My father subscribes to "The Absolute Sound," and in the latest issue they have an article about FLAC. Of course they have no (or very minimal) double-blind testing (something both my father and I believe is necessary for any review to be valid) and a history of endorsing bullshit, so we take their results with a truckload of salt.
They score their comparisons on a scale from 0-200 points, with CD audio as 100 points. The scores are generated by A/B comparison (not A/B/X) to a variety of reference qualities. The first issue crops up with this. 0 = Kazoo. 50 = 320kbps MP3. 100 = Red Book CD, 44.1khz/16 bit. 110 = 48khz/24 bit upconverted CD. 120 = 88/24 upconverted. 130 = 96/24 upconverted. 150 = 176/24 upconverted. 160 = 192/24 upconverted. 170 = 192/32 upconverted. 180 = SACD/HRx/High-res downloads. 200 = "Master Tape?". There are no references between 50 and 100. Furthermore, a "very large" difference of 50 points would "require only one A/B comparison and is so large that a 24-hour hiatus between listening sessions would still elicit the typical audiophile expression of 'Holy Cow! This is a night and day difference!'"
Both their reference systems used on-board sound cards capable of 192khz S/PDIF output into a PS Audio PWD DAC. Motherboard brand and model is not disclosed. Actual sound-card model is not disclosed.
This seems quite suspicious to me. I have been unable to successfully detect differences between 320kbps CBR MP3, wave ripped from CD using Exact Audio Copy, and CD Audio using Foobar2000's ABX comparator plugin. I used Epica's "Design Your Universe" tracks "White Waters" and "Burn to a Cinder" as my references this time. I used the onboard audio of my motherboard (an ASUS P6X58D Premium, Realtek ALC889 audio, with 24-bit/192khz default output set in Windows 7) and a set of Grado SR-60 stereo headphones. My CD drive is a Lite-On iHAS424. I don't have a fancy $4000 DAC. My ABX test results were no better than guessing, nowhere near a "night and day" difference audible with a 24-hour gap. I sincerely doubt that the lower quality of my headphones and DAC would be enough to mask such a difference. Thus, I doubt their measurement scale's accuracy.
They did their playback comparisons using JRMC (proprietary) with 192/32 realtime upsampling. They never once mention using the reference FLAC encoder/decoder, or even FLAC frontend.
The top 3 programs in sound quality were:
JRMC: 150 score for HRx 176.1khz/24-bit to FLAC
dBPowerAmp: 145
Foobar2000: 140
Original HRx wave file: 180
So they're claiming a large drop in sound quality.
Later they claim that converting from FLAC to WAV with Foobar can increase sound quality (where would the extra data be coming from?) and that other programs decrease sound quality. In all cases they claim a decrease in sound quality when compared to the original CD.
They also (via listening tests, no md5 hashing or such) claim that Wav->FLAC->Wav conversions create cumulative degradation. This is, of course, a very big claim.
So I took a wav file (a rip of "White Waters", mentioned above) and used the FLAC reference encoder to compress it. Then to decompress. I compared the MD5 hashes of the two .wav files, and they were the same. Just in case some strange miracle had occurred and I'd found an MD5 collision I compared the SHA-512 sums, and those were also the same. The two files were bit-for-bit identical. Just for fun, I repeated the wav->FLAC->wav process 10 times, and the files still had identical hashes. I then ABX tested the original and final files, and was unable to do better than guessing.
TL;DR: Bullshit detected.
FLAC is Lossless (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lossless_data_compression).
What are you asking about?
I struggle to read what you have posted any chance you can fix it?
Looks like someone needs to explain what lossless means to them.
I'm not asking anything. I'm describing the article, and why I think it's wrong. I advise everyone to avoid this magazine due to the ridiculous claims they are making with insufficient evidence.
FLAC is lossless, with a properly implemented decoder. "The Absolute Sound" claims it isn't, and don't test the reference implementation. They don't test the file I/O, and use very subjective listening tests.
I couldn't find that article on their website, admittedly I didn't look very hard either. I'm guessing it's only in the physical magazine?
I did find this discussion in their forums, which contains many comments from one of the article's authors:
http://www.avguide.com/forums/computer-music-audio-quality (http://www.avguide.com/forums/computer-music-audio-quality)
The simple answer is that your father should no longer subscribe to The Absolute Sound. There's another thread current which has reference to something they're saying which is egregious bullshit, even by the standards of audiophile comics (which set the bar very high indeed).
Do not adjust your ears, or your perception of reality; placebo is powerful, and there is such a thing as being self-deceiving, but that looks like they're just making it up.
http://www.avguide.com/forums/computer-music-audio-quality (http://www.avguide.com/forums/computer-music-audio-quality)
Thanks for that link. I enjoyed this quote the most:
For example, compare identical music files played back from an optical drive, a defragmented hard drive, and a memory stick: they will all sound different.
Yep. The funniest bit is that none of the audiophile reviewers ever post the results of a hearing test. Most are over 40, and almost certainly have degraded hearing.
I’d compare this to shooting fish in a barrel—but fish wouldn’t be asking for it. This kind of thing is just too easy to have any potential of being satisfying.
Example: the fact that they rank upconverted streams higher on their wholly uncalibrated and obviously completely imaginary scale of quality. If they had even an inkling of the actual (basic) science, they wouldn’t say something so patently untrue.
I could go on, but, again, there isn’t much point. I doubt we could ever convince the writers of how wrong they are. The best we can do is keep places like this around as a rational alternative, and maybe (those with more energy) post a summary debunking on TAS for the potential rescue of its not-yet-brainwashed readers.
I could go on, but, again, there isn’t much point. I doubt we could ever convince the writers of how wrong they are.
I've been casually reading audiophile magazines since 1990 and I'm more and more convinced that some of them (they writers) are stinkly in bad will and they do it on purpose, for marketing reasons. And there are also people with no technical background or worse, just a little of it, who like to be fooled in being smarter! Like it or not, that's the real world...
<<non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa>> (Dante, Inf. III - 51)
This is the third article in a four part series. The Absolute Sound magazine has little interest in putting it's editorial content on the web. The first two parts are being discussed in this thread:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=92656 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=92656)
"0 = Kazoo." Bummer. I play the kazoo and I assure you it is definitely not a zero. At least a 25.
"0 = Kazoo." Bummer. I play the kazoo and I assure you it is definitely not a zero. At least a 25.
Actually, since a kazoo being played live is one of the sounds you might try to reproduce, and pretty much anyone can agree that recordings almost never sound just like live music, a kazoo should be ranked above the master tape: it's the original source, with no degradation by recording/playback equipment.
Is this the same article which claims that the speed at which a CD is ripped changes the sound, even if they are a bit-perfect match? I bought the electronic download of that issue of the magazine just to read the BS. I was curious.
Yeah, from the same series. Sorry, I meant epic saga.
Is this the same article which claims that the speed at which a CD is ripped changes the sound, even if they are a bit-perfect match? I bought the electronic download of that issue of the magazine just to read the BS. I was curious.
Of course you downloaded it on an ultra-slow modem line for added high end readability?
The article happens to be part 2 of a 4-part series. The first installment went to great length to describe the test equipment and methods used, and explained all the questions they were going to try to answer. I think this is what I'm looking for, a comprehensive examination of digital audio, as it sits today, so I can know which tools to use, and the difference in the various formats that can be used to store and play back my audio collection. I haven't seen this installment, yet, but I'm sure that if the person who started this thread had been paying attention, they would have seen that it was part 2 of a series. They need to go back an issue, and come up to speed, because it's way too early in the series to be calling them out on their findings, as they're only halfway through the article. Anything less is what I call B.S.. By the way, I'm not a big fan of those guys, because I'm sick of in depth reviews of $5K dacs and $25K speaker systems, since the great majority of people anywhere can't even dream of owning that gear, and I find it to be elitist, IMHO, but sometimes they do teach me about audio, and we should let them finish this lesson, before we start running them down, I think.
That reminds me about the time someone suggested that a particular unnamed magazine editor is factually correct simply because he has a kind demeanor.
I can bedazzle you for years and then claim two plus two equals five. Would you withhold judgement until I was finished?
I suppose you might if I were to make some type of pronouncement on April 1st.
The article happens to be part 2 of a 4-part series. The first installment went to great length to describe the test equipment and methods used, and explained all the questions they were going to try to answer. I think this is what I'm looking for, a comprehensive examination of digital audio, as it sits today, so I can know which tools to use, and the difference in the various formats that can be used to store and play back my audio collection. I haven't seen this installment, yet, but I'm sure that if the person who started this thread had been paying attention, they would have seen that it was part 2 of a series. They need to go back an issue, and come up to speed, because it's way too early in the series to be calling them out on their findings, as they're only halfway through the article. Anything less is what I call B.S.. By the way, I'm not a big fan of those guys, because I'm sick of in depth reviews of $5K dacs and $25K speaker systems, since the great majority of people anywhere can't even dream of owning that gear, and I find it to be elitist, IMHO, but sometimes they do teach me about audio, and we should let them finish this lesson, before we start running them down, I think.
I'm getting to be an 'oldguy' too and 'high end' journalism's pseudoscientific B.S. is quite familiar to me at this point. It's been going on for decades.
You need to realize that some of us have been following this particular instance of it for a week or two now, and even when we haven't been able to access the articles, we HAVE been able to read what *one of its authors* has been saying about it online. Please refer to the other HA thread linked on this one.
And if you care to read a bunch of otherwise intelligent guys go way, way down the rabbit hole trying to 'explain' this 'mystery', check out the whatsbestforum (http://"http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?5291-The-Absolute-Sound-%28magazine%29-take-on-many-aspects-of-computer-assisted-music-reprodu)thread.
0 = Kazoo. 50 = 320kbps MP3.
100 = Red Book CD, 44.1khz/16 bit
.
.
150 = 176/24 upconverted
.
.
Furthermore, a "very large" difference of 50 points would "require only one A/B comparison and is so large that a 24-hour hiatus between listening sessions would still elicit the typical audiophile expression of 'Holy Cow! This is a night and day difference!'"
Anyone who can consistently elicit a 'holy cow night and day difference' from multiple users in a 320 kbps mp3 vs Redbook comparison, much less redbook vs upconverted, is doing something very wrong.
The rest of what they report (as relayed by you) appears to be even more incredible on its face.
apparently part 3 is even better...
The article claims a persistent degradation of sound quality after each conversion from WAV to FLAC to WAV again.
http://www.avguide.com/forums/computer-music-audio-quality (http://www.avguide.com/forums/computer-music-audio-quality)
Just laugh. It's the only way to stay sane!
But feel sorry for any poor souls looking for better quality music that get sucked in.
Of course people "over there" will be saying exactly the same thing about HA.
Cheers,
David.
The fact that FLAC is lossless, and should always produce the exact same result the uncompressed counterpart, I don't get the rating system.
Shouldn't 0 be nothing? I.e. white noise or silence?
I don't know that magazine, and therefore I don't know how well respected that magazine is. But those kind of magazines or webzines tend to make errors here and there. I remember an article on Tom's Hardware, which is a very well respected source of hardware reviews and examination. But they reviewed a device once and were talking about the custom controller in there and were speculating about production value, procedures and all that. Later in the article it was revealed, that it is a chip made by Xillings and next to it a picture of it...
...it was clearly an FPGA.
The whole article about the chip made no sense, of those three full pages of text about 40% were bullshit/simply wrong. I believe it is the same with this article you described. The article doesn't make sense, it's like comparing text files: Copy a plain text file, compress one with LZMA and then uncompress it, then check if they're still identical. So maybe it's not the magazine at fault, maybe just the author of the article. Was probably an intern or something, writing it.
Of course you downloaded it on an ultra-slow modem line for added high end readability?
No, I used FIOS, so it looks like crap!
The article doesn't make sense, it's like comparing text files: Copy a plain text file, compress one with LZMA and then uncompress it, then check if they're still identical. So maybe it's not the magazine at fault, maybe just the author of the article. Was probably an intern or something, writing it.
um, no, it wasn't.
And if you care to read a bunch of otherwise intelligent guys go way, way down the rabbit hole trying to 'explain' this 'mystery', check out the whatsbestforum (http://"http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?5291-The-Absolute-Sound-%28magazine%29-take-on-many-aspects-of-computer-assisted-music-reprodu)thread.
make that whatsbestforum (http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?5291-The-Absolute-Sound-(magazine)-take-on-many-aspects-of-computer-assisted-music-reprodu)
Very amusing.
Doesn't it seem like more than the placebo affect though? More like a lack of any handle on reality. :S
How do people get this way?
um, no, it wasn't.
O_o
Oookaaay, well, like I said, I never heard of the magazine before.
I wonder if this things that TAS testers hear is the Higgs-Boson particles changing things between the bits. Cern should accelerate an mp3 file of their test corpus and not waste their time with protons.
Anyone for a TOS #8 complient God-Particle abx? It may be the first inderect proof of this. Why use physics when we can easily do it by ear?
What is the motivation of this article? I must admit I love reading TAS to see what stuff is sold...$12,000 for 1 meter of cable, $30,000 DACs etc. I guess there is a huge market for this stuff. Perhaps this FLAC thing is a way to open a new market for something...maybe a DAC that fixes FLAC...hey that rhymes!!!
If, with good gear and ears people could hear differences between redbook and 320kbps mp3, or even between redbook and sacd, then fine. I couldn't care less because still I think my ~250 kbps vbr stuff on target devices is not as bad as shellac records. But they refuse to prove their claims. Usually clowns with zero knowledge about computing.
I think audible differences are possible, but I refuse to take clowns serious that constantly tell us we listen to completely distorted output. Ridiculous.
What is the motivation of this article? I must admit I love reading TAS to see what stuff is sold...$12,000 for 1 meter of cable, $30,000 DACs etc. I guess there is a huge market for this stuff.
I imagine the market isn't actually that big, but that doesn't matter - if you can sell just
one twelve-thousand-dollar cable, you've made $11,998 profit!
I wonder if this things that TAS testers hear is the Higgs-Boson particles changing things between the bits. Cern should accelerate an mp3 file of their test corpus and not waste their time with protons.
Anyone for a TOS #8 complient God-Particle abx? It may be the first inderect proof of this. Why use physics when we can easily do it by ear?
Let's put some GOD(Higgs-Boson) particles inside a bag of marbles and hang them in front of a loudspeaker, then play the album Erogenous Zone.
After this check if the marbles have multiplied themselves, if so the existence of these particles is proven?
I agree that two bit-identical files should sound the same.
However playing back two bit-identical files side-by-side or sequentially might engender some DAC or other digital-domain data handling difference. Just because the files on your drive are bit-identical doesn't mean your DAC is going to play them back exactly the same. The DAC should play them back exactly the same, but I think there's a possibility it might not. Things like jitter, LSB noise, etc can all come into play. Just a guess, but I would think that EVERY TIME you play a file back- whether from CD or hard drive or whatever- it will decode to analog a few parts per million (billion?) differently.
What I would like to see is a bit comparison in a pair of buffers to see if two bit-identical files present exactly the same bitstreams to the DAC. Does playing a file back happen without error? It might, I don't know. Does digital=>analog conversion happen exactly the same for each set of data, down to the last microvolt? I don't know.
But this is about file playback in general, not about some kind of file conversion loss or file-type-specific effect.
THAT said, I don't see that you could draw a conclusion that FLAC sounds worse than WAV given the experimental setup used by the authors of the Absolute Sound article. They could POSSIBLY conclude that the way their setup played these files back yielded some kind of differences- but you could not extrapolate this to say that FLAC just sounds worse than WAV in general. They failed to control for all the variables, by a wide margin. Very poor experimental design, and inexcusable hubris on the author's part in drawing their conclusions based on this flawed experiment.
It's clear that without double-blind testing these "quality tests" are just so much mental masturbation.
I subscribed to Absolute Sound in 2011, I wanted to check it out. I certainly wouldn't renew my subscription. If you examine the whole "subjectivist" argument in the light of consistent logic, you conclude that these golden-ear reviewers believe that their OPINION is somehow better or "more true" than actual objective reality. This notion is absurd on the face of it, and for anyone who is capable of rational thought the subjectivist approach can be clearly seen to be either the result of genuine delusion or cynical dishonesty.
I agree that two bit-identical files should sound the same.
However playing back two bit-identical files side-by-side or sequentially might engender some DAC or other digital-domain data handling difference. Just because the files on your drive are bit-identical doesn't mean your DAC is going to play them back exactly the same. The DAC should play them back exactly the same, but I think there's a possibility it might not. Things like jitter, LSB noise, etc can all come into play. Just a guess, but I would think that EVERY TIME you play a file back- whether from CD or hard drive or whatever- it will decode to analog a few parts per million (billion?) differently.
What I would like to see is a bit comparison in a pair of buffers to see if two bit-identical files present exactly the same bitstreams to the DAC. Does playing a file back happen without error? It might, I don't know. Does digital=>analog conversion happen exactly the same for each set of data, down to the last microvolt? I don't know.
But this is about file playback in general, not about some kind of file conversion loss or file-type-specific effect.
If any of these theoretical factors you list here would influence peoples playback so much that it sounds different on every file, on Hydrogenaudio not one abx test could have been done.
People always must have heard differences no matter what they test.
It is exactly this weird reasoning that make such articles like the TAS one worthwhile for the business with trying to confuse.
What I would like to see is a bit comparison in a pair of buffers to see if two bit-identical files present exactly the same bitstreams to the DAC. Does playing a file back happen without error? It might, I don't know. Does digital=>analog conversion happen exactly the same for each set of data, down to the last microvolt? I don't know.
And you honestly think this would lead to an audible difference do you?
The thing that amuses me is that the people doing these tests are generally older so their hearing has deteriorated anyway. I'm 34 and can't hear past 16KHz, yet these people claim to be able to hear differences that a bat couldn't hear.
What I would like to see is a bit comparison in a pair of buffers to see if two bit-identical files present exactly the same bitstreams to the DAC.
Question: are the contents of a Word-file different every time you open it on your computer? Do the words shuffle if you compress it using ZIP? If not, why would it be different for audio?
What I would like to see is a bit comparison in a pair of buffers to see if two bit-identical files present exactly the same bitstreams to the DAC.
Question: are the contents of a Word-file different every time you open it on your computer? Do the words shuffle if you compress it using ZIP? If not, why would it be different for audio?
Bad example... the same as long as it's the same computer and same version of Word. Change those and things are often not quite the same. Things I've seen changed are the appearance of the dots on a bullet list, and how variable width fonts render.
What I would like to see is a bit comparison in a pair of buffers to see if two bit-identical files present exactly the same bitstreams to the DAC.
Question: are the contents of a Word-file different every time you open it on your computer? Do the words shuffle if you compress it using ZIP? If not, why would it be different for audio?
Bad example... the same as long as it's the same computer and same version of Word. Change those and things are often not quite the same. Things I've seen changed are the appearance of the dots on a bullet list, and how variable width fonts render.
Of course, but we are talking about different FILES not different SOFTWARE. If you want to know if different FILES result in different bitstreams, even if they are bit-identical, you should only change one parameter (the file, not the playback software). So the example still holds.
What I would like to see is a bit comparison in a pair of buffers to see if two bit-identical files present exactly the same bitstreams to the DAC.
Yes, they will. Computers are designed to work that way. If they weren’t they would not function at all. If you run that test and indeed get varying results the only valid conclusion is that your equipment ist faulty and should be fixed or replaced.
Does digital=>analog conversion happen exactly the same for each set of data, down to the last microvolt? I don't know.
But this is about file playback in general, not about some kind of file conversion loss or file-type-specific effect.
You’ll probably see tiny differences because there are effects like jitter in the d/a stage (I’m not claiming anything about audibility!). But you’re right. That is a problem of the playback chain from the DAC onwards, it has nothing to do with the audio format or the digital domain as a whole. I guess that’s exactly the point where “experts” like the TAS authors would fail and still blame FLAC, even if they ran a scientifically correct experiment.
Yep. The funniest bit is that none of the audiophile reviewers ever post the results of a hearing test. Most are over 40, and almost certainly have degraded hearing.
Yeah! Since I'm more than 50, I really have degraded hearing. And that's a major pain as a music enthusiast and musician as well. Please, have mercy on us oldies. Cheers. Alberto