Audio Flash Drives?

[Brian Walton]

3 hours ago, Jack Stoner said:

The wav files have the song titles.  They show on my car system.  I don't use MP3's unless an absolute must.  MP3's are "something less than full fidelity".  

 

Fully aware of the quality differences.

However, for mass consumption there is a lot more to it than song titles.  Not having the files tagged with meta data makes you look like an amature more that the MP3 vs WAV difference that frankly you probably can't hear in your car stereo system anyway if you are encoding at the higest bit rate.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

13 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

Fully aware of the quality differences.

However, for mass consumption there is a lot more to it than song titles.  Not having the files tagged with meta data makes you look like an amature more that the MP3 vs WAV difference that frankly you probably can't hear in your car stereo system anyway if you are encoding at the higest bit rate.

The quality differences are not identifiable by humans ears unless you measure the audio and know which is which, but that opens the door to perception bias, confirmation bias and other cognitive issues.

It's hard to suggest that people didn't think about audio quality when they developed the MP3 format 28 years ago.

[Brian Walton]

1 hour ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

The quality differences are not identifiable by humans ears unless you measure the audio and know which is which, but that opens the door to perception bias, confirmation bias and other cognitive issues.

It's hard to suggest that people didn't think about audio quality when they developed the MP3 format 28 years ago.

It actually depends on both playback equipment and ones ears.  In a car environment those factors are almost always negated.

Using high end playback equipment doing A/Bs with above average ears there absolutly are people that can pick the better source above an average of "guessing."  I've done blind tests with clients befroe in a studio environment.  Not everyone gets it, but there are those that can....one of which that got it right every single time was literally blind.  Which re-inforces the concept that ones other senses become heightended if you loose one.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

15 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

It actually depends on both playback equipment and ones ears.  In a car environment those factors are almost always negated.

Using high end playback equipment doing A/Bs with above average ears there absolutly are people that can pick the better source above an average of "guessing."  I've done blind tests with clients befroe in a studio environment.  Not everyone gets it, but there are those that can....one of which that got it right every single time was literally blind.  Which re-inforces the concept that ones other senses become heightended if you loose one.

Without knowing the exact parameters of your test environment, I highly doubt it. Ethan Winer has some tests on his website for bit rate, dither and so going on for over 10 years and no one has been able to guess the results correctly.

[Brian Walton]

12 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Without knowing the exact parameters of your test environment, I highly doubt it. Ethan Winer has some tests on his website for bit rate, dither and so going on for over 10 years and no one has been able to guess the results correctly.

They were blind tests and results are mixed but I can tell you with absolute certainty that some people do have the ability as long as the playback equipment is good enough.  Small percentage of the population but they do exist.  Just like only a tiny percent have perfect pitch.  

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

12 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

They were blind tests and results are mixed but I can tell you with absolute certainty that some people do have the ability as long as the playback equipment is good enough.  Small percentage of the population but they do exist.  Just like only a tiny percent have perfect pitch.  

If the difference depends on a playback system, then I'll argue that knowing the (alleged) quality of the playback system introduces confirmation bias. If those special eared people can detect it, they can detect it no matter what the conditions are. That would be the same as someone with perfect pitch stating they can only accurately tell pitches under certain conditions.

[Brian Walton]

7 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

If the difference depends on a playback system, then I'll argue that knowing the (alleged) quality of the playback system introduces confirmation bias. If those special eared people can detect it, they can detect it no matter what the conditions are. That would be the same as someone with perfect pitch stating they can only accurately tell pitches under certain conditions.

No it doensn't when they can do it a statistacially significant number of times.

The issue with quality of playback system is different than perfect pitch detection in that the the differences between the lossy and lossless formats are related to quality of sound reproduction.  $10 earbuds do not reveal the same level of sound detail as $15K Genelec Speakers do in a treated room.

 

Lossy compression throws out data in the files and they attempted to do so to minimize the perception of loss, which they have done a very good job of at high bitrate encoding.  However outstanding sound reproduction helps to reveal those subtle differences.

You think a mixing engeneer can also mix records on $10 headphones?  There is a reason why studio monitors are built and sold.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

3 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

No it doensn't when they can do it a statistacially significant number of times.

The issue with quality of playback system is different than perfect pitch detection in that the the differences between the lossy and lossless formats are related to quality of sound reproduction.  $10 earbuds do not reveal the same level of sound detail as $15K Genelec Speakers do in a treated room.

 

Lossy compression throws out data in the files and they attempted to do so to minimize the perception of loss, which they have done a very good job of at high bitrate encoding.  However outstanding sound reproduction helps to reveal those subtle differences.

You think a mixing engeneer can also mix records on $10 headphones?  There is a reason why studio monitors are built and sold.

Once again, if their ears are so special, why their detection relies on a specific set of conditions to work?

As per mixing on 10$ headphones, I wouldn't be surprised to find many people out there doing it. Not everyone has the budget to high end equipment but have a will to make music. Mixing with headphones was almost taboo 10 years ago and now even famous engineers are doing it.

[Brian Walton]

3 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Once again, if their ears are so special, why their detection relies on a specific set of conditions to work?

As per mixing on 10$ headphones, I wouldn't be surprised to find many people out there doing it. Not everyone has the budget to high end equipment but have a will to make music. Mixing with headphones was almost taboo 10 years ago and now even famous engineers are doing it.

Becuase  ears can only hear what is being reproduced via speakers of some type.

If you don't think there is a quality differene between sets of speakers, then we are not even talking the same language.  

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

2 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

Becuase  ears can only hear what is being reproduced via speakers of some type.

If you don't think there is a quality differene between sets of speakers, then we are not even talking the same language.  

Oh yes. There are quality differences between speakers, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the notion that all it takes to tell MP3 from WAV is a sufficiently high end playback system.

Should I remind you that nobody gave two tosses about Yamaha NS10's until Quincy Jones made a Platinum record using them? Gear quality is not solely tied to how much it costs. You'd be surprised to find boutique hifi speaker systems costing over half a million dollars with up to 25% THD and IM Distortion. That what believing in audio gets you.

[Jack Stoner]

Brian,  I don't know if I'll ever be asked to make "commercial" music flash drives.  Started this thread to find out how they are formatted/created in case I am asked.

 

[craigb]

My 2 cents (which means I'm probably due change ?).

As I've posted before, back in 2003-4 I had a $4,000 stereo setup and tested .wav's and .mp3's at all sorts of resolutions. 

From an intellectual stance, I know a person can realize a much larger range than is usually specified (20 Hz to 20,000 Hz); I even have devices I used during my PhD work that go up to 100,000 Hz (like an Echofone Ultrasonic Listening System first created to attempt to communicate with dolphins).  Although you may not consciously hear frequencies outside of the usual range, we found evidence that a person IS getting some benefits, primarily in the accelerated learning area.

However, from a more realistic point of view, I had started importing all of my music to hard drives and the space usage for wave files was excessive!  Back then, I had to have a multi-bay external hard drive just to hold a small portion of my collection.  In the early 2000's, the largest hard drives typically available were only 250 GB and I had four of them for 1 TB total.  For reference, here's one example of the file size differences:

Quote

A three-minute MP3 encoded at a variable bit rate (VBR) averaging 211 kbps (kilobytes-per-second) can be around 5MB in size. A high-quality WAV file of the same song is nearly 10 times that at 45MB in size.

A quick calculation tells me that, if I had kept everything as .wav files, my current collection would require about 35 TB's to store!

So, back to the tests.  I created a sample .wav track that had short portions of several songs from different genres.  I then converted that track into all the different file types and resolutions I wanted to test and appended these to the end of the original .wav file.  I then put all of them into a playlist (I named each track to easily see what it was).  I then shuffle played those so I wouldn't know what was being played ahead of time.  As I listened, first without headphones, then with, I wrote down comments about the track before checking the file name.

The results were interesting to me.  I could easily hear the differences between the .wav reference track and all resolutions below 192 kbps, so I removed those and retested.  Even with the decent gear I was working with, I really didn't notice anything that made me want to use a resolution above 192 kbps, so that's what I went with. 

While this information isn't an exact match to the topic because I'm talking about music I'm listening to, I thought it might be interesting.  I should also note that whenever I'm creating a new audio track that I actually go in the other direction.  I always use tracks and stems that are higher quality than what a resulting CD of 16-bit/44.1 kHz would be (typically 24-bit/96 kHz).  This allows me to run them through things like effects processors without losing quality (like how the accumulation of rounding errors of old gear basically left you with something like a 14-bit song back in the day!).  My thinking is that, if you start with the highest quality, you can always downgrade it.  I use this same approach with graphics and video.

YMMV! ?

 

[Brian Walton]

1 hour ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Oh yes. There are quality differences between speakers, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the notion that all it takes to tell MP3 from WAV is a sufficiently high end playback system.

Should I remind you that nobody gave two tosses about Yamaha NS10's until Quincy Jones made a Platinum record using them? Gear quality is not solely tied to how much it costs. You'd be surprised to find boutique hifi speaker systems costing over half a million dollars with up to 25% THD and IM Distortion. That what believing in audio gets you.

My initial post say "quality is good enough" it had no bearing on the price.   I've used $15K Genelac speakers so I know they can reveal tiny differences in music and the upper frequency specturm, dynamics and detail that no $10 headphone can.  I've heard tons of speakers and mixed on over a $250,000 system in a terrible room that didn't sound as good as some cheap studio monitors in a decent room.  

 

I also didn't say it was strickly the playback system....it is the playback system and the ears/brain that in combination is able to deciper the difference.  The vast majority can't but my argument is that some can and I've done tests that back that up so it isn't just conjecture.  

[Brian Walton]

1 hour ago, Jack Stoner said:

Brian,  I don't know if I'll ever be asked to make "commercial" music flash drives.  Started this thread to find out how they are formatted/created in case I am asked.

 

Fully understand, and thus why I indicated you might dive deeper into the ins and outs of how it works if you do.

[Notes_Norton]

When I decided to do MP3s as backing tracks for my duo (for the same reason as Craig - file size) I tested it this way.

1. I set up my PA set, consisting of two EV-ZLX15P speakers and a Samson 12 channel analog mixer.
2. I removed all FX and EQ to keep that from influencing the sound
3. I hooked my synth modules up to two channels so that the sound was live--not recorded
4. I recorded WAV and various resolution MP3 files and hooked them up to two channels in the same mixer
5. The MP3 files were ripped with CDex with the LAME encoder, and with the Quality setting at the highest (Q=0)
6. I adjusted the volumes so both the synth rack and recorded files were at 75db, "A" weighted, SLOW response.
7. Next I sat 4 musicians down.  One just had her hearing tested and was found as perfect as can be, another worked in a store that sold high-end sound equipment, and the others I trusted to have good ears.

The musicians sat with their backs to me, so they couldn't see what I was doing. I played the audio and various recordings, and they wrote down their impressions.

Nobody could not tell the difference between the synth rack, the WAV files and the 224kbps MP3 files. I'm sure there was a degradation in both the WAV and the 224kbps MP3 files, and I'm sure lab equipment could measure it. However, trained ears on a high-end PA system could not tell the difference.

At 192 kbps all but one listener could hear the very slightest difference in the highest frequencies. I could hear it too. I doubt that anyone without trained ears listening in a quiet room could notice it, it was that slight. Not only that, but I swapped channels at this point between the synth rack and MP3 files to make sure the mixer channels weren't the difference. They weren't.

At 128 kbps we could all hear the difference. Probably adequate for causal listening in a noisy environment like a car, but not good enough for stage. The high frequency loss was more noticeable, the dynamic response seemed reduced and the general clarity and separation of the instruments was degraded. Anything under 128 was pure trash.

Since no room I play in is either a perfect listening environment, certainly not quiet, and hopefully full of an audience that is having a great time eating, drinking, listening, and dancing to the music, I figured 192kbps was optimum for my needs.

BTW, I make my own backing tracks, playing all the parts myself in real time into a MIDI sequencer; Generally an orphaned Master Tracks Pro. It's a straight sequencer with great editing tools and no audio to get in the way, so everything is available from one click of the menu bar (no sub menus and sub-sub-menus). This allows me to spend more time on the MIDI controllers (synth keyboard, wind controller, drum controller, etc.) and less time on the computer keyboard. The synths and sound modules consist of Yamaha TX81z, Yamaha VL70m, Korg i3, Korg DS8, Roland MT32, Roland XV5050, Roland SC55, Edirol SD90, Ketron SD2 and both a Peavey and Akai hardware samplers that I sampled my own bass, drum, and other instrument samples. I choose what I consider the sound for each part from whatever synth I think sounds best in that song.

In other words, we're listening to high quality sounds on a high-end PA set.

Of course this is my personal experience, and depending on your ears, the app and encoder you are ripping your files with, the system you are playing them through, and a few other things, your experience might be quite different.

Insights and incites by Notes

 

 

 

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

9 hours ago, craigb said:

From an intellectual stance, I know a person can realize a much larger range than is usually specified (20 Hz to 20,000 Hz); I even have devices I used during my PhD work that go up to 100,000 Hz (like an Echofone Ultrasonic Listening System first created to attempt to communicate with dolphins).  Although you may not consciously hear frequencies outside of the usual range, we found evidence that a person IS getting some benefits, primarily in the accelerated learning area.

I heard a similar argument about harmonics a few years ago on Gearslutz. Sure, some frequencies outside the hearing spectrum can be perceived in other ways. Music is something that was invented and developed as a product to be heard. Not watched, not perceived some other way. So, anything that goes beyond the audible spectrum either way is unnecessary, IMO.

[Notes_Norton]

12 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

<...> So, anything that goes beyond the audible spectrum either way is unnecessary, IMO.

If it sounds good, it is good.