Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

ultra_prescriptivist t1_je2c4ra wrote

Reply to comment by dpalma9 in What music service do you guys use? by dpalma9

Again it comes down to there being a difference on paper but not to our ears. Human hearing has numerous blind spots that lossy codecs can use to cleverly remove audio data that is either 1) outside of the audible range to begin with, or 2) too quiet or drowned out by other sounds in the mix. As such, it doesn't really matter if you have very expensive gear or not, your ears will always be the bottleneck.

Expensive gear exists simply because it generally does make music sound better, regardless of whether it's lossless or lossy. What matters far more to our enjoyment of that music is how well it was recorded, mixed, and mastered. File formats and bitrates/samples rates etc, have nearly no impact past a certain point.

3

CertainlySomeGuy t1_je3x3og wrote

I can't tell the difference if the time of comparison is reasonable far apart. In tests like you mentioned, there are songs where I notice the difference and some where I don't. I guess what makes it even more confusing to some people is bit perfect playback, that can actually make a (small) difference.

1

ultra_prescriptivist t1_je3xiw5 wrote

>I can't tell the difference if the time of comparison is reasonable far apart.

What do you mean, sorry?

>In tests like you mentioned, there are songs where I notice the difference and some where I don't.

So in which songs did you notice the difference and how many times were you able to correctly identify them?

1

CertainlySomeGuy t1_je44tdd wrote

Sorry, English is not my first language. I meant that a direct comparison is easier when listening to the song in higher and lower def without a longer pause in-between. It should be obvious, but I just meant it to show how close of a gap it is between high and low def.

I listened to a wide variety of genres and have not testet it with specific songs.

1