Comment by goblin89

14 years ago

Well, actually it was that long cymbal sounds “fade” quicker and just sound different with lossy music.

IIRC I distinguished an mp3 encoded by iTunes with bit rate 192 or 256 kbps from its original in Apple Lossless (both played on same cheap acoustic system). I probably should test with AAC or Ogg, too. Although I have a feeling that it's pretty much impossible to keep intact those rich in high frequencies cymbals while keeping compact file size.

> I've decided not to listen for the pre-echo artifacts so that I won't notice them :)

You're much better at controlling your mind. =) After I once verified that the difference is audible even on cheap speakers, I can't switch back to lossy formats. It means constant wondering if that how it's supposed to sound or not…

That's, by the way, why Apple's idea of having ‘Mastered for iTunes’ label[0] IMO is worthwhile—at least you can be sure that mastering engineer listened to it this way. =)

[0] http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/02/mastered-for-itune...

4 comments

goblin89

Reply
pja  14 years ago

Might be interesting to try AAC or Ogg Vorbis & see if they're any better. In these days of ever increasing cheap portable storage carrying a bunch of flacs around isn't quite as nuts as it used to be of course.

(Cymbals seem to be a particular bugbear for mp3 encoding; cymbal-heavy tracks tend to suffer the most from obvious encoding artifacts once you know what to listen for.)

TylerE  14 years ago

It's certainly true. Ogg is far less audible than mp3 - it's actually very decent at bit rates as low as 64kpbs.