Re: [LAU] Lossy audio to lossless format - Linux-audio-user

2 Oct 2014

On Wednesday 01 October 2014 09:14:22 Paul Davis did opine
And Gene did reply:
...
  On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 7:27 AM, Gene Heskett
&lt;gheskett(a)wdtv.com&gt; wrote:
  Your ears are probably the best tool. Some hear
well, and some do
 not. I am amazed at the number of people who cannot tell if mp3 has
 ever been in the mix. To me its obvious, when your ears get tired of
 it, and want to "change the station" in just a minute or so, its
 been an mp3 at some point.  
 For crying out loud, stop this nonsense!

 It is established without any shadow of a doubt that the overwhelming
 majority of the population CANNOT tell the difference between a
 reasonable bit-rate encoding in mp3 format and the original PCM data.
 This isn't up for debate.

 Reasonable bit-rate means 256kbps; by the time you reach 320kbps even
 expert listeners have a very very hard time differentiating the mp3
 from the PCM in an ABX test. 
256 kilobit mp3?  I don't know if I have one that is so little compressed.  
The most I've picked up here & there was 96 and below, usually with an un-
known history. Even 128kbit mp3 can be detected in a few seconds.  Here I 
have done a/b testing against some well produced cd's I've ripped, and 
with ogg running at Q7, which gives a filesize similar to an mp3 at 128kb, 
and cannot tell the difference.  Back these ears up 55 years to before I 
started wearing out rifle barrels, and I expect they might detect the 
diff.

...
  By all means talk about low bit rate encodings and how
they are no
 good, but please folks - double blind testing doesn't lie, and the
 double blind tests are close to unambiguous at this point. 

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS