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Well, yadda yadda but this is what Neil is fighting against:
"MP3s are another matter all together, and these are a lossy format where information is thrown away to make the file smaller. MP3 files of less than 320KB/S are usually easily audibly inferior to the original CD version. We do not recommend MP3 coding for anything except non-critical work where space must be saved"
He is trying to make those become obsolete and not the standard for which we listen to music. For which the general public doesnt hear music.
Agreed, but at the same time, charging people more for 24/192 files is kind of pointless if they don't sound any different than the 16/44 files.
The problem is, a lot of the discussion around this topic comes down to reductive thinking.
I'll give you an example: we think about human hearing like it's a known, understood quality, so we talk about it in those terms. When people discuss human hearing limitations, for example, they quote numbers from studies where individual sounds were played at exactly those frequencies, and people self-reported hearing them. Since children tend to hear a little higher up, while middle aged people (especially men) tend to trend off starting around 16-18kHz, in general this is referred to as the "20kHz rule." That sounds good. It's numerical. It's exact. Now we know what people hear, and the problem is solved.
What it does not take into account, however, is whether or not those frequencies that we cannot individually hear or identify can still affect our response to a layered sound.
Consider:
1. Recorded sounds with preserved high frequencies (above 26kHz) produce different brain activity in all listeners than do the same sounds with those frequencies removed. Some of that brain activity change resides in centers associated with emotional response.
2. Elderly individuals with severe, near-deaf hearing loss experience different neural activity (again including emotional response) dependent upon the inclusion of some of those frequencies they've otherwise lost the ability to hear alongside ones they still hear.
3. Length of exposure seems to have an impact on whether or not individuals "heard" a sound in self-reported scenarios, which may indicate that we simply take longer to distinguish or acclimate to those sounds.
4. Individuals who have 400 Hz sounds and 800 Hz sounds played simultaneously, in their right and left headphones respectively, perceive instead an oscillating tone that wavers significantly in pitch.
And so on. The point is, when human reception, perception, and reaction is involved, simple math never really is.
1. T. Oohashi, E. Nishina, M. Honda, Y. Yonekura, Y. Fuwamoto, N. Kawai, T. Maekawa, S. Nakamura, H. Fukuyama, and H. Shibasaki. Inaudible high-frequency sounds affect brain activity: Hypersonic effect. Journal of Neurophysiology, 83(6):3548–3558, 2000.
2. Lenhardt et al., Human ultrasonic speech perception. 1991.
3. K. Hamasaki and T. Nishiguchi. Differences of Hearing Impressions Among Several High Sampling Digital Recording Formats. 118th AES Convention, 2005.
4. Deutsch, D. An auditory illusion. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, August, 2005.
_________________ (patriotic choking noises)
Last edited by McParadigm on Fri March 14, 2014 3:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Well, yadda yadda but this is what Neil is fighting against:
"MP3s are another matter all together, and these are a lossy format where information is thrown away to make the file smaller. MP3 files of less than 320KB/S are usually easily audibly inferior to the original CD version. We do not recommend MP3 coding for anything except non-critical work where space must be saved"
He is trying to make those become obsolete and not the standard for which we listen to music. For which the general public doesnt hear music.
Agreed, but at the same time, charging people more for 24/192 files is kind of pointless if they don't sound any different than the 16/44 files.
There is more "information" there whether you hear it or not. It's still the least offending example of audiophile music format when it comes to the money grabbing aspect of it. SACD and DVD-audio both needed dedicated players that were usually expensive as are the discs, the Blue-ray audio discs, while playable on every player, are expensive and feature the same music compressed in a bunch of lossless codecs for no other reason than someone collecting licence fees i presume.
I'm thinking of getting the pono player but I can't pull the trigger. I still don't even know if you can burn CDs to flac and add the flac files to the player. If you could do that, I'm in. Otherwise I'm not buying my whole music collection again at 15-25 bucks an album. That's for rich folks. Although if they offer, let's say the Beatles catalog at a quality "four times better" than lossless cd, I might have join the club.
I'm thinking of getting the pono player but I can't pull the trigger. I still don't even know if you can burn CDs to flac and add the flac files to the player. If you could do that, I'm in. Otherwise I'm not buying my whole music collection again at 15-25 bucks an album. That's for rich folks. Although if they offer, let's say the Beatles catalog at a quality "four times better" than lossless cd, I might have join the club.
You can definitely rip your cd's to FLAC and add them to the player.
I'm thinking of getting the pono player but I can't pull the trigger. I still don't even know if you can burn CDs to flac and add the flac files to the player. If you could do that, I'm in. Otherwise I'm not buying my whole music collection again at 15-25 bucks an album. That's for rich folks. Although if they offer, let's say the Beatles catalog at a quality "four times better" than lossless cd, I might have join the club.
You can definitely rip your cd's to FLAC and add them to the player.
You just cost me $400.00. Herbie Hancock special edition here I come!!!!
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