AAC for ipods ? anyone ?
in [UK Mac]
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From: J. J. Lodder on 11 Jan 2010 04:59 Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > Howard <Howard.not(a)home.com> wrote: > > > I have been looking at a change to AAC for quality purposes... > > > > Anyone already moved over to AAC for use on their iPod or in the home or > > car ? What do you think ? > > LAME makes mp3s that sound as good as AACs to my ears, at top bit rate > anyway. LAME-made mp3s sound maybe /better/ than iTunes AACs at 192 > kbit/s, where I can hear a difference. Hard to be sure, but LAME is > very good at mid-to-low bit-rates according to many people. Once again: Never believe what your brain tells you that your ears are hearing subtle differences, unless it was in a good double blind test setup. Otherwise you are probably just fooling yourself, Jan
From: Elliott Roper on 11 Jan 2010 07:18 In article <1jc5bgb.57z4of1smwz98N%info(a)that.sundog.co.uk>, SM <info(a)that.sundog.co.uk> wrote: > Howard <Howard.not(a)home.com> wrote: > > > > So I discard all mp3 less than 192 and recode everything else to 160 > > > AAC. If my ears were younger, I might have chosen 192 or even 256 AAC, > > > discarding mp3 less than 320. > > > > VERY intersting ... thanks a lot Elliot !! > > There's info here: > > <http://productionadvice.co.uk/why-mp3-sounds-bad/> Thanks for that. Ian Shepherd is a well respected animal in the sound and DVD biz. His article is spot on. I think it washed a bit of flannel out of my old ears. His point about listening to good stuff a lot to help you hear the mess you usually put up with rings especially true. I still have an ancient amplifier that is switchable between class A and class B. It takes about an hour of intensive listening in class A to notice the headache is not so bad. My not so scientific theory is that your ears and brain work really hard at fixing up un-natural noises I got iTunes to scrunch his excerpt WAVs to AAC 160. "Talk about Love" was much better than his mp3. The difference was less marked on the other example but still easy enough to spot in the harp's sound at 24"+ -- To de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$ PGP Fingerprint: 1A96 3CF7 637F 896B C810 E199 7E5C A9E4 8E59 E248
From: Howard on 11 Jan 2010 09:14 D.M. Procida <real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk> wrote: > Howard <Howard.not(a)home.com> wrote: > > > D.M. Procida <real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk> wrote: > > > > It's been iTunes's default encoder for nearly a decade, hasn't it? > > > Well ... let's face it the vast majority of users use MP3. Hence my > > question. > > I think most iTunes users - which means the vast majority of iPod users > (which means every single person on the planet and no doubt even on > other planets as long as there are Apple stores or Tescos there) - use > AAC without even realising. > > So there may be far more AAC users than you expect. > > Daniele I suspect you are right, if the default has indeed been AAC. H
From: D.M. Procida on 11 Jan 2010 09:21 Elliott Roper <nospam(a)yrl.co.uk> wrote: > My not so scientific theory is that > your ears and brain work really hard at fixing up un-natural noises I don't think that can be it. It doesn't make sense as an evolutionary outcome. I guess it could be a strange by-product of some other evolution, but I can't think what. I think that we are very *bad* at identifying low-level, background causes of stress and tiredness, and that unnatural sound is one of these. I think we have to learn how to identify poor-quality sound, and what's poor about it, and that it requires practice and concentration to do that well. Daniele
From: Rowland McDonnell on 11 Jan 2010 13:07
J. J. Lodder <nospam(a)de-ster.demon.nl> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > Howard <Howard.not(a)home.com> wrote: > > > > > I have been looking at a change to AAC for quality purposes... > > > > > > Anyone already moved over to AAC for use on their iPod or in the home or > > > car ? What do you think ? > > > > LAME makes mp3s that sound as good as AACs to my ears, at top bit rate > > anyway. LAME-made mp3s sound maybe /better/ than iTunes AACs at 192 > > kbit/s, where I can hear a difference. Hard to be sure, but LAME is > > very good at mid-to-low bit-rates according to many people. > > Once again: > Never believe what your brain tells you > that your ears are hearing subtle differences, > unless it was in a good double blind test setup. <sigh> As I pointed out, it was triple-blind: not only did I have no idea what source was what, I wasn't even doing a bloody test! I just happened to spontaneously notice a HUGE quality improvement. There's nothing remotely subtle about it, Jan, wake up, please. I've explained all this to you before and I'm amazed that you don't seem to have tried to understand. I read about people telling me that the differences between codecs and bitrates and lossy/lossless audio is subtle. It's bloody well not if you've got my ears and the bitrate is less than 256 kbit/s/. Once the bitrate's high enough on lossy compression - and that means 256k/bit - yes I'd want to sit down to do a triple blind test to be sure of what I could notice, but at lower bitrates *the difference is so huge there is no need for careful testing*. And I'm *UTTERLY* sure of that with me with my ears as they were before I had my recent ear infection - my left ear still hasn't got back to normal and I can't bloody well hear properly on that side any more, which is bloody bloody /bloody/ annoying because I can't enjoy music properly at the moment. > Otherwise you are probably just fooling yourself, Once again: since I was not listening for a quality improvement, since I spotted the quality improvement spontaneously, your purely abstract reasoning is not remotely inapplicable to the circumstances in question. And even if this abstract reasoning you present above were applicable to the situation, I'd be able to point out that your abstract reasoning is entirely wrong. But I should give up - who's ever been able to force an idea into the head of a Dutchman? Brains like clogs, the lot of 'em. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking |