snarlydwarf;155496 Wrote: > *snip* > > Quality loss. > > When you download a song from ITMS or Walmart or whoever you get a > 128k'ish lossy compressed file. It has lost data from the original > recording. > > Now you burn that to a CD: that step is lossless, sure. So is ripping > it from a CD. But you have already lost data. > > If you then re-encode it so that you can get 6-10 hours of music on a > CD, you lose data. Your only choice to preserve what data was there > on the downloaded file is to have a CD that has no more than 70 minutes > of music on it. > > But if I buy a CD, rip it and encode it myself, I only have one > transition that loses data, instead of two. I also have a higher > quality version on the player, since I can encode at better than > 128kbps. > > Surely you don't believe that lossy compression can be repeated without > loss. > > "The re-encoding is up to you"... no, it isn't. It is one of the > conditions I put on music that I buy. I must be able to listen to it > on my nice old pjbox, my car stereo (on my usual 6-10 hour cd's: I > dislike swapping cds while driving) and my Squeezeboxes.
You're making assumptions about that the loss between the CD to a 128kb bit-rate mpeg is detectable by the human ear. First off, most folks don't know that CD's themselves are flawed. The standard for cutting off high-end bandwidth on CD's was/is 20khz and no lower than 20hz, because outside of those ranges it was correctly believed that the signals were undetectable by the human ear. In recent years though, several University studies have shown that frequencies outside of this range combine create affects on the human music listening experience that may not have anything to do with the ear's physical limitations. There are also issues of frequency combining and cancellation, all of which is taken out when CD's are mastered. So, if you think your CD's are "pure", you're sadly mistaken, and the loss taken to make the CD itself is looking to be more detectable than the loss compressing to a 128kb or higher file. If you want the full, analog range of sound, your only choice now is vinyl. SACD has some possibilities, but personally I think most SACD music sounds contrived, as if it's trying to show you what five discrete channels can do, very little of it sounds realistic. I actually prefer DVD-audio for full-range sound in a digital format if I have to take digital. Regardless, you're taking something analog (sound waves), making assumptions about how they affect people, digitizing them, then sticking them on a piece of plastic to be D/A'd back again to your speakers. There are many, many more points of loss then just re-compressing a file. In the end, I'll take my tube amp, Walsh F's and Thorens turntable with magnetic cartridge if I want to REALLY hear full range, realistic sound. PS- If you can find me a double-blind study (or if you'd care to wager, say, a grand or so on it I'll set us up a test) on 50 or more random tracks played straight off the CD, compressed at 128kb, then an uncompressed and re-compressed one at 128kb and tell the difference on the types of audio equipment you were describing above, you're on! I'll give you 2:1 odds you'd never be able to make more than 10% above the standard deviation for a random sample of that size. That's not really fair, 'cause listening in your car and most houses has so much ambient distortion nothing done during CD creation or compression can even come close to comparison, so let's use an anechoic chambber. I know where we can rent one. -- tlp [164kb MP3 encoded library (wish FLAC had been around when I did most of my ripping oh so long ago) -> PC -> 100 Mb network -> SB3 -> Denon 3805 (used mainly as a pre-amp / DSP) -> Speakercraft BB1265 running whole-house audio, rack of assorted amps, mostly older Carvers or Sunfires -> bi-amp'd Paradigm Reference Studio 100 V.3's, CC-570, ADP-470's, and my own make of electrostatics (hence the rack of Amps).] Terry ------------------------------------------------------------------------ tlp's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8459 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=29626 _______________________________________________ ripping mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/ripping
