Audio Files - best quality

[drew gandy]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

It would be an interesting experiment, but I'd bet on the mp3. Even with good chrome tape, and even with the Dragon's auto azimuth adjustment, I'd be surprised if a cassette could compete with even a mediocre digital format. It might beat 64k mp3s, I think even 128s would win, ...

Mac

I think it would depend on the source content. Pop music with one of the more recent codecs; yes I think 128k might win but high dynamic range classical, not so sure. I think they would sound different and the tape would lose if you were bothered by hiss. But tape might handle the quiet parts better and ultimately win because it doesn't have any "swamp" in it. Remember when mp3.com was around? They limited everything to 128k and even the decently recorded material sounded pretty bad. Conversely, in my experience the newer codecs (last 5 years?) can sound pretty ok at 128k. Don't ask me which codec I recommend. I have not kept up on them. But I think if you're going to go MP3 then the latest LAME is a good choice. Obviously lossless is good if you have the space. That's my 2 cents.

 

[Jack Arnott]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

I'm pretty sure that's a dead format :lol:

You can laugh, but as a Stones fan, there are many titles (maybe all?) on SACD.
And you probably already have a player. Start out with Sympathy for the Devil remix, and you will be cursing that they all aren't in MC mixes. You will be hooked on the sound quality though. Dead? It's 16 years old. Sony has tried many times to kill its own format, because the suits in power now don't understand its potential. But that means that the patent runs out in one year. And more and more titles are being released all the time. Just not by Sony much anymore.

 

[Dave Barnett]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

It would be an interesting experiment, but I'd bet on the mp3. Even with good chrome tape, and even with the Dragon's auto azimuth adjustment, I'd be surprised if a cassette could compete with even a mediocre digital format. It might beat 64k mp3s, I think even 128s would win, and on cost of storage even wavs probably beat high quality cassettes. $4/album in media, plus the shelf space, no thanks.

I agree, also the media degrades.

 

[Jack Arnott]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

I agree, also the media degrades.

The best sounding speakers I have ever heard I almost missed.
When I walked in the room they were playing a reel to reel tape.
That had been played WAY too many times. It had so much noise, and so little dynamics.
When they switched to CD it was like lifting a cover off the speakers, a hissy cover.

 

[Jared Koopman]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

The best sounding speakers I have ever heard I almost missed.
When I walked in the room they were playing a reel to reel tape.
That had been played WAY too many times. It had so much noise, and so little dynamics.
When they switched to CD it was like lifting a cover off the speakers, a hissy cover.

Just curious, what were they?

 

[harrybrilljr]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

Why not .wav or .aiff for everything? Terabytes are getting cheaper and cheaper.

Well as it turns out there seems to be no meta tags for either. I have done a test for ALAC compared to AIFF and I can't hear the difference on my cans. I can hear some bad compression on the vocal track though in both cases.

 

[harrybrilljr]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

You can laugh, but as a Stones fan, there are many titles (maybe all?) on SACD.
And you probably already have a player. Start out with Sympathy for the Devil remix, and you will be cursing that they all aren't in MC mixes. You will be hooked on the sound quality though. Dead? It's 16 years old. Sony has tried many times to kill its own format, because the suits in power now don't understand its potential. But that means that the patent runs out in one year. And more and more titles are being released all the time. Just not by Sony much anymore.

The SACD and the DVD Audio are still alive, as well as high end digital delivery. In doing this research I have checked out some 192/24 music and I can't really hear a difference between that and 44.1/16. I think the mastering is what matters there. If they know it's going to 96/24 or 192/24 then they are going to pay great attention to the mastering too, I would think. My gear could be the reason I can't hear the difference. I played this stuff through the Roland Octa-capture set to 192K mode, on a set of sony cans. Did it sound good? Yes it sounded fantastic. Down sampling to 48K seems to make no difference. Perhaps iTunes is at fault? It seems like you should hear a difference but if you don't then you don't need it, right? I'm going 44.1 ALAC for my personal CDs (at least the ones I like) I buy from iTunes and have no choice but 256k AAC. It seems OK for most of it but I think it could be better.

What I really want to listen to are half speed masters. Does anyone else know what that is?

For anyone wanting to purchase 96k/24 music,.... https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php

 

[Mike Caldwell]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

I agree, also the media degrades.

It's no contest when it comes down to the storage media

I think the theme and or question in my original post was that or why the general mass public will choose a lesser quality audio format over a better offering. Convenience, cost, physical size, just don't care, can't tell the difference....all of the above.

When it comes to video quality for the masses that's a different story all together in what money is spent on.

 

[Jack Arnott]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

Just curious, what were they?

Field coil speakers. Two way (some of the very high end ones are single driver, have not heard those.)
Crossed at 350 cycles with two large horns. Probably did not extend above 12khz.
I don't know the brand name, and they have disappeared. But oddly enough I ran into two of the proprietors at the NAMM show.

 

[Geri O'Neil]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

"What I really want to listen to are half speed masters. Does anyone else know what that is?"

Sure do.

G

 

[Jack Arnott]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

What I really want to listen to are half speed masters. Does anyone else know what that is?

My thought is that they are vinyl pressings that are made with the master tape, and the cutting machine that it is be duped to, are running at half speed. The idea being that the cuttings are more accurate running at a slower speed.

 

[harrybrilljr]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

My thought is that they are vinyl pressings that are made with the master tape, and the cutting machine that it is be duped to, are running at half speed. The idea being that the cuttings are more accurate running at a slower speed.

Buddy of mine and former employer has stacks of them from the 70s. He got them new. When an album was $2.99 these were $10-20 each. He said its what the DJs used at the time.

So listening to snippets of Rush on the HD tracks site, and comparing to my ACCs from itunes, I'd have to say the mastering is identical. It stands to reason if Rush went to the trouble of remastering for digital, it translates to ACC, ALAC, AIFF, unless the samples are not representative of the 96k/24bit version. If I hadn't replaced most of my Rush already I'd buy the sets they have. Well worth the money at about the same price as itunes. The individual albums are way overpriced though.

 

[Jack Arnott]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

Buddy of mine and former employer has stacks of them from the 70s. He got them new. When an album was $2.99 these were $10-20 each. He said its what the DJs used at the time.

So listening to snippets of Rush on the HD tracks site, and comparing to my ACCs from itunes, I'd have to say the mastering is identical. It stands to reason if Rush went to the trouble of remastering for digital, it translates to ACC, ALAC, AIFF, unless the samples are not representative of the 96k/24bit version. If I hadn't replaced most of my Rush already I'd buy the sets they have. Well worth the money at about the same price as itunes. The individual albums are way overpriced though.

One of my least favorite of the multi channel mixes I have is Rush, moving pictures on BluRay audio, 5.1.
For some reason both the mix, and the sound are very boring.

The Snakes and Arrows live BluRay is excellent.

 

[John Roberts]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

My thought is that they are vinyl pressings that are made with the master tape, and the cutting machine that it is be duped to, are running at half speed. The idea being that the cuttings are more accurate running at a slower speed.

This is all about trading off different sonic compromises.

The vinyl mastering system had physical constraints based on the mass of the cutting head, so slowing down a master tape and cutting lathe to half speed, effectively doubled the frequency response of the cutter (20kHz original sound information gets printed at a lethargic 10kHz). Of course you were still limited to the quality of the master tape... around the same time another audiophile theme was recording direct to disc at full speed but without the intermediate tracking and mix-down tape generations. There were fans of both approaches that addressed two very different performance constraints (in other words "better" is subjective).

This is all academic at this point with digital media that "can" be arbitrarily accurate (ignoring GIGO). Consumers have long been satisfied with lower fidelity than is possible. That is the nature of free markets, where consumers spend their own money. The lowly cassette persisted long past it's time because consumers liked it.

JR

PS: Not to get all audiophile on you, but at best recordings are an illusion. Sometimes a studio creation of a performance that never existed as an actual acoustic event. Even simple stereo is trickery to provide the illusion of spatial information from the two fixed sound sources. You can go crazy trying to pursue realism, in a system based on illusion. Relax and just enjoy the songs (magic is more fun if you don't know how the tricks work). I sometimes find myself listening to old juke box hits on satellite and the sound quality of some recordings is abysmal, but the songs still sound good.

 

[harrybrilljr]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

John I'm not too concerned with realism in my recordings. I'm not too fond of live recordings in terms of audio quality. It's always a big compromise. Performance is what it's all about when it comes to live music. I like studio creations, and lots of trickery. Jack, I can't even imagine remixing Moving Pictures to 5.1.... Blasphemy!

NEW music that was made since around the early 90s or so when CD was very mature seems to translate fine to most of the other digital formats. It's the stuff that was made for vinyl, mastered for vinyl, and sounded great when played back on vinyl that has issues. When put on CD the older stuff was terribly harsh and so was remastered with no thought to what went into the original product. Perhaps they could make a DSP that mimics what happens when a vinyl record is pressed and played back, and run the original tapes, post mastering, through this device before heading to digital media. Seems like this could be done these days but the record companies have no motivation to do it.

 

[John Roberts]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

NEW music that was made since around the early 90s or so when CD was very mature seems to translate fine to most of the other digital formats. It's the stuff that was made for vinyl, mastered for vinyl, and sounded great when played back on vinyl that has issues. When put on CD the older stuff was terribly harsh and so was remastered with no thought to what went into the original product. Perhaps they could make a DSP that mimics what happens when a vinyl record is pressed and played back, and run the original tapes, post mastering, through this device before heading to digital media. Seems like this could be done these days but the record companies have no motivation to do it.

Perhaps you should read some of my old columns from the '80s. I often ended up an apologist for CD technology that was not immediately embraced for some of these reasons.

In the days of vinyl recording, there were multiple post processing stages after the mix down was "finished". Sweetening and mastering engineers tweaked the recording (EQ and Dynamics) to better work with the vinyl media.

There were also examples of CD remasters that were not treated as carefully (it cost money), some even kept the HF boost that was added on the original master, to compensate for the vinyl processes expected HF loss (from sitting before it gets plated with metal to stabilize it. The longer it sits the more HF goes away). Keeping the now unnecessary HF boost results in a too hot mix (harsh?) on flat playback media.

Vinyl as a medium was not somehow better, but a CD print could sound like crap if the content was not treated with the same respect. There are reported cases of mastering and sweetening engineers dramatically changing a recording for the better, sometimes saving a marginal drug-addled mix-down session, and mostly without any public credit. While the record companies appreciated those guys I don't think it's even a profession now. I can imagine if some of those suspect master tapes didn't get cleaned up before releasing it as a CD, or worse yet just getting squeezed for loudness by some young puke with no ears..

Don't confuse the limitations of the medium for how the content was handled, or mishandled.

JR

 

[Dave Barnett]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

There are reported cases of mastering and sweetening engineers dramatically changing a recording for the better, sometimes saving a marginal drug-addled mix-down session, and mostly without any public credit. While the record companies appreciated those guys I don't think it's even a profession now.

Of course Mastering Engineer is still a profession now.

 

[John Roberts]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

Of course Mastering Engineer is still a profession now.

Yup, and somebody still makes buggy whips somewhere. The specific task that I believe is obsolete is "sweetening" while there are still some buggy whip lovers buying new vinyl so somebody is cutting those. Mastering still exists as a task with digital media but surely different.

While anecdotal I think I saw some mastering guy on another forum post that he was quitting his mastering business to work full time as a rock climbing instructor.

I remain sensitive to how technology changes the job market... I don't get much call to design analog consoles these days... :-(

JR

 

[Scott Bolt]

Re: Audio Files - best quality

I have been given Ipods and assorted MP3 players as well as CD's with music on them that's been downloaded, ripped, converted from who knows where. Playing them back is painful at times as I'm thinking that for the most part the music listening masses accept this for high quality!

Agreed.

To the OP, my personal favorite for lossless is FLAC since it is a free and open standard. Apple lossless is also good for the stuff you really want to sound good.

You can get surprisingly good sounding MP3's IF they are encoded correctly. If you use something like Adobe Audition (or pick another pro editor of your choice), you can pick your encoding. To my ears, a 320Kbs VBR (variable bit rate) file sounds "pretty good" while the original lossless format would be "excellent".

As others have attested, the original recording quality (especially of older music) is likely going to account for MUCH more of the difference in sound quality than the difference in quality that most decent encoded formats would produce.

lossless file formats (or original PCM WAV format) are just cumbersome to move around IMHO. Sure, Terabytes are cheep, but it still takes a ton of time to move a terabyte across your USB to your audio device!

You know what really gets me? MOST people can't hear the difference between CD's in a car and XM radio .... even with a high quality car stereo. It is just sad.

 

[Samuel Rees]

Apple lossless for me. Lossless, small enough, encodable in iTunes. Done. I was not yet a teenager when XM came out and I thought it sounded 'awesome' in my dads car, really just because it was static free. This blows my mind now... I feel like I can hear the bits churning!