Have you ever regretted ABXing?
Reply #42 – 2010-11-06 05:29:03
I'm sure you already know this, but using those lossy files as "source" to re-encode to the next great lossy would not be wise at all. If you can't hear the difference now you'll likely do so if you try that even once! Are you sure that it is "likely" to hear degradation from going lossless->"sensible lossy encoding"->"another sensible lossy encoding"? Depends on what is "sensible", I guess, but I would not dare to say that its likely. I'd rather say that chances of hearing flaws increase as the number of transcodes increase. OK, I can happily agree with that. My wording isn't always perfect and I tend to sound "absolute" in print when I didn't mean it that way at the keyboard I've never ABXed lossy-to-lossy trascodes and am going by things I heard on other people's stuff. (The type of people who just looked at me blankly when I tried explaining to them that taking an MP3 @128 and converting it to 320Kbps was not going to "improve its sound quality.) Be that as it may, I've ABXed a few passages from certain songs over and over 100% positively @128Kbps LAME-encoded MP3. My point is I don't think it could get "better" if it was transcoded. The results are here:foo_abx 1.3.4 report foobar2000 v1.1 2010/11/05 00:36:34 File A: C:\dBpoweramp\EAC-FLAC\Jars of Clay\02. Unforgetful You.flac File B: C:\Users\Engelsstaub\Desktop\New folder\02. Unforgetful You.mp3 00:36:34 : Test started. 00:37:46 : 01/01 50.0% 00:38:52 : 02/02 25.0% 00:39:34 : 03/03 12.5% 00:40:41 : 04/04 6.3% 02:07:57 : 05/05 3.1% 02:09:05 : 06/06 1.6% 02:19:47 : 07/07 0.8% 02:20:04 : Test finished. ---------- Total: 7/7 (0.8%) (...I grew bored with this one after the seventh round. The passage was annoying to listen to over and over.) I'm not taking some great pride in this because I do go out of my way to find passages that I "just know" I'll be able to ABX and, as before, I'm humiliated at how subtle the difference is. I have to concentrate very hard to hear such "differences" and wouldn't likely notice a thing if I were just listening to them without prejudice. That bugs the crap out of me...I realized that I could actually live with it if I had to. I used to believe (until recently) that "even at higher bit-rates the high-hats wash out!" But I have heard this effect on transcodes. Truth is, I never heard "the high-hat thing" on my MiniDiscs in the nineties. I knew nothing about ATRAC compression then and believed that these were basically 1:1 digital copies via fiber optic transfer. ...but I know there were a (very) few instances where I was like "what happened to this effect?" or whatever. ...so anyway: I was just thinking "logically" that what was nearly transparent before would likely become apparent after. My bad for making assumptions and claims without more than anecdotal proof. Sincerely.