[vorbis] Ear damage by compressed audio?

[Michel Donais]

Very interesting. There are some things that I see as "skewed" in his
article IMHO though.

<p>When I play a DVD, I see a lot of compression artifacts, as long as it's
on a decent enough TV. That's why I stopped looking at digital TV. I can
even see the compression once it's recorded on a VCR tape! So being able
to spot these problems, I don't see it as a flaw of my brain.

Being able to spot defects in audio compression is one thing, but seeing
the recognizable pattern again in some non-MP3 songs doesn't make it a
necessary evil. For example, ringing and cymbal frequency switches are
common flaws in modern radio music as most radio uses some kind of
compressed format for their songs anyways. And with the
multiband-limiter that expands the high frequencies to a peak level,
it's much more hearable.

<p>Another part for me is the usage of good-vs-bad audio reproduction
systems with good-vs-bad source materials. With my HD390, I stay far
away from 160KbpS MP3s or less compressed in fast quality settings. I
usually tolerate 128KbpS MP3s in good quality settings. When I do MP3s,
I encode in V=0 Q=0 128KbpS minimum, which average in 200-230KbpS after
the compression.

If I had a $10000 sound reproduction system, I'd probably stay away from
192KbpS too ... And with cheap cans/PC speakers, I really don't care on
the quality, 128 might be enough.

<p>>From experience, I've seen that usually, I have ringing when I'm using
cheap sound reproduction system. With cheap cans, forget it, I have a
headache and am tired of listening to music after only 3-4 hours. With
good cans, I can listen to music non-stop for 8 hours, sometimes at very
high levels, and still not suffer from any "hearing fatigue". On cheap
systems, you have some frequencies that will "score home" and simply
want you to go over the top, something I don't have with good reprod.

<p>But quality-to-quality, I agree that a low quality reproduction have a
better chance to feed you precise frequencies that will make you
cringe... also, the worst the signals, the better your ear will become
accustomed to these low-fi signals... but it's not worst than AM audio,
8-tracks or cassettes...

<p>My 2 cents.

Have a nice day
Mike

<p><p>> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-vorbis at xiph.org [mailto:owner-vorbis at xiph.org] On Behalf
Of
> Kasper Souren
> Sent: 5 février, 2003 12:07
> To: Vorbis at Xiph.org List
> Subject: [vorbis] Ear damage by compressed audio?
> 
> I can't tell whether this is really serious:
>
http://www.informatik.fh-hamburg.de/~windle_c/Logologie/MP3-Gefahr/MP3-
> risk.html
> 
> Some comments please!
> 
> 
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