Comment by widerporst
7 years ago
Interesting. Are you sure you were using the right settings and a recent version of LAME for this?
The only artifact I can reliably hear in 320 kbps MP3s is pre-echo, for instance with castanets, and only in a few very specific situations. Apart from this, V2 and above sounds completely indistinguishable from the original to me.
Which is great ...for you...
but what if in the future you could hear the differences? And now your entire collection is in MP3 V2 - now what?
No reason to not rip everything in uncompressed FLAC these days.
But if your happy with your audio now, great!
The reverse is overwhelmingly more likely. For 8khz+ frequencies (where most compression takes place) your hearing declines pretty quickly once you hit 30 years. Whatever real compression differences you're hearing at 20 will be largely gone 10 years later, and almost certainly 20 years later.
Notch Inhibition Induces Cochlear Hair Cell Regeneration and Recovery of Hearing after Acoustic Trauma
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662731...
Stick to FLAC and keep your fingers crossed for cochlear regeneration tech ;)
But in 20 years there will be new 20-year-olds. And one day there may be 40-year-olds that didn't damage their hearing with leaf blowers and rock concerts. And there may be a future compression algorithm so good that no one can tell, but you need a lossless original to take advantage of it.
Not quite 30 -> 55+ is where we would expect to see presbycusis,
And even though you may have diminished hearing you still have awareness of frequencies above 8Khz.
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There was never a reason to rip in anything less than lossless codecs! Lossy codecs are only for consumption in technically restricted conditions, lossless are for storing and listening.