[Jimber_Jam]

My Alessandro MS1s have a lot more clarity than my Cyber Acoustics A3780 speakers. But then I usually find headphones to me more revealing than speakers.

 

[cyberidd]

Listening through my cx300 at school I found the easiest place to spot the 128 was when the strings played the choppier notes in the latter half. The strings on the 128 lacked the bite they had on the 320.

 

[intoart]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lucky /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm listening to my RX700. The phones tend to roll off the treble range, though removing the felt helps a bit.

I consider rolled-off treble a good thing. It helps tame modern recordings, which tend to have excessive treble due to compression.

 

[0458]

I just did that 'can you hear it test' Got it right with my aego's

How many times did you lot play it over? I just did both the once.

My new cans come tomorrow so I'm gonna retry that again see how much of a difference I can hear

 

[ear8dmg]

I often find it easier to spot low bitrate mp3s when DSP effects are in play. I use Dolby Headphone on my Xonar D2 relatively frequently and it makes low bitrate stuff stick out like a sore thumb.

 

[oqvist]

RX700 is 35$ headphones don´t ask to much from them. Maybe the reason they are quite popular is that they are indead very forgiving rather then true to source? I have a set on my way to have fun with since they are so cheap.

 

[newtonium]

The reason for this is actually a strange paradox. One of the ways mp3s get smaller is by removing audio information. They do this by applying principles of psychoacoustics, such as when a certain tone is so loud that you don't hear other tones, those quieter tones can be removed. When you have a smaller bitrate, the algorithm is more aggressive in removing this information.

If you have a poor quality system that does not faithfully reproduce the frequency spectrum, low bitrate mp3s can sound bad because those tones that are supposed to mask the missing tones are either not there or not at the correct volume the algorithm assumes. If you have a good quality system, your ears are hearing the music as the algorithm intends. In other words, you are providing a more ideal environment for the compression algorithm to do its "psychoacoustical magic".

This is a bit of paradox. I find that I can detect lossy compression the easiest from the cheapest speakers. But also, as you go up to higher levels of equipment, the desire for higher levels of source materials increases.

This also explains why using DSPs, such as Dolby Headphone, can be revealing for low bitrate material--the environment that the mp3 compression algorithm assumes has been changed.

 

[RallyMaster]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loser777 /img/forum/go_quote.gif 128s bug me a lot in certain genres, but in classical where there's less percussion and sometimes treble, it's less noticeable. That said, I just failed this: mp3 or not - Don't you hear it?

I actually got that right (RX700 owner). There is a noticeable bit of hissing with the 128kbps file. What sound adapter do you use?

 

[fjrabon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lucky /img/forum/go_quote.gif mp3 or not - Don't you hear it? That's another one. The most straightforward way, though, is to take a lossless file, encode it at the bitrates you wish to test, and set up an ABX test via Foobar.

lol @ that test. That's such an easy passage for low bitrates that I'm really not surprised that its almost impossible to discern a difference. It's comprised mostly of just a voice and 128kbps almost never throws away meaningful information in the vocal range. The only part where you MIGHT be able to tell a difference is about 2/3rds the way through where you get a softer transient. There aren't any hard transients and there isn't much in the very high freq ranges, which is where 128 kbps can start to get into trouble, especially if there are a lot of frequencies going on at the same time (which there aren't in that recording).

It would be kind of like having Mike Bibby and LeBron James do warmup style layups to determine who was the better basketball player.

 

[fjrabon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by newtonium /img/forum/go_quote.gif The reason for this is actually a strange paradox. One of the ways mp3s get smaller is by removing audio information. They do this by applying principles of psychoacoustics, such as when a certain tone is so loud that you don't hear other tones, those quieter tones can be removed. When you have a smaller bitrate, the algorithm is more aggressive in removing this information. If you have a poor quality system that does not faithfully reproduce the frequency spectrum, low bitrate mp3s can sound bad because those tones that are supposed to mask the missing tones are either not there or not at the correct volume the algorithm assumes. If you have a good quality system, your ears are hearing the music as the algorithm intends. In other words, you are providing a more ideal environment for the compression algorithm to do its "psychoacoustical magic". This is a bit of paradox. I find that I can detect lossy compression the easiest from the cheapest speakers. But also, as you go up to higher levels of equipment, the desire for higher levels of source materials increases. This also explains why using DSPs, such as Dolby Headphone, can be revealing for low bitrate material--the environment that the mp3 compression algorithm assumes has been changed.

was about to post the same. However I don't think I would have worded it as well as you did. Dead on accurate. A lot of people on here just repeat the mantra of "with expensive headphones all you are going to do is hear how bad your files are compressed". Which is actually not true at all. The better your headphones are at reproducing exactly what is intended by the recording, the better compression works.