Research finds MP3s drain your music of emotion

mp3 > physical x100000... etc

Physical formats are a waste of space, time and money.

Vinyl wears off with each listen. Cassette sounds like shit to begin with and CD's are digital anyway.

I don't understand this Vinyl resurgence. It's ancient technology, we're past that already. If you want something to hold, hold your laptop, what does having a big disc have to do with the music?

I did one of those hearing test things when Tidal went online and every time I guessed it was FLAC it came out 128kbps mp3 lol

I downloaded something off slsk last week that turned out to be 32kbps. Really couldn't work out why it sounded so shit for ages because I'd subconsciously ruled out the idea that anybody would be sharing 32kbps mp3s in 2016.

  On 12/7/2016 at 9:02 PM, Kidrodi said:

mp3 > physical x100000... etc

 

Physical formats are a waste of space, time and money.

Vinyl wears off with each listen. Cassette sounds like shit to begin with and CD's are digital anyway.

 

I don't understand this Vinyl resurgence. It's ancient technology, we're past that already. If you want something to hold, hold your laptop, what does having a big disc have to do with the music?

It's almost as if different people have different experiences and preferences listening to music.

For space reasons, I was mp3-only for about a year, and I didn't enjoy music anywhere near as much. I'd never really given it much thought before then, but as soon as I got my CD collection back I was listening to a wider range of music, choosing stuff I was in the mood for more often, and enjoying the whole experience more.

Also cassette only sounds like shit if you have shit quality tapes on a shit quality deck.

I admit that I like to have my music collection in FLAC. I know that I can distinguish FLAC from 196kb/s through my monitors when played out loud but not from 320kb/s (I think few people can). But FLAC gives me that placebo sound quality. :)

If you slow a FLAC file down it will sound significantly better than a slowed down high quality MP3, so that might be an advantage (especially if you sample) but I don't do that very often so actually there is no real advantage in having my collection in FLAC rather than 320kb/s MP3 other than the psychological factor

  On 12/7/2016 at 9:07 PM, purlieu said:

It's almost as if different people have different experiences and preferences listening to music.

I get that it's just preference, but paying twice or even three times the price of mp3's for something that NATURALLY degrades the sound quality of the music is crazy to me, whether that's Vinyl or Cassette. At least CD's don't do that.

  On 12/7/2016 at 8:39 PM, darreichungsform said:

 

  On 12/7/2016 at 8:27 PM, clarktrent said:

Low bitrates and even 320 kbps MP3s obviously don't sound as good as lossless formats. Holy shit, who would have guessed?

I bet you couldn't tell the difference between 320MP3 and FLAC in a blind test

 

It depends on the track, hardware, software config, etc. Plus, I'm not trying to be dicky or anything, but did you even read the rest of my post? It wasn't a snobbish audiophile thing.

  On 12/7/2016 at 9:46 PM, clarktrent said:

 

  On 12/7/2016 at 8:39 PM, darreichungsform said:

 

  On 12/7/2016 at 8:27 PM, clarktrent said:

Low bitrates and even 320 kbps MP3s obviously don't sound as good as lossless formats. Holy shit, who would have guessed?

I bet you couldn't tell the difference between 320MP3 and FLAC in a blind test

 

 

It depends on the track, hardware, software config, etc. Plus, I'm not trying to be dicky or anything, but did you even read the rest of my post? It wasn't a snobbish audiophile thing.

 

Hey, just wanted to be a wise ass, nothing personal :)

  On 12/7/2016 at 9:46 PM, clarktrent said:

 

  On 12/7/2016 at 8:39 PM, darreichungsform said:

 

  On 12/7/2016 at 8:27 PM, clarktrent said:

Low bitrates and even 320 kbps MP3s obviously don't sound as good as lossless formats. Holy shit, who would have guessed?

I bet you couldn't tell the difference between 320MP3 and FLAC in a blind test

 

 

It depends on the track, hardware, software config, etc. Plus, I'm not trying to be dicky or anything, but did you even read the rest of my post? It wasn't a snobbish audiophile thing.

 

it doesn't depend on anything, no one has been able to distinguish a 320kbps mp3 (encoded with recent versions of lame, for example) from flac.

The original study is a dead link. They don't give any reasons for the results, what measurements they were using or how the study was being conducted.

I don't know what to infer from this study. If the encoding process makes songs sound sad, should we be encoding our sad songs to make them sadder and leaving our happy ones uncompressed to make them sound happier?

  On 12/7/2016 at 2:40 AM, doublename said:

audiophiles are a disease though

Audiophile Ring

lossless schmossless.

The experience of not being able to discern more or less compressed lossy formats was eye opening for me.

But yea the act of streaming something from Spotify can't really emotionally keep up with the experience of a rare flea market vinyl find or waiting weeks for a Japan import CD and such etc etc, but that's all related to the act of acquiring the music and has nothing to do with the music itself innit. Still, since we experience music in context, if the mundane hunter-gatherer context of purchasing a plastic thingie helps in appreciating choons - why the hell not.

  On 12/7/2016 at 1:38 AM, eugene said:

one of the comments reads "The study says they chose 32 kb 56 kb and 112 birates... "

What crazy person chooses that value, I didn't even know you could have that bitrate

320 4 LYFE

  On 12/7/2016 at 9:02 PM, Kidrodi said:

mp3 > physical x100000... etc

 

Physical formats are a waste of space, time and money.

Vinyl wears off with each listen. Cassette sounds like shit to begin with and CD's are digital anyway.

 

I don't understand this Vinyl resurgence. It's ancient technology, we're past that already. If you want something to hold, hold your laptop, what does having a big disc have to do with the music?

I would like to retract my unnecessarily angry comments on physical formats. 

I recently came across a record store in Basel and decided to buy Xen by Arca on vinyl amongst other things because I love it and I don't have that much vinyl anyway so why not.

The thing came with a fucking amazing book with illustrations (by Jesse Kanda) and it felt very cool to look at while listening to it.

I probably sound like a retard cause I didn't know albums came with booklets but as someone who has consumed 99% percent of music ever digitally it was a nice complement and I'd definitely do it again.

I declare myself a hypocrite, thank you. 

P.S. The degrading sound quality thing is still bullshit

  On 12/7/2016 at 6:51 PM, span said:

that's why elseq is digital only

lol

lol. though i've actually had bittorrent clients overwrite data in my files. listening to a track that sounded fine before, and all of a sudden some lame rock tune starts playing for a couple of seconds, then back to the original track. has happened a few times.

  On 12/7/2016 at 2:40 AM, doublename said:

 

edit - audiophiles are a disease though

yep, its a disease. venture in to high end speakers and headphones at your own risk. really addictive stuff

  On 12/7/2016 at 9:28 PM, Kidrodi said:

 

  On 12/7/2016 at 9:07 PM, purlieu said:

It's almost as if different people have different experiences and preferences listening to music.

 

I get that it's just preference, but paying twice or even three times the price of mp3's for something that NATURALLY degrades the sound quality of the music is crazy to me, whether that's Vinyl or Cassette. At least CD's don't do that.

 

even thought its true that Vinyls wears off and degrade in SQ over time, vinyls/tape/cassete often sounds better then the digital release.

while I dont know with modern album transfered to vinyls since I dont buy any modern vinyls, but for the 50's all up to the 90's, getting the original vinyl of a album will sound often much better then the digital release or reissue.

there's many reasons to explain why analog is often better. for one, playing a vinyl means you eliminate the DAC which is the culprit of digital audio. no matter who tells you that digital sound as good as analog, take it with a big grain of salt. Experience with it yourself: only then will you know if analog can sound better then digital. very few DAC in the world can come close to a good analog setup imo.

when I was really into jazz, I bought about 250 jazz vinyl issues from the 60's since the 60's reissue are better then anything that was digitally transfered in the 80's and 90's.

My takeaway is emotionless music sounds better at lower bitrates.

*converts elseqs to 112kbps*

Anyone know of modern ways to use early versions of MP3 encoders? Even low bitrate modern MP3s sound pretty good. What I'm looking for is that late-90's liquid garble.

audiophiles!

  On 12/22/2016 at 2:55 PM, peace 7 said:

Anyone know of modern ways to use early versions of MP3 encoders? Even low bitrate modern MP3s sound pretty good. What I'm looking for is that late-90's liquid garble.

try this http://www2.arnes.si/~mmilut/BladeEnc.html

I had a discussion today with a guy at work who claims to be able to tell 100% of the time on his system whether or not he's listening to a 320 or flac.

"The flac just has more depth man".

I just stopped talking about it at that point.

Flac so deep I can't even hear it