Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompressed?

I was going to post this in the Science and Technology forum, but thought what the heck I'll throw it in here for a bit of opinion.

My hearing isn't great and I don't have high end equipment, so I'm not the best person to ask. In my experience, I've never noticed the difference.

Is it just like the difference between the expensive gold plated audio leads and the cheap supermarket own brands (i.e. nothing in it)?

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

No, because there is a lot of science behind this. LPs are analog; CDs and MP3s are digital with the audio signal sampled at discrete intervals. Therefore, by definition, an LP contains infinitely more information than a CD. Personally, I think that a digital format sampled at a high enough rate would provide a sonic experience indistinguishable from an LP played on equivalent equipment.

That said, I am able to tell the difference between highly-sampled digital formats and those sampled at lower bitrates and compressed with a lossy format. If you drop too much information when sampling at a very low rate (and then compressing), the fidelity of the recording is markedly degraded. I typically encounter this with MP3s sampled at or below 128 kbps; they just sound "slushy" to me.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

I've noticed that difference before with compressed files. For some reason an old MP3 player didn't play the full file, it left something out as it went through the entire file. When I played it again on another player, I was surprised to hear more music. Not more music in length but in depth of quality.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

I think most people can tell the difference in a fair side-by-side. The difference from an analog to digital medium is pretty obvious.

However, when it comes to various digital variants, it can get a bit blurred. The quality of equipment being used is a big factor--(one more than most give credit for). On a typical computer, the difference between a 128 and and 328kps mp3 isn't very noticeable. But that's because the DAC (Digital to Analog Conversion) on most computers is very poor--even ones with supposed "high end" sound cards.

This is because most sound cards try to be as generic multimedia friendly as possible--usually catering to more movies/games and not music specifically. The same is true with speakers.

However, if you have a quality set of cans (headphones) and a a decent external USB DAC, you WILL be able to tell the difference. I have such a set up with my laptop and people can believe the difference from a lower quality mp3 and a flac. They really didn't know what they were missing.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

Anyone who's been around longer than the internet knows that difference. But if you were raised on MP3? You might not think it's important. The reason MP3's are so popular is despite their poor quality, they have a greater convenience of use. Not because they set any standard of quality. I kind of feel sorry for people who think it's as good as it gets. It's like the difference between dipping a foot in a pool and diving in.

But I always scratched my LP's.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

My main problem is impacted dust. Carbon-fiber brushes and the Discwasher system just can't seem to get debris deep in the grooves.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

How much of the extra information that analogue carries over digital (i.e. LP over CD) is perceived by the human ear?

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

I cannot tell the difference between a CD and an LP, but then I have never done a side by side comparison. I should think the difference might be noticeable then. I should try it I guess, I have some albums on both LP and CD

I can certainly tell the difference between an mp3 encoded at 128kbps and a CD though. Especially through my stereo, of course the crappier your equipment gets the less it matters.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

I can tell the diff.. I've had to "re-rip" some of my music due to clipping sounds. After I ripped at a much higher bit-rate they sound fine. However, 88.1 out of Akron sounds like they are using mp3 or maybe itunes. I can hear the same clipping on many of the songs they play. But given a choice i'll take LP's any day of the week. Hell, most high-end BD players do 7.1 analog out. They know whats better...

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

CD audio is uncompressed wave (44100Hz, 16 bit, stereo) that equates to around 1400kbps.

LP was a long time ago, and there was a 'tapes' phase in the mid 90s that fell between those and CDs. What I remember of LP's was that soft background crackle, occasional jumps, and the novelty of being able to spin the disc manually. I can't really remember what the sound quality was like.

But 128kbps mp3 vs uncompressed wave, yes I can usually tell the difference in side by side comparison. But it would be hard to say if I was played something and had to guess which.

I'll normally compress things to 160kbps; higher bitrates are not significantly better, as mp3 will often cause artifacts no matter how high the bitrate it.

I know some people are enthusiastic for flac encoding, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me; compression is supposed to reduce file sizes by a substantial amount, else why bother. Given that flac offers 2:1 compression, that isn't a big space saving over raw audio, and it generates a tonne of power draining work for your media player to get the sound out of it.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

No, in an analog medium you're limited to the physical attributes of the media itself.

Look at CD audio (44.1khz /16-bit) vs. DVD-A (96khz / 24-bit). Some audiophiles claim they hear the difference between 44 and 96, but all the science consistently proves otherwise. Our ears can't hear past 60khz at the absolute best, and any recording is going to lose some fidelity over original sound. That's not to say those who claim they hear a difference don't, but it's fairly certain the difference they're hearing can be attributed elsewhere.

Where the real performance increase comes is 16-bit vs. 24-bit. The range of sound between these two is increased exponentially and good listeners can always pick them apart instantly.

Their vinyl equivalent?
Vinyl's 'sample rate' is found to be about 50khz, at it's 'bit-depth' at most a 12 for an LP. With a 45 these are cut nearly in half.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

24-bit is only important for accurately representing low volume sounds, where you'd otherwise be working within the lower 8-bits in a 16-bit encoding. I would say that 16-bit is perfectly adequate for things happening at normal volumes.

44.1kHz is greater issue, because this isn't the sound frequency, it's only the sample rate. You'll struggle to approximate any sound waveform well with a 44.1kHz sample rate.

So both are important in their own way.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

Compression isn't that important anymore anyway if you consider that the price of flash drives is down to 2€ per GB or even less.
I mean, does it really matter if your music player can store 1000 songs or 5000?

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

The benefit of FLAC encoding is to be able to distribute lossless audio over the internet more efficiently. Not as a storage format.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

Absolutely.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

I agree. I've often compared audio compression with compression of text files.

In 1990, people saved things to floppy disk. And they had only 1MB of space. It was common practice for people zip compress text files, as doing so reduced them down to just 10% of the original file size. On a floppy disk, this mattered greatly.

Nowadays, text files are insignificant compared to the drives they are stored on. There is no longer a need to compress them. It would be odd to do so.

Then circa-1998, when mp3 became popular, the situation was much the same. Hard disks were around 1 GB, and wave audio would quickly eat that space up. mp3 allowed a reduction of file size down to 10%, which mattered greatly.

In the not too distant future, uncompressed wave will be insignificant compared to the hard disks they are stored on, and there will no longer be a need to compress audio.

I thought that internet servers already apply lhz compression to data before transmitting it around the globe? I don't know if that happens at a browser level, but I'm sure it happens at a server level.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

^ Well, no, if you download an uncompressed CD image or wavs, you download about 700MB. If you download a FLAC rip of an album, you download about 350MB, depending on the length of the album of course.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

That's an additional layer to be sure, but I was approaching from a signals and systems point of view. An analog signal does by definition contain infinitely more information than a sampled (digital) representation. Whether or not that analog signal accurately represents whatever it was meant to record is another issue, as you've correctly pointed out. For all intents and purposes, a digital signal with a high enough bitrate should contain enough data to make it indistinguishable from a live performance to the human ear. I agree that a lot of the perceived "difference" between analog and digital recordings can be attributed to the equipment people are using (and their attendant levels of distortion, harmonics, etc.).

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

Not necessarily. Actually, with most file types (and their associated compression type) compression is usually less than 50%.

That's only true for certain players--i.e. the big "bulky" ones. A good, small flash based player (like an iAudio) can play them with minimal battery drain. Or, if you install rockbox on an iPod and tweak it properly, the batter drain shouldn't be too bad either.

But, then again, unless you have a set of expensive IEM and a portable "clip-on" DAC to go with it (which can also get expensive) you won't be able to hear the difference from a 328 mp3, anyway.

For the time being at least, flac is really meant for computer players. Plus, a good set of cans and a desktop USB DAC are a lot cheaper than their portable counterparts.

I have a DAC that's about the size of a matchbox that I can use with my laptop as long as I have a table or some kind of workspace. But obviously it's too big to carry around. If i wanted one of equal quality that was portable, it'd be nearly twice as much.

As odd as it seems, for the typical person, it does. Even though, people can do what I do and the file swap while I'm in the shower each morning. It doesn't take that long.

Hopefully, with USB 3.0 around the corner, people will wise up.

Actually, storage is precisely what it's meant for. The original idea was to have a way to back-up CDs without any signal degradation.

People can then convert them quickly and easily to whatever other compressed format that is required at the time. Switching between compressed formats and sample rates is usually a bad idea and re-ripping from CDs can get time consuming.

Granted, you need the right "tools" to do this. But in my case, since flac is Linux native, I can do batches of flac to 328mpe at a time with a few simple commands. One album takes about 2-3 minutes. Plus, all the metadata is preserved.

 

Re: Who can tell the difference between LP and CD, MP3 and uncompresse

Equipment is a pretty big factor but source is paramount.

I recently upgraded my computer audio setup and I can detect a lot more than I used to be able to. I got rid of my Logitech speakers and X-Fi card and replaced it with Audioengine A5 speakers and a USB DAC which puts me firmly in "Mid-Fi" territory.

Vinyl has a reasonably distinct sound and anyone should be able to pick that up. With my current setup, I can tell the difference between MP3 and FLAC assuming the bitrates aren't great. My speakers "accentuate" the imperfections. Above LAME-encoded 192kbps, I almost always cannot distinguish between MP3 and lossless.

I'm slowly phasing MP3 out of my music collection and at present I'm using WASAPI to bitstream audio to my DAC, bypassing any resampling Windows might be doing. Vista/7 don't have the same Kmixer XP had, however, so "bit perfect" playback is still supposedly possible if you only have one audio stream and all volume levels at 100%.