i'm your bass creator;331202 Wrote: > Some people are saying that they can tell the difference between > lossless and mp3 - 320 by listening to the positioning of instruments > on a high end sound system. (which is very interesting) ..
The vast majority of music these days, including jazz, is recorded in a canned way which renders "staging" as entirely artificial. "Canned" means that the musician typically hears the base track and then plays his instrument. His instrument is individually recorded, albeit in high quality, and then mixed into the track. "Staging" has no significance when recording is doen this way. Even in classical music sought after soloists will record their solos remotely. Staging is great when the recording was really done meticulously. An example is Karl Munchinger's relatively old (1982?) recording of the Pachelbel canon. Take it with you if you are going for equipment auditions - despite the analog hiss it is a beautiful recording. But I'd say even audiophile record collections have a minority of recordings where staging has true significant. Typically it's simply based on where the mixing engineer decided to position the slider between L-----R somewhat whimsically as he mixed in the track. :-) Incidentally, a 320k MP3 reproduces the staging in aforementioned Munchinger barroque concert, you can beautifully place the strings in barroque chamber formation (which differs from the classical). So I'd disagree that staging is an MP3 weakness, but then again I am no expert in the different MP3 codecs' psychoacoustics model at 320k... I think the safest way to hear out MP3s is in the high frequency range, the cymbals or toher high noted percussion instruments typically sound an ounce duller and even sometimes decrease in perceived volume. That is where the MP3 model tries to get the most savings, since high frequencies means bandwidth and the human ear is terrible at truly resoving things with granularity in the high ranges. But at 320k with LAME, it is *reaaaally* hard. Mind you, I still record all my favorite stuff in FLAC, but I also always make an MP3 copy. I tell myself I am futureproofing things by keeping multiple formats of my favorite stuff. I think one thing that has not been mentioned in this thread is... for me the key consideration is that I never ever want to rip my albums again. Ever. That opens a whole new direcxtion in the discussion as a rule... because, which format is really the most futureproof? -- pablolie ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pablolie's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3816 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51021 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
