Audiology Thread

[The Most Curious Thing]

Originally Posted by justriiingo

I do like the fact that bose is kind of a stepping stone into the high-end audio world.

Definitely, I'm so appreciative of Bose for this reason. Headphone shopping as a 14-year-old was rather intimidating.

Originally Posted by ChickShhh

What is a DAC? My mp3 player does not support lossless files, it's only a Sony A846 Would it be a bit wasted if I only play with 320k?

A digital-analog converter, which portable players don't support anyway (although I have a Sony Walkman too -- can't remember the model number -- and I don't have any problems with the quality). And about 320k...I've done blind tests between lossless and 320k of different albums in my library, a lot of which I've failed (I can't pass a blind test of Kyouiku, for example...that album is made for lossy compression ). But some bands/genres are noticeably different.

[Glathannus]

Originally Posted by The Most Curious Thing

I can't pass a blind test of Kyouiku, for example...that album is made for lossy compression

A more-accurate (but not literally-true) thing to say is that Kyoiku was made from lossy encoding (essentially). If so, then any (further) lossiness introduced on the user side of things, would essentially be lossy-transcoding. For that reason, Kyoiku is one of the last albums I would ever want to think about storing in lossy.

Kyoiku may have the least to preserve in lossless, but the CD tracks as-is have already lost so much that they would become unbearable in lossy. Kyoiku in lossy, sounds too much like 2nd-generation lossy. Since I can generally hear bigger differences between 1st and 2nd generation lossy than I can hear between lossless and 1st-gen lossy, I cannot justify the encoding or existence of 2nd+ generation lossy to anyone.

[The Most Curious Thing]

Originally Posted by Glathannus

A more-accurate (but not literally-true) thing to say is that Kyoiku was made from lossy encoding (essentially). If so, then any (further) lossiness introduced on the user side of things, would essentially be lossy-transcoding. For that reason, Kyoiku is one of the last albums I would ever want to think about storing in lossy.

Kyoiku may have the least to preserve in lossless, but the CD tracks as-is have already lost so much that they would become unbearable in lossy. Kyoiku in lossy, sounds too much like 2nd-generation lossy. Since I can generally hear bigger differences between 1st and 2nd generation lossy than I can hear between lossless and 1st-gen lossy, I cannot justify the encoding or existence of 2nd+ generation lossy to anyone.

Huh, that makes a lot of sense. I suppose the reason I have an easier time hearing differences in Adult than Kyouiku, for example, is because I'm listening to them from a subjective quality standpoint and not an objective fidelity standpoint (if that makes sense?)

I'm a newcomer to the world of high-quality audio, so I'm going to defer to you .

[TurtleFu]

So what do you keep Kyouiku in, Glath? FLAC, Ogg, WMA Lossless?

[Glathannus]

^
WAV, actually.

It serves my purposes, and that's what matters most.
I wouldn't criticize anyone for using FLAC or WavPack, though.

This is how my library is structured:



This is a parallel folder tree where I keep my metadata separate from the audio:


This is what the CUEsheet looks like in Notepad:


Since I don't want to memorize catalog numbers to reach my music, I have another folder tree which looks like this:


The M3U's job is to reference all the Tokyo Jihen releases I've got on-file, so I don't have to humanly keep track of where they are:


This is what it looks like when I load the M3U into foobar2000:


The idea is to keep the audio itself, and the organizing of that audio - as compartmentalized as possible. In the event that I lose the computer-stored audio, I want the ripping and reorganizing process to be as quick and mindless as possible. If I were to re-rip Kyouiku, my system will know that the file should be named TOCT-25452{_2,A4}_image.wav, and will auto-move that to the appropriate place, while all the metadata from before will reference the new WAV.

So why not go to all this trouble with FLACs or WavPacks instead? Because they take too much processing to create. When you're trying to replace 500 rips as quickly as you can, you don't want to waste any time on processing (which could become a bottleneck if you were ripping 4+ CDs simultaneously). Lossless compression also costs processing to decode during playback (or during conversion to any other format), while WAV costs basically nothing but space.

WAVs are also ready-to-burn with Offset Correction and all. Usually if you want to burn from lossless, you must first extract WAV(s) out of it anyway - if you want to do it right.

[justriiingo]

Pretty much most of us at EMF agree that Kyouiku sounds terrible.
But you gotta agree that the material is pretty good.

[TurtleFu]

I'm surprised you use Windows, Glath, because I always thought most audio and media professionals preferred macs.

[Tokyo Jihad]

WUH-OH!

That's because alot of audio and media professionals are petty, superficial, mouth breathers

[TurtleFu]

Yes...
...but because they use Macs?

[Tokyo Jihad]

it's part of the uniform.