It seems like everytime I turn around I see someone converting their lossless collection to <insert lossy format here>. Why? I hear arguements like: i have an ipod, or I can't hear the difference. Maybe it's just me, but that seems kinda lame to me. Why not keep the quality on the idea that if you ever get better speakers, you won't need to rerip your entire collection? and as to the ipod crisis: I have an ipod. I just wrote added a batch to the shell extension that decompresses re-encodes lossyless and transfers. one click. and it doesn't even take that long.
Someone open my eyes.
If you encode at high quality, aps for instance, you don't really have to re-encode your CD's no matter how good your speakers are. Since you get room for about 8 times more albums when you encode into a lossy format, I don't really think lossless is much more than a waste of space for a lot of people.
I seriously doubt many people convert to lossy and ditch their lossless files. When you read about people converting their lossless to lossy chances are it's for space or portable reasons. That does not mean they do not keep the lossless files. And even in the other case, just because it seems 'lame' to you, that does not nullify their reason for doing so. To each, his own.
Lossy files make sense for space saving on a portable, since modern hard-drive based players still have only 60 GB or so. However, if someone was transcoding to lossy and throwing away the lossless, that would not make sense. I just lost about a dozen CDs in a car accident and am very glad I have lossless backups.
Because MP3 plays everywhere - lossless-formats do not. Thats quite important for road-warrior-lifestyles. Sure, i could create a special-CD with decoders for a lossless-format, take a DAP with me which supports a lossless format in case the DAPs of others don't support it.... or i could just take it all in MP3-format with me and don't care about all those special-cases.
- Lyx
I agree with tev777 (and Mono).
I think what you have seen, in the majority, is people who keep lossless on their PC, and transcode to lossy for portables. This doesn't mean they delete the lossless.
I archive from CD to lossless, but then transcode to MP3 to play in my car. I backup the lossless files to DVD.
Maybe there's a very few, but most people who've bothered to rip to lossless aren't going to just decide one day that APS is, in actual fact, just fine.
Actually it makes perfect sense to me.
Currently in my PC I have over 400GB of hard drive space. More than enough to comfortably store my music losslessly. So I have my music ripped with EAC into WavPack. However, on my iRiver iHP-120 I have 20GB of space. That's quite a bit smaller. Not to mention that the largest hit on battery life is hard drive access: something files as large as lossless files would cause to happen a lot. So I use -q 5 Vorbis for my portable purposes. I can do the conversion with foobar2000 and keep all my tags. It's simply win-win for me. Best possible compressed quality (more than I really need) on my PC and better than I can ABX on non-problem sample quality on my portable.
Hope this helps you understand my logic.
EDIT: Until I got enough hard drive space I had no choice but to go lossy only and my choice then was Vorbis -q 6. Lossy has its place, but if you have the space lossless is the wiser decision IMO. Simply because if something happens to the discs you have perfect copies still there.
I hear arguements like... I can't hear the difference. Maybe it's just me, but that seems kinda lame to me.
Yes, with LAME you won't hear a difference.
Lossy audio isn't perfect, so it would be misleading to say something to the effect that LAME would always be transparent no matter what.
Why not keep the quality on the idea that if you ever get better speakers, you won't need to rerip your entire collection?[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=282177"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Because better speakers don't drastically improve your hearing, nor your familiarity with artifacts..?
LAME 3.9x's joint stereo was tuned with inexpensive headphones, IIRC.
Lossless has a psychological benefit, and if you have enough space, I agree with that choice. But for as long as I constantly run out of disk space, I have to keep my HD as empty as possible.(I never seem to be able to get an HD large enough...) So I encode with Nero AAC 'extreme' and regularly store to DVD+R. I could never hear the difference to lossless, if I grew another set of ears, and save about 2/3 space.
To think of it, if I would ever want to store video in a lossless format...[shudder]
Currently I rip to WavPack . . . BUT I am out of space alread on my HD and, as I don't have a DVD burner, I am strongly considering transcoding my lossless to Musepack --quality 5. If a decent HD portable with Musepack ever comes along I will convert all my lossless to Musepack whether I have the space or not.
Uhm...when your music collection starts heading towards 60 GB in MPC --extreme, and you have a limited income, lossless doesn't sound so appealing. I just don't have enough money to buy a disc array, thankyouverymuch. It also makes streaming a heck of a lot easier. Most of the time, I end up listening to my audio with my DAP anyway, and even transcoding MPC to OGG is fine when you're not listening too closely (and are in noisy environments and are using open-aire headphones/earphones).
In other words, you really have to consider the situations of different people. Some of us have to be budget audio enthusiasts, you know.
same problem here ... my 80GB hd is already full of LAME MP3s ... maybe Qest wants to donate me 300 bucks so i can buy a bigger disk
It seems like everytime I turn around I see someone converting their lossless collection to <insert lossy format here>. Why? I hear arguements like: i have an ipod, or I can't hear the difference. Maybe it's just me, but that seems kinda lame to me. Why not keep the quality on the idea that if you ever get better speakers, you won't need to rerip your entire collection? and as to the ipod crisis: I have an ipod. I just wrote added a batch to the shell extension that decompresses re-encodes lossyless and transfers. one click. and it doesn't even take that long.
Someone open my eyes.
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lossy is simply a question of space, hardware and software support
Since you get room for about 8 times more albums when you encode into a lossy format, ...[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=282182"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
You're exaggerating. Make that 3 to 5 times more albums. If, at least, you were talking about lossy encodings of transparent quality (say 150 to 200 kbps), compared to the average 800 kbps lossless file (which can even go as low as 350 kbps with classical music).
Particularly I find the lossy encoders and the computers very useful for music. My stereo home system is only 3 components: One old Dell computer (266 Mhz) with 60 Gb of capacity; one stereo amplifier of 100 watts RMS, and; the speakers. No more tuners, cd players, turntables... The music center is only the computer , this is very useful. I encoded all my CDs with Lame 3.96.1 -aps and Vorbis 1.1RC1 -q7 and I listen these files in my old Dell with my stereo system.
I find that Lame -aps and Vorbis -q7 are total transparent for me.
In my particular case; I don't find any necessity to use lossless, because I store the original CDs; I don't use my CDs at all, only for rip to mp3 or vorbis for my DAP and Stereo system. For my personal use outside of my house I use only the lossy files, never the original CDs.
Why people use lossy? because you can obtain total transparent sound with only aprox. (1/6) of the size of the original files.
MP3 players are a fantastic reason to transcode from lossless. I'd rather have thousands of imperceptibly flawed (ie, totally transparency) songs available in my car than a few dozen lossless files. The originals are nicely safe at home, but my portable won't play FLAC.
but my portable won't play FLAC.
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And even if they do, what's the point?
I have a Rio Karma. And I could not think of one situation where I would actually hear a difference between lossless and lossy (my transperency threshold is very low)
I do like others do here: I encode to lossless, transcode to lossy for computer AND portable use and burn the lossless files to DVD, then store them in a different location than my CDs (in case od disaster)
BTW, Nero hates long names and has changed the file extension of at least two of my flacs to .flc. Is there a way to revert this change? Although foobar reads these files flawslessly (that Peter just thought of everything) I'd hate to be unable to play those files in the future.
I'll tell you why: a collection of over 8000 albums.
You know what lossless means, don't you? 5x the storage space (real world and electronic), 5x the time to back up, 5x the cost to store and back up. With large enough numbers, lossless simply cannot be justified. Unless you have money to burn!
So there are a lot of situations where lossy works and lossless doesn't - like storing large music collections conveniently. Eventually, this situation will end.
However, the other issue: that common lossy (e.g. mp3) plays where lossless does not (because lossless will always be less common, because most people simply don't care) - this issue will probably get worse, rather than better!
Even now, is there any lossless format that shows any sign of becoming as ubiquitous as mp3 (apart from CD itself!)? I don't see this happening any time soon.
Cheers,
David.
i think QEST's questions are answered....and then some!!!
... a collection of over 8000 albums.
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... a collection of over 8000 albums.
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You have money to buy 8000 albums, but can't justify a 60 dollar dvdr burner, and buying media for around 20 cents a disc, or even how cheap hard drives are these days. All well. I am one to rip my cd's to Ape and archive to dvd. I like knowing I have an exact backup incase a cd gets damaged, lost, or whatever; which they do. I also rip to ogg to listen to on my computer.
A collection of that size is bought over a large number of years. The monetary impact is nothing like that if you were to build a music server to store that lot losslessly.
You have money to buy 8000 albums, but can't justify a 60 dollar dvdr burner, and buying media for around 20 cents a disc, or even how cheap hard drives are these days. All well. I am one to rip my cd's to Ape and archive to dvd. I like knowing I have an exact backup incase a cd gets damaged, lost, or whatever; which they do. I also rip to ogg to listen to on my computer.
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I second this. My CD collection isn't that large (nearly 4000 for the time being), builded in 15 years. But nevertheless, being most of them (~80%) classical / jazz music I can get very good compression ratios: so I decided to store them all losslessly --> single APE image + cuesheet, checksums, artwork etc.. quite a task I know... I did some approximative math: with around 350 Mb for disc (prudential, usually I get away with less) the ratio for a single backup dvd-r is ~12,5, so I'm going to ask for some 300+ dvd (and the same number for cd-r filled with PAR files, following the procedure described [a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=31146&st=25]
here[/url], post #41. All in all, I should do with nearly 500 $, a lot of work and a lot of fun, also. Meanwhile you can of course transcode from lossless to everything you want for PC, iPods, car etc. etc.
All of this is nothing new. So, back to square one: why people go lossy? With a collection of, say, 500 cd you could do the all work with a single 50-dvd stack. So: why take the trouble of secure ripping your collection just for getting something lossy you'll need to change in the near future because the new alpha... or the new portable... or the girlfriend's Mac... or the new USB external HD.... Think you'll be happy rerip everything twice or...? You HA people, I mean, not the average user who doesn't even know of lossless..
And, 2Bdecided: ok, 5x money and space (it depends from the kind of music, anwyay)... but why 5x time to back up? Maybe encode to Flac or Ape takes 5x than encode with Lame? It's not just the time you spend on burning dvds... And with lossless you're doing something that's gonna last for long, long time (at least I hope )
... a collection of over 8000 albums.
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sounds like someone who copied every CD he/she got his/her hands on...don't tell me you have listened to them all nor that you really like all of them...even if you buy 2 Albums a week you'd still need more than 70 years to collect that many CD's...some people just collect stuff just to have it...
8K albums, at 10 u$s minimun each is a lot of money to expend on CDs!!!!
Who said all of them were ripped by 2Bdecided himself?
Particularly I find the lossy encoders and the computers very useful for music. My stereo home system is only 3 components: One old Dell computer (266 Mhz) with 60 Gb of capacity; one stereo amplifier of 100 watts RMS, and; the speakers. No more tuners, cd players, turntables... The music center is only the computer , this is very useful. I encoded all my CDs with Lame 3.96.1 -aps and Vorbis 1.1RC1 -q7 and I listen these files in my old Dell with my stereo system.
I find that Lame -aps and Vorbis -q7 are total transparent for me.
In my particular case; I don't find any necessity to use lossless, because I store the original CDs; I don't use my CDs at all, only for rip to mp3 or vorbis for my DAP and Stereo system. For my personal use outside of my house I use only the lossy files, never the original CDs.
Why people use lossy? because you can obtain total transparent sound with only aprox. (1/6) of the size of the original files.
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The operative phrase is, "total [sic] transparent for
me." If you are satisfied with the sound quality you are getting, more power to you. But the el-cheapo analog circuitry on the typical $100-$200 soundcard just cannot compare with the top-notch $1000+ line-stage preamp in an audiophile-grade audio system. Before we even started considering the lossy vs. lossless argument, the soundcard alone would be "Game Over" as far as I was concerned. There are good, and correspondingly expensive (about as much as a low-end laptop), high-end computer sound cards out there for sure, but I doubt your old Dell has one of those.
I do use lossy compression for casual listening, usually through my DAP. For that, I am currently using EAC/LAME at a high variable bit-rate. And over my DAP or my computer's audio system - a typical SoundBlaster Audigy 2/Klipsch ProMedia combo - I admit that I cannot hear the difference between my EAC/LAME MP3's and FLAC. And I have tried, BELIEVE ME, I have tried - with all kinds of music, especially acoustic jazz and classical, which is what I listen to most of the time.
But when I play a CD through my good living room audio system and then play an MP3 CD of the exact same material, to my ears, there is a difference. Compared to the CD, the MP3 sounds flat - all the highs and lows are there, but the sense of impact, space, and front-to-back depth is missing - the soundstage collapses. So the answer for me is, well-encoded lossy formats can sound indistinguishable from CD originals or lossless formats over mediocre equipment. But over a system capable of true high-resolution audio reproduction, lossy doesn't cut it. As the very word "lossy" implies, something, albeit subtle, is lost, and what is lost is what makes a high-end audio system worth all that money.
Before the sysop gets on me again for violating TOS #8, I will quality further by saying that my experience would not be everyone's experience. For one thing, the necessary testing would not be repeatable except with very good to excellent audio gear. And even under those conditions, not everyone is likely to hear the alteration in soundstage that I hear unless they have trained themselves to listen for it.
I did the above testing on a single blind basis with help from my wife and with my chosen material at least (Berlioz: Les Troyens; Charles Dutoit/L'Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal on Decca), which includes extremes of dynamic range, with chorus, vocal solos and full orchestral, recorded in a spatious venue, I can reliably hear the difference significantly more than half the time,
but only on my best equipment.
What that all boils down to is that if one can listen to a lossy format on the best equipment he or she uses and be happy, go for it. For my purposes, I always encode twice - FLAC for my good stereo and for archives, and MP3 for everthing else. When I run out of hard drive space, off to CompUSA I go and buy yet another drive - they really are very cheap these days.
Lossy and lossless compression are objectively different. Whether the difference is
subjectively audible is a matter of good equipment and the individuals doing the listening. Is it possible for a lossy codec to be absolutely transparent to
everyone on
all material,
all the time? Maybe, but I have yet to hear about any controlled, double-blind tests using a large enough statistical sampling of people to convince me one way or the other. If there is such a test involving a large sample of people - at least 100, but the larger the better - and someone knows about it, I would be grateful if someone steered me toward it. For what it's worth, FLAC is the only compression scheme that I've ever heard
anyone from the "golden-eared" high-end audiophile community admit (albeit grudgingly) is not totally execrable.
Who said all of them were ripped by 2Bdecided himself?
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Oh MoOzOoH - what are you suggesting!
Anyway, most of you missed the fact that I said albums, not CDs. Most of them aren't ripped at all because they're LPs or 78s (which aren't really albums, but anyway...).
You must remember - I've lived through a decade or two when people decided LPs weren't worth having, and so were available at next to nothing. I also know a good shop which sells used CDs at £1 ($2) and amongst the junk some real bargains can be had! So the collection itself didn't cost that much.
The point is, if I ever do contemplate putting
everything into a PC (and I contemplate it a lot - but never actually get around to it!) the idea of doing it losslessly is painful!
When I said "5x the time to backup", I meant backing up the backups. If you can make a
second or
third copy 5x quicker, then you're more likely to do it, and less likely to lose all your hard work because of media failure.
I work on the principle that you should always have at least two copies, those copies will require checking regularly, and at least one of those copies will require re-copying at least every five years. Why make that job 5x more painful than it already is?
Cheers,
David.
Lossy and lossless compression are objectively different. Whether the difference is subjectively audible is a matter of good equipment and the individuals doing the listening. Is it possible for a lossy codec to be absolutely transparent to everyone on all material, all the time? Maybe, but I have yet to hear about any controlled, double-blind tests using a large enough statistical sampling of people to convince me one way or the other. If there is such a test involving a large sample of people - at least 100, but the larger the better - and someone knows about it, I would be grateful if someone steered me toward it.
I think what you ask for has been done. (http://www.heise.de/ct/02/19/094/default.shtml) C't, the most reknown German computer magazine, in cooperation with the/one of(?) Germany's most popular audiophile magazines performed a multiformat (Ogg Vorbis, MP3, MP3pro, WMA9, Real Media and AAC at 64, 128 und 160 kBit/s) vs. uncompressed blindtest, with a) professionals and audiophiles (among others, a studio engineer from a classical music label, a soprano of the Lower Saxony State Opera, a Sennheiser headphone developer, and even the MPC devel himself) and b) 3500 readers who downloaded and rated samples. The test for the 'Pros' took place in a studio; additionally the Pros could bring their own favourite music and favourite headphones for a 2nd round without timelimits. General results were as could have been expected; compressed not being distinguishable from uncompressed - even MP3 getting better ratings than uncompressed regularly etc.
Considering this test is two years old, codecs that are under active development should have even less problems delivering transparency now.
The magazine c't has conduced such a test with solely MP3 before, in 2000 (http://www.heise.de/ct/00/06/092/), where 256-kbps-MP3 was etstablished as 'transparent'.
But when I play a CD through my good living room audio system and then play an MP3 CD of the exact same material, to my ears, there is a difference.
From New Scientis: The Placebo Effect (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600)
DON'T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.
This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.
So what is going on? Doctors have known about the placebo effect for decades, and the naloxone result seems to show that the placebo effect is somehow biochemical. But apart from that, we simply don't know.
Benedetti has since shown that a saline placebo can also reduce tremors and muscle stiffness in people with Parkinson's disease (Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 587). He and his team measured the activity of neurons in the patients' brains as they administered the saline. They found that individual neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (a common target for surgical attempts to relieve Parkinson's symptoms) began to fire less often when the saline was given, and with fewer "bursts" of firing - another feature associated with Parkinson's. The neuron activity decreased at the same time as the symptoms improved: the saline was definitely doing something.
We have a lot to learn about what is happening here, Benedetti says, but one thing is clear: the mind can affect the body's biochemistry. "The relationship between expectation and therapeutic outcome is a wonderful model to understand mind-body interaction," he says. Researchers now need to identify when and where placebo works. There may be diseases in which it has no effect. There may be a common mechanism in different illnesses. As yet, we just don't know.
The magazine c't has conduced such a test with solely MP3 before, in 2000 (http://www.heise.de/ct/00/06/092/), where 256-kbps-MP3 was etstablished as 'transparent'.
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And because of this test there are still people in Germany claiming that this was a proof that 256kbs MP3 is indistinguishable to CD!
And because of this test there are still people in Germany claiming that this was a proof that 256kbs MP3 is indistinguishable to CD!
i think for most (99%?) of the people it is
And because of this test there are still people in Germany claiming that this was a proof that 256kbs MP3 is indistinguishable to CD!
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You'd have to use a pretty bad mp3 encoder not to achieve that, though
Personally, not going lossy has nothing to do with the actual quality of lossy codecs- my ears aren't tuned anywhere near as well 99% of the people on this board. I stay away from lossy because as soon as you do, and you want to convert to another format for whatever reason, you're forced to *transcode* with lossy codecs, and that's when you run into severe quality problems. I'm willing to take the 5x hit in order to have the freedom of portability between formats.
I mean, my 160 gig drive cost me $130CAN. So, I can go lossless at 40 cents per album or lossy at 9 cents per album. Given I've already spent $20-$25 just to get the CD, I'll take go lossless for 40 cents to give me options in the future.
Mind you, that logic doesn't hold when you've got 8000 albums....
I mean, my 160 gig drive cost me $130CAN. So, I can go lossless at 40 cents per album or lossy at 9 cents per album. Given I've already spent $20-$25 just to get the CD, I'll take go lossless for 40 cents to give me options in the future.
but you have the best lossless ... your original CDs
... a collection of over 8000 albums.
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sounds like someone who copied every CD he/she got his/her hands on...don't tell me you have listened to them all nor that you really like all of them...even if you buy 2 Albums a week you'd still need more than 70 years to collect that many CD's...some people just collect stuff just to have it...
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Local pawn shops where I live sell CDs in as-new condition for less than two bucks each; all you need to spend is $30 per week to collect 7800 in ten years. Imagine listening to a different CD every day on the drive to work, and the drive back.. my commute is an hour each way, so I need 10-15 new albums per week.
In other words, it's damned easy to go through that much music.
For people in Canada, since we're being charged for backups anyways (CPCC levy, if u care), we like to make copies and pass the originals along. It's legal, it's morally OK, and you never have to hear the same song twice. Dig it.
Sorry for the OT
I mean, my 160 gig drive cost me $130CAN. So, I can go lossless at 40 cents per album or lossy at 9 cents per album. Given I've already spent $20-$25 just to get the CD, I'll take go lossless for 40 cents to give me options in the future.
but you have the best lossless ... your original CDs
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Original CDs are a pain in the ass. The best lossless is hard drive, with flac-DVD backup. Even my 800 CDs are a nightmare to organize and store, I pity the fool with 8000 originals kicking around the place.
I mean, my 160 gig drive cost me $130CAN. So, I can go lossless at 40 cents per album or lossy at 9 cents per album. Given I've already spent $20-$25 just to get the CD, I'll take go lossless for 40 cents to give me options in the future.
but you have the best lossless ... your original CDs
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Original CDs are a pain in the ass. The best lossless is hard drive, with flac-DVD backup. Even my 800 CDs are a nightmare to organize and store, I pity the fool with 8000 originals kicking around the place.
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riggits beat me to it.
Also, if anything happens to those CDs (fire, theft,
anything), I'm out a good $4000 in the hard cash I paid and even more on a personal level. I keep all the rips on my drive backed up to DVDs at a buddy's place, just in case of the worst.
Well, as my first time ever reading/posting in hydrogenaudio, I'll share my point on the subject; Reason why to go lossy:
Because my cd collection grows faster than my hard-drives, and i want to keep all my music in there! (so far 1000+ coded)
No to talk about the backups on lots of dvds, and the need to transcode everytime you want to have the music in mobile media (like mp3 player, palm, car...)
For my ear, which I'm quite proud of, latest lame stable at V 0 q 0 is similar enough to original. The main drawback is the coding time, and my personal solution is to rip groups of CDs into monkey (takes less than 5min per cd) and then let the computer working day-night-day-... in building the mp3.