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Topic: Can headroom worsen audio quality due to the masking threshold? (Read 368 times) previous topic - next topic
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Can headroom worsen audio quality due to the masking threshold?

I know this may sound like a silly question, but while I know it is a good idea to add headroom before encoding with a lossy codec such as MP3 or AAC to avoid clipping, can this, due to how these codecs work, result in more audio being classified as unimportant and being mangled compared to encoding a 0 dB peaking file because more of the audio goes under the masking threshold?

Re: Can headroom worsen audio quality due to the masking threshold?

Reply #1 –
Same could be said about lossless, that by adding headroom you decrease number of bits used / signal-to-noise ratio.
Lossy codecs are supposed to be transparent even for very quiet passages, quality you lose that way is so microscopic that probably unmeasurable/undetectable.
 

Re: Can headroom worsen audio quality due to the masking threshold?

Reply #2 –
That's a really interesting question, Fred — not silly at all. You bring up a subtle but valid point about perceptual coding and how headroom might influence what a codec considers "masked" or less important. While adding headroom generally helps prevent clipping, I suppose in certain cases it could potentially cause quieter elements to fall below the codec's masking threshold. It’s a bit of a trade-off, isn’t it? Would love to hear if anyone has tested this side-by-side with real audio examples.