate audiophiles. But 192 KHz is absolut nosense. 44.1 / 16 Bit is 22,05 KHz or so. I think This is still best for mainstream records. Funny alot of Apples music 192 Khz Files are Not really 192Khz…. There is a cut. In The spectrum
96kHz makes NO sense except during the mixing/mastering stage for the headroom. But as you say, CD is 22 kHz (so are 256 kBit/s+ MP3 btw), with the human hearing ending waaay earlier (16-18 kHz if you are young!). So all of that 96 kHz nonensense is ULTRASONIC content. Your dog or some bat might like it, but you, as a human, won't.
The better the system the easier is to tell the difference. On denons d9200 it was always 5/6 for me no matter how many times I did the test which is weird. I think its poor selection of tracks. If you would get stuff like "they are billions" soundtrack I can guess them even on cheap system.
By better the system means what
I got 5 out of 6 using Sony Headphone with LDAC
Hahaha iba talaga ang ads lang sakalam
got 5/6 correct. sound chain: iPad mini -> airpods 3 😂 most of the difference for me were in the upper mids to higher frequencies.. clarity was just better with the higher bit rates.
320? Its so bad
mp3 not so cool sounds like flac. I make my choice.
Nice video but u truly didn’t answer the question of your title.
3/6
high resolution audio more like a vessel or container to me, nake better sound or not ,all about the track how to produce,recording,mixing, techniques, lot of big name producers 50-60 years old today,getting older hearing ability start to losing ,no reverse, cant get back, back then or now ,no matter analog or digit,tape or not, high res yes frequency can go higher and lower, way beyond human hearing ability ,for those producer more like feel thing than care about some frequency you haer,im not saying high resolution useless, i mean sometimes no need so focus on is high res ,dsd,mqa, lossless type of format, just be reasonable,320kbp lot of people cant hear different, and hear different doesn't mean better sound, just different, high resolution just wider range, can catch more data, even some noise you dont want, no right or wrong, this argument since 1669 to 2021 still going, never stop. nowsday high res more gimmick, put a high res sticker, make sound 69% better,work on guitar too, now my tele neck pickup sounds like tele.
Ironically the audio quality of this video is worse than any compressed file ever!!
...whilst being compressed to OPUS/AAC by TH-cam!
I started this journey with my kz zs10 pros and my phone. I did the npr test as well as the abx digital feed tests. I could not tell the difference. I kept thinking maybe I could, but as time went on I know for sure I could not. So I figured, maybe it's a hardware limitation. So I got a dac, the fiio btr5. Listening to that vs my phone, there is maybe a minute difference in general. Idk. I did the tests again with no change.aybe it's the headphones, so I got some senn hd600s. Still no difference. I cannot hear the difference whatsoever. Ive done way too much research with everyone saying the same thing. Listen to the highs, the s and th sounds, cymbals, etc. No difference. I want there to be a fucking difference so bad to justify the money I just wasted, but there isn't. I might return everything unless there is anything else I might still be able to do, but as of right now I went down the rabbit hole waaaay too deep to find horse shit at the end.
Vorbis 500kbs like lossless
Car audio here
Lot of noise in this video
Why is there a picture of a JBL Flip 5?
JBL Flip 5 supports only SBC.
And SBC can only support 345 kbps.
No way you can listen to lossless music with that piece of junk!
😂
Boring