Usually when I hear someone swear by lossless audio one service provides compared to another, I swear the reality is either placebo or one service is just using a better masterering compared to another. The service that has on their service the album mix and mastering. Like they could serve it as 192kbps MP3 and sound better than a lossless encoded album version with non ideal mix and mastering
These days I mostly see the placebo audio arguments in streaming service and FLAC/lossless encode fanboys.
The clamour for lossless/high-res streaming is the audiophile community in a nutshell. Literally paying more money so your brain can trick into thinking it sounds better.
Like many hobbies, it’s mainly a way to rationalize spending ever increasing amounts on new equipment and source content. I was into the whole scene for a while, but once I had discovered what components in the audio chain actually improve sound quality and which don’t, I called it quits.
commander@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
kabe@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Oh, 100%. I actually tested this by recording bit perfect copies from different streaming services and comparing them with audacity.
I found that they only way to hear a difference between the same song played on two different platforms was 1) if there was a notable difference in gain or 2) if they were using two different masters for the same song. If two platforms were using the same master version, they were impossible to tell apart in an ABX test.
All of this is to say that the quality of the mastering is orders of magnitude more important than whether or not a track is lossy or lossless, as far as audible audio quality goes.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not here to argue I can hear the difference, because I can’t. But in audio collecting where the size and burden of even large lossless files isn’t much different from lossy files, why care? I download the flac files and compress upon delivery to the client where the space might be of a larger concern.
kabe@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I do the same, as it happens, so I won’t argue with you.
As for “why care?”, I’d say it’s about making informed decisions and not spending money unnecessarily in the pursuit of genuinely better sound quality.
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I think it depends on your source.
If we are talking about a downloaded good high bit rate MP3 and a FLAC, then yeah, I can’t hear a difference.
For streaming, I CAN hear a difference between the default spotify stream and my locally stored lossless files.
kabe@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If we’re talking free tier Spotify, then it could actually be due to the bitrate (96kbps OGG vorbis, IIRC). However, if you’re a premium subscriber then the standard bitrate is 160kbps, which is definitely not audible to 99.99% of people.
However, after much testing, I found that a noticeable audible difference between a local file and the same song on a streaming service is almost always due to either a loudness differential or because the two tracks come from different masters.
stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I really noticed when I switched from Spotify to Tidal that there is something different about Spotify’s sound quality that makes it worse even at the highest streaming quality. I was surprised since I fully admit that in 99% of cases I can’t tell the difference between a 128kbps MP3 and a FLAC of the same file.
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Could be poor mastering. You can’t always just take a track and squish it down to a low bitrate without tweaking some settings.
BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I’m a person with sensitive hearing and mp3 always sounds muddy to me compared with a flac or wav rip. My coworker poo-pooed this notion, but I proved it to him. Mp3 does alter the sounds, most people won’t notice, but for somebody that does hear the differences its annoying. I would not spend 10k or anything. I paid $15 for an old 5.1 system, and max $80 for a pi2 with a DAC hat. LOL
For me its like if you stood outside a persons house and heard them talking vs their words coming over their TV. There is a noticable signature that let’s you hear its the TV or real people, and that’s what mp3 vs wav is like for me.
I can also hear my neighbours ceiling fan running in the connected town home. That almost inaudible drone of the motor running, drives me nuts
Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I don’t about you, but in my country Tidal is cheaper than Spotify. But that might be placebo
/jk, though tidal is actually cheaper here. I can’t tell the difference in blind testing between 320 kbps mp3 exported in Reaper and the original wav; they’re indistinguishable to me. Actually, I can tell them apart with some airwindows dithers, but that is a pretty esoteric exception.
snooggums@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
The push for lossless seems more like pushback on low bit rate and reduced dubamic range by avoiding compression altogether. Not really a snob thing as much as trying to avoid a common issue.
The video version is getting the Blu-ray which is significantly better than streaming in specific scenes. For example every scene that I have seen with confetti on any streaming service is an eldritch horror of artifacts, but fine on physical media, because the streaming compression just can’t handle that kind of fast changing detail.
It does depend on the music or video though, the vast majority are fine with compression.
otacon239@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My roommate always corrects me when I make this same point, so I’ll pass it along. Blu-Rays are compressed using H.264/H.265, just less than streaming services.
GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
🤓☝️ many older blu-rays also used VC1
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Or worse. I think it was the original Ninja Turtles movie that I had owned on DVD and the quality of it kind of sucked. Years later I got it on blu ray and I swear they just ripped one of the DVD copies to make the blu ray disc.
eleijeep@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Higher bitrate though init
errer@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Significantly, streaming is 8-16Mbps for 4K, whereas 4K discs are >100
cogman@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
People don’t like hearing this, but streaming services tune their codecs to properly calibrated TVs. Very few people have properly calibrated TVs. In particular, people really like to up the brightness and contrast.
A lot of scenes that look like mud are that way because you really aren’t supposed to be able distinguish between those levels of blackness.
That said, streaming services should have seen the 1000 comments like the ones here and adjusted already. You don’t need bluray level of bits to make things look better in those dark scenes, you need to tune your encoder to allow it to throw more bits into the void.
chisel@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Lmao, I promise streaming services and CDNs employ world-class experts in encoding, both in tuning and development. They have already poured through maximized quality vs cost. Tuning your encoder to allow for more bits in some scenes by definition ups the average bitrate of the file, unless you’re also taking bits away from other scenes. Streaming services have already found a balance of video quality vs storage/bandwith costs that they are willing to accept, which tends to be around 15mbps for 4k. That will unarguably provide a drastically worse experience on a high-enough quality tv than a 40mbps+ bluray. Like, day and night in most scenes and even more in others.
Calibrating your tv, while a great idea, can only do so much vs low-bitrate encodings and the fake HDR services build in solely to trigger the HDR popup on your tv and trick it into upping the brightness rather than to actuality improve the color accuracy/vibrancy.
They don’t really care about the quality, they care that subscribers will keep their subscriptions. They go as low quality as possible to cut costs while retaining subs.
Blu-rays don’t have this same issue because there are no storage or bandwith costs to the provider, and people buying blu-rays are typically more informed, have higher quality equipment, and care more about image quality than your typical streaming subscriber.
IronKrill@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I fail to see where TV calibration comes in here tbh. If I can see blocky artifacts from low bitrate it will show up on any screen unless you turn the brightness down so far that nothing is visible.
kabe@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The thing is, dynamic range compression and audio file compression are two entirely separate things. People often conflate the two by thinking that going from wav or flac to a lossy file format like mp3 or m4a means the track becomes more compressed dynamically, but that’s not the case at all. Essentially, an mp3 and a flac version of the same track will have the same dynamic range.
And yes, while audible artifacts can be a thing with very low bitrate lossy compression, once you get to128kbps with a modern lossy codec it becomes pretty much impossible to hear in a blind test. Hell, even 96kbps opus is much audibly perfect for the vast majority of listeners.
oktoberpaard@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
In a distant past I liked to compare hires tracks with the normal ones. It turned out that they often used a different master with more dynamic range for the hires release, tricking the listener into thinking it sounded different because of the high bitrate and sampling frequency. The second step was to convert the high resolution track to standard 16 bit 44.1 kHz and do a/b testing to prove my point to friends.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Yeah the enshittification did this IMO, we can serve 196kbps but chose to serve 128 or 96 so you really hear how shitty it sounds. Or pay extra!
Uncompressrd FLAC and other unnecessarily good recordings are useful when mixing, if I have understood it right, as it degrades quality. Otherwise I bet nobody can tell the difference between a 320 mp3 and a wave file. Guess 256 is all okay but why bother when the difference is so small?