[vorbis-dev] Can compressed music sound better thanuncompressed?

[Peter Surda]

On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 10:43:04PM +0200, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> > Believe me, that were high-end-equipped tests - that magazine i mentioned
> > is the most respected one by "higher skilled" computer enthusiasts here in
> > germany.
> Oh, the c't "testing". Those were hardly statistically relevant, you know...
Exactly. I read the article BTW (roomate used to buy c't regularly but stopped
now 'cause it takes helluva lotta time to read :-))

Those testers were carefully selected among very many who volunteered and lot
of them were professionals in the area of "high end music" or had much
experience in the area. The equippment used for these tests was described with
lots of details. They used a specially prepared room etc. Those "reference
headphones" that any of them was free to use if unsure, mentioned before in
the list, cost about 2 times the price of all the electronic equipment
together I have in my room (including 2 computers).

Music used was also selected from large list and represented many various
genres.

And although they mostly could identify 128k mp3s, even they were
statistically unable to determine 256k ones.

Oh yeah and one of them had a hearing disability which made him more
sensitive to the parts stripped by the compressor :-)

This basically means that normal mortals are unable (lack of skill,
perception, equipment, money) to find out which is "better". This goes for me
as well.

Please note that minidisc have lossy compression too ("ATRAC") and I have
never read an article (or heard someone) saying that MD sounds worse than CD.

OTOH I read articles from "professionals" that said CD sounds better when you
paint the edges black and MD media from TDK sound better than from the other
producers.

> Ciao,
> Segher
Bye,

Peter Surda (Shurdeek) <surda at bigfoot.com>, ICQ 10236103, +436505122023


--
         The computer revolution is over. The computers won.



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