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Topic: Can MP3 or other lossy codecs... (Read 21659 times) previous topic - next topic
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Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #25 –
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There is simply nothing in compressed music that could be harmful to human ears (other than the volume it's played at  )


Actually Im not sure that's correct.
If I listen to a 64kilobit/sec BLADE or Xing stereo encode it gives me the urge to stab an icepick into my ear, which would likely result in severe ear damage.

  Admittedly the compressed music is not the direct cause of the damage, but the point stands

edit: yes I am being sarcastic

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #26 –
Quote
There is no need for research. There is simply nothing in compressed music that could be harmful to human ears (other than the volume it's played at   )

Undocumented claim. Please provide proof.

I can actually make the opposite undocumented claim: Lossy music have already caused world-wide brain and ear damage: 90%+ of people worldwide thinks 160 kb mp3 is perfect for listening, whereas I get a headache after listening for a few minutes.

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #27 –
Quote
Quote
There is no need for research. There is simply nothing in compressed music that could be harmful to human ears (other than the volume it's played at   )

Undocumented claim. Please provide proof.

No it's just worded a little strongly. There is no plausible theory as to why lossily compressed music would cause hearing loss, and there is no body of anecdotal evidence to suggest it might be happening.  Until either exists there is nothing to investigate.  Further current theory would suggest that since lossy codecs subject the ear to less real, as opposed to perceived, noise then listening to lossy codecs should be better for your hearing.

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #28 –
Quote from: Audible!,Jan 17 2004, 05:08 PM
Quote

The link is pretty funny, and the author appears to have incorporated many official looking pictures into his "explanation". I enjoyed this particular segment the most:
Quote
I personally own mainly cheap CDs and phono records, but almost no downloaded MP3 musics. I have however some computer games with MP3 music, but I don't play them excessively. Despite I generally listen to music only quietly, I have repeatedly tinitus; this happens particularly often when I fall asleep while watching TV, even when the sleep only lasts few minutes. I thus also suspect the data reduction in radio and TV broadcasts as a cause, not least because the hearing uses particularly the sleep for calibrating itself, during that the presence of neuroacoustically datareduced tones thus should be particularly harmful.


      Blaming tinitus on data reduction is pretty novel I must say.

reminds me of a pre-(this season) Niles Crane 

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #29 –
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I am not sure if we should spent time explaining why. (perhaps you just want to know if it is true or no).

Please do. If you (and the others) just say the document is wrong, you are making a undocumented claim.

The Internet consists mostly of undocumented claims, propaganda and socalled reviews. I personally don't believe anything I read on the Internes unless it has been thoughly documented and scientifically proven. True that no proof exists that lossy music is harmful, but no proof exists that is is harmless either.*

Oh, but it does.

There is nothing in human hearing's physiology ("the way it works") that could even begin to suggest such a thing. Documented scientific proof? Any book on local library on this subject. Read my lips: what you don't hear, cannot damage you.

Let me put a similar example: dog whistles. Even if I recorded one of those, handed you headphones and cranked up the volume while playing such sample, your hearing would not suffer in the slightest bit; why? because you can't hear it. It does not stimulate the "transducer" that we all have inside our ears.

This is widely documented, BTW.

*Emphasis is mine
I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.
Reseñas de Rock en Español: www.estadogeneral.com

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #30 –
There is no scientific backing  (controlled experiment with statistically significant results) that quantization noise introduced by MP3 or any other lossy codec is different from any other natural sound for the human hearing system.

Quantization noise is just narrow-band noise - the fact that it is masked (if the psymodel is good) even helps - since it won't even get to the central nervous system through the hearing nerve, and most of the noise will be below ATH (absolute threshold of audibility) - which means that it even won't be transfered to the middle-ear. 

These two facts would actually help the claim that quantization noise in perceptual audio codecs is actually less harmful than any other noise - because it is masked.

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #31 –
Great !
I like the idea that MP3 is good for my hearing because
it has some useless parts of the audio signal filtered out...
But, then, PCM audio CDs ... are they bad for my hearing ?
Just kiddin !
So glad I didn't throw away my MP3 collection after all !

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #32 –
i've been messin' around with mp3 since early 1999... my hearing hasn't changed one bit over the past 5 years 

i've also been a club DJ since 1996... fortunately that hasn't affected my hearing much either

guess i consider myself lucky, blessed with good ears 

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #33 –
And the compressed audio doesn't go directly to our ears as it is.. there is the noise introduced by speakers for example.
For damage the ear it should at least come directly into our ears without other audio interferences which could compensate the loss.
[ Commodore 64 Forever...! ]

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #34 –
Quote
Try to avoid too loud music and noise!
This can irreversibly damage your hearing!

If you have tinitus that is a "signal" that you was exposed too long to loud music.
If you have problems to recognize the music you really should see a doctor as AtaqueEG recommended!

Sometimes the music in bars or discos is much louder than allowed by law in working areas.

My tinnitus started just about the time when lossy compression appeared and I must also say, that a Rolling Stones concert music temporarely raised my hearing threshold, such that I was deaf to quiet sounds for some hours.
Was not I just listening to too loud music? Since then, I have earplugs with me all the time, and I do apply them. Recently I had an audiogram and it shows, that I did stop further hearing loss.

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #35 –
Quote
Quote
There is simply nothing in compressed music that could be harmful to human ears (other than the volume it's played at  )


Actually Im not sure that's correct.
If I listen to a 64kilobit/sec BLADE or Xing stereo encode it gives me the urge to stab an icepick into my ear, which would likely result in severe ear damage.

  Admittedly the compressed music is not the direct cause of the damage, but the point stands

edit: yes I am being sarcastic

To me regular harmonic distortion also gives the urge to take off my headphones. That is how I became to love bass heavy music. 3x15dB boost at 30Hz is a 45dB cut at 1kHz. So I can have an SPL of 100dB@30Hz, yet no damaging sounds.  The distortion is also reduced or pushed below the hearing threshold.

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #36 –
Quote
Q: Does Logologie treat man and women equally?
Yes.
The gender plays no important role in Logologie, respecting the fact that the oestrogen from the environmental pollution finally will wipe away all the differences between the genders - there will be no machismo anymore and no hysterical wives - because this hormone will come to us and the hormone will be everywhere - spreading ONE message - to make all men created equal.


(http://www.informatik.fh-hamburg.de/~windl...ogologieFAQ.htm)

Does anybody need a doctorate degree to confirm that this man is absolutely insane?

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #37 –
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White science is the term for that unholistical way of operating official scientific research which only respects the thinking in the Boolean logics of the either-or and which re-uses the old, foul, Zoroasterian priest- handicraft of devilization by rejecting anything not fitting into its worldview or the power interests of its operators by banning it with the simple term "unscientific", while claiming its own research methods would be the only "objective" ones (treated as "the only truth").
Well then, I guess he wouldn't take blind testing as proof of MP3's harmlessness.

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #38 –
I haven't read through everything you have written here nor the article posted in first post, but!

I have regular problems with ears... Physical problems. My hearing itself is fine, but in period of time my ears hurt much (I really don't know the medical term to this thing in English; that's why my text is so plain, but it has been diagnosed by doctor and I have cured it over and over again). That problem has been with me very long time (that is also long time before mp3 was even invented) and now - few years I have listened mp3 format sounds a lot. And - result is that if the file has bad quality, my ears begin to hurt after 10 minutes of listening mp3 128 kbps (Xing, for example) with my earphones; mp3-s with larger bitrate I can tolerate up to 1 hour, but no more!

Funny thing is, that I personally can't make the diffrence between - let's say 128 kbps LAME or Xing, because I don't have very good equipment and also - my hearing is not so precise, but - I have tested a lot and used files that I encode myself and files from others (with EncSpot program) and - results are the sam all the time. I also can not tolerate if computer is working in the room where I sleep - at the mornings I have a headache and also I can not listen even WAV format music (directly from original CD) for a long time. BUT - if I use my Sony Hi-Fi system with earphones, I have listened music for hours (while taking a nap;)) without any futher problems...

So I don't know what to blame... bad sound card? (Earphones quite good), compressed music files?

Anyhow, I don't want to say, that mp3 can cause something, because as said - I have other problems with ears also, so... Make up your own mind.

P.S. Sorry for the hard-to-understand-text; it's quite late here and I haven't checked text for eny errors, so it might be confusing...

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #39 –
Spy - have you tried this?
Create two copies of a CD:
1. Copy 1:1, i.e. Extract from CD -> wav -> Burning program -> audio CD-R
2. Copy with lossy step: EAC -> e.g. 128kbps mp3 -> decode/burn -> audio CD-R

Ask someone else to put the CDs in your hifi in a random order and listen to them in CD repeat mode (without knowing which one is played) until your ears start to hurt. Repeat this several times - and document the results (time it takes until ears hurt, which CD was played and maybe some details about the pain in case there's a difference).

If you post the results here, I'm sure our statistics experts will help to evaluate the results.
Let's suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is feeling negative? The rain? Or YOU? What's causing the negative feeling? The rain or your reaction? - Anthony De Mello

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #40 –
Quote
Quote
There is no need for research. There is simply nothing in compressed music that could be harmful to human ears (other than the volume it's played at   )

Undocumented claim. Please provide proof.

I can actually make the opposite undocumented claim: Lossy music have already caused world-wide brain and ear damage: 90%+ of people worldwide thinks 160 kb mp3 is perfect for listening, whereas I get a headache after listening for a few minutes.

I'm a little late, but anyway... 

Well, in the absence of any evidence either way people should choose the simpler of two theories. For medicine though people often choose the "rather safe than sorry" and assume anything is dangerous until it's proven harmless. That's why it's so easy to upset people with alarms of cancer from this, tinnitus from mp3, etc. This stance makes sense sometimes, but nowadays I think the stress all these "health alarms" cause is worse than the actual healthrisks they warn for...

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #41 –
Quote
Let me put a similar example: dog whistles. Even if I recorded one of those, handed you headphones and cranked up the volume while playing such sample, your hearing would not suffer in the slightest bit; why? because you can't hear it. It does not stimulate the "transducer" that we all have inside our ears.

This is widely documented, BTW.

*Emphasis is mine

I'd debate that. There are even legal limits on the allowed exposure to ultra sonic sounds. They're ridiculously high, but they exist.

Depending on the frequency of your "dog whistle" you might start to hear it at ~ 100dB, or even lower. Hearing 24kHz at 100dB is quite common, according to published research. I don't have the references on me, but I've posted them here before.


As for wrecking your hearing with psychoacoustic coded sounds - in the short term, that's nonesense. And the fact that all "real life" sounds aren't coded means it won't happen - ever.

But if everything you ever heard came via a cheap 3" speaker, I'm sure your ears would adapt to this in some way. But I'm not sure sure whether they'd boost the unused frequency extremes, or lose them.

Similarly, if everything you ever heard had noise added tightly around the limits of spectral masking (either just within, or just outside - i.e. good codec, or bad codec!) it's not inconceivable that the ear would adapt in some way. The existing human sharp spectral masking curves are due to an active neural feedback process - the basic "dead ear" curves are much wider. Would the neural tuning curves become sharper to filter out the noise, or wider to stop us from actually hearing it?

I think it's likely that nothing would change. For one thing, the existing shape doesn't match anything specific in our environment, but can behave as a useful time/frequency compromise for some tasks. Why change?

However, to say with 100% certainty that one of our senses wouldn't adapt to a continuous change in stimulus over time (or even generations) is a very brave statement indeed!


Still, the guy crank, and I enjoy mpc without worries!

Cheers,
David.

EDIT: The quality of digital TV and (especially) radio broadcasts in the UK is enough to give anyone a headache! DAB digital radio often sounds worse than FM (80kbps mp2!!!!), never mind CD! The bitrates are higher on FreeView, but most commercial stations are a transcoded mess.

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #42 –
There are so many potential and unknown triggers of tinnitus.  Personally when I quit smoking and taking psychotherapeutic medicines it reduced in frequency a lot.  This is the same time period I was getting into mp3s so if they were an issue I doubt I would have noticed such an improvement.  And don't you dare ask me to ABX by smoking again!
"Have you ever been with a woman? It's like death. You moan, you scream and then you start to beg for mercy, for salvation"

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #43 –
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However, to say with 100% certainty that one of our senses wouldn't adapt to a continuous change in stimulus over time (or even generations) is a very brave statement indeed!

If this was understood from what I posted, I am sorry, I did not meant to disqualify evolution

Obviously some changes --and I am not talking about damage here-- have and will occur to our senses and to other organs/systems in our body triggered by external stimuli, but don't expect this to happen anytime soon.
I think that is pretty safe, with current hearing physiology knowledge, that you can spend you life listening to your MPCs and me to my MP3 (although that won't happen, most likely in 5 years or so we'll all be listening to lossless encoding of somekind, and don't forget about the new media that will appear/become popular in the inmediate future) without the slightest worry, besides volume, that is.

24kHz hearing? I would be very much interested in taking a look at such paper. I have never heard --no pun intended-- something like that.
I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.
Reseñas de Rock en Español: www.estadogeneral.com

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #44 –
Did anyone looked at the history of equal loudness curves? I am wondering about the peak at approx 16kHz. Does TV's horizontal deflection has anything to do with it?

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #45 –
Quote
Similarly, if everything you ever heard had noise added tightly around the limits of spectral masking (either just within, or just outside - i.e. good codec, or bad codec!) it's not inconceivable that the ear would adapt in some way. The existing human sharp spectral masking curves are due to an active neural feedback process - the basic "dead ear" curves are much wider. Would the neural tuning curves become sharper to filter out the noise, or wider to stop us from actually hearing it?

I think it's likely that nothing would change. For one thing, the existing shape doesn't match anything specific in our environment, but can behave as a useful time/frequency compromise for some tasks. Why change?

However, to say with 100% certainty that one of our senses wouldn't adapt to a continuous change in stimulus over time (or even generations) is a very brave statement indeed!


The first part of your response is completely about organ "adaptation" (in the colloquial sense) and I have no argument with it, however your parenthesized statement "(or even generations)"  leads me to believe you feel this acquired "adaptation" (to a 3" speaker or to good or bad codecs) could concievably be passed on to offspring.
  I wish to stress that acquired characteristics are not heritable.

  An individual whose senses have "adapted" to the "continuous change in stimulus over time" cannot transfer this ability to their offspring so that the offspring do not require a similar period of "adaptation". Without an unbelievably complex modification of the genome of the gametes which would allow for a predisposition to not require an acclimatization period to the hypothetical 3" speaker or codec processed sounds (so indescribably improbable as to be easily called "impossible"), the offspring themselves would have to go through the same acclimatization period, without question.
  The sensory stimulus has no ability to physically modify the genome of the gametes. Without this ability, no amount of exposure to the stimulus will impact the offsprings ability to hear one thing or another. The genome followed by the experience in the womb dictates the physical characteristics of the ear of the newborn child, not the parents exposure to limited frequency or compressed sounds.
  This is extremely well-known, and there are no known exceptions (bacterial transferance of plasmids coding for novel characteristics are not acquired characteristics since the characteristics are an outgrowth of the transferred DNA of the plasmid and only begin to be expressed subesquent to the transfer). Nor is there a mechanism known or suspected that would allow for such exceptions.

    So assuming I have interpreted your meaning with the "(or even generations)" statement correctly (which I probably have not), I'm certain it's quite safe to say that such a statement regarding the ability of those whose sensory organs become adapted to specific types of sounds (in our case, those from a hypothetical 3" speaker or from all sounds being processed with a codec) to pass the ability on to their offspring is not a brave one at all.

  If I have completely misinterpreted your parenthesized comment, I apologize, but there is far too much absurd nonsense and disinformation about the action of selection and Evolution on the internet as it is (the thread rjamorim linked to earlier illustrates this perfectly). This is in part due to the relative subtlety of the subject material, and also due to proscriptions (especially here in the US: see Kansas school board) against learning empirical facts that might indirectly contradict religious dogma.

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #46 –
TVs are a fine example actually... i'm sure after years upon years of watching teev for several hours a day could concievably place a kind of "notch filter" on one's hearing.  certainly i don't know anybody over ~25 years who can hear this annoying sound.  perhaps this could be tested by switching the TV to NTSC mode (instead of PAL) to slightly change the pilot tone and watch people's reactions.

however, the above is a special case.  a feature of lossy coding that has been neglected in that "report" (sorry, but i just HAD to use quotes) is the fact that the masked frequencies are different frame per frame.  the higher precision in the same bands in different frames would surely cancel out over a fairly short term, producing an average that is even harder to distinguish from analog noise.

the only way lossy coding could concievably alter hearing (even in an "adaptation" sense) is if one were to listen to a constant tone with a noise background coded at a low bitrate.  one could imagine the ear would slowly become aware of the noise lacking in the bands adjacent to the constant tone... and in this case i'd say the most "damaging" effect would be the opposite of the above - the fact that you would be less sensitive to the frequency of the main tone.

oh, and as far as analog TV broadcasting goes... ew.  nowadays i can tell a live sports event from a delayed event simply from the artefacts present.  and my reception isn't even particularly good... (would this be a case of natural noise being perceptually different from quantization noise? ).

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #47 –
Quote
Did anyone looked at the history of equal loudness curves? I am wondering about the peak at approx 16kHz. Does TV's horizontal deflection has anything to do with it?

There is no peak at 16 kHz as far as I know. The curve is continuously increasing from about 13 kHz, where the second dip has it's minimum. If this dip is what you're referring to, it has nothing to do with TV. It's because of the length of your ear canal - it works like a 3/4 wave pipe resonator around this frequency.

I leave it as an exercise to calculate the length of your ear canal and check if it's correct. The speed of sound in air is 340 m/s.

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #48 –
Rotfl....

so do we have to be worried that after listening to to much mp3 files our brains will go lazy and unable to fillter out background sounds in the real world ? (listening to a conversation in a noisy environment would get hard)

im sure we are in no danger...

allmost all the time while listing to compressed audio there are plenty of background sound not originating from the compressed source to keep your mind calibrated.....

for example the whirring of fans on your pc.... wind blowing... a clock ticking ... your own breath ... everytime you move your clothes make noises.... cars driving by ... your neigbours making love... an airplane ... birds, street dogs, cows , sheep... trains... rain on the window. your fridge.... TL lights humming...  your aquarium or other pet ... the DVD turning in your drive.... eating crisps while watching a dvd ... kids playing in the street...

well you get the picture by now ..if you start paying attention to them... the list is ENDLESS......


just try to find a silent spot somewhere a be amazed at how much "background noises" you yourself create ... more then enough to keep your mind calibrated ...


maybe there would be some truth in that story if you only listened at only 1 simultanious  compressed audio source for the rest of your life, you probably would have to do this as soon as you are born, (your brain would get lazy and unable to filter out backgroundsounds, you possible would have a lot of trouble with following a conversation in a noisy environment)  but that would only be possible in a theoretical world. from the moment you start mixing in other background sounds (even other compressed ones) your mind has to start working to filter them back out ....

and it could easely be fixed with a  "MP3 hearing aid" (patent pending) 

be happy you can get an hour or two to listen to only the DVD you want without  to many distractions... and enjoy....your mind will not unlearn that quick , otherwise we would be in real trouble when we wake up in the morning....

Can MP3 or other lossy codecs...

Reply #49 –
Quote
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There is no need for research. There is simply nothing in compressed music that could be harmful to human ears (other than the volume it's played at   )

Undocumented claim. Please provide proof.

I can actually make the opposite undocumented claim: Lossy music have already caused world-wide brain and ear damage: 90%+ of people worldwide thinks 160 kb mp3 is perfect for listening, whereas I get a headache after listening for a few minutes.

Hi, sshd. I respect what you're trying to say, but I think you've got it around the wrong way. I think that it should be proven that it IS harmful, rather than the opposite. There is no need to prove that it isn't harmful...and besides, proving that it IS harmful (which is a far easier goal to make) will necessarily negate proving that it isn't .
Uh oh, you bwoke it.