this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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These have an actual perceivable difference even if subtle. Hires audio, however, is inaudible by humans.
I tend to agree, but the audiophiles always have an answer to rebuttal it with.
I'm into audio and headphones, but since I've never been able to reliably discern a difference with hi-res audio, I no longer let it concern me.
I've bought pretty expensive equipment, tube amplifier, many fancy headphones, optical DACs. A library full of FLAC files. I even purchased a $500 portable DAP. I've never been able to reliably tell a difference between FLAC and 320k MP3 files. At this point, it really doesn't concern me anymore either, but I at least like to see my fancy tube amp light up.
I will say, though, $300 seems to be the sweet-spot for headphones for me.
I just keep FLAC around so I can transcode them to new lossy formats as they improve. And so I can transcode aggressively for my mobile when I'm streaming from home, and don't need full transparency.
Yeah there's a clear difference between a pair of $25 or $50 headphones and a pair that cost a few hundred. When I first got my Sony WH1000-XM3s I let my coworker try them and he said "Wow, I didn't know music could sound this good!". When I upgraded to the XM4s a few years later I let my brother try them and he was similarly impressed.
Beyond a few hundred and the thousand dollar range you hit diminishing returns.
~~diminishing returns~~ snake oil
Blackmail -- Evon. That's the one song where I ever heard a difference, though that was ogg, dunno what bitrate I used back then but it was sufficient for everything else. Listening on youtube yep that's mushy. The noisy goodness that kicks in at 0:30, it's crisp as fuck on CD.
...just not the kind of thing those codecs are optimised for I'd say. Also it still sounds fine, just a bit disappointing if you ever heard the uncompressed thing. Which is also why you should never try electrostatic headphones.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Blackmail -- Evon
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Imo the biggest bump is from mp3 to lossless. The drums sound more organic on flacs whereas on most mp3s they sound like a computer MIDI sound.
The biggest bump for me was the change in headphones. It made my really old aac 256kbps music sound bad.
320kbps cbr and v0 vbr mp3 are audibly transparent. Most likely, 250kbps and v2 are too.
Tried flac vs 192 vorbis with various headphones. E.g. moondrop starfield, fiio fa1, grado sr80x...
Can't tell a difference. Kept using vorbis.
Opus is the way these days. Pretty much transparent even at 128kbps (arguably with even lower bitrates in most cases).
Yeah, I've heard good things too.
I'd somewhat call myself an audiophile, just one that cares about actual measurements and audibility, and not snake oil. Haven't heard a good term for that yet, though.
Audiophiles also tend to care about some some sort of audio purity, but I'm willing to go wild with EQ, room correction, and impulse responses, which is pretty much the opposite of purity.
Think of the bits, won't you?!
(Yeah, totally agree)
They have tests you can take to see if you can hear the difference. A lot of people fail! Lol
Usually percussion is where it's easiest to notice the difference. But typically people prefer the relatively more compressed sound!
I'd thought I could hear a difference in hires audio, but after reading up on it I'm starting to think it may have been some issue with the tech I was using, whether it be my headphones or something else, that made compressed audio sound veeeery slightly staticky when high notes or loud parts of the track played.
Personally though, even if it wasn't, the price for the equipment wasn't worth it for a difference that was only perceptible if I was listening for it. Not to mention it's near impossible to find hires tracks from most bands. Most claiming to be hires are just converted low res tracks and thus have no actual difference in sound quality, the only difference being the file is way larger for no good reason.