Most confusing thing you've ever learned?, In regards to audio, something that made you go Huh? Options

[SamDeRe81]

I'll give you an example,

1. I thought AAC was CBR, but after using mp4box to remux a few I found out it was ABR. Totally surprised the hell outta me at the time.

2. I found out about the ISMA specification for MPEG-4 files. (why not implement it automatically instead of forcing us to use mp4box or mpeg4ip?)

3. That when tagging mp3 files iTunes used non-standard compliant tags for some areas. Thus leading to un-readable files on Linux (which can only read along the specifications). Hours of frustration until I found MusicBrainz Picard and set the f'r to id3 2.4 and to clear existing tags.

Anyone else got a story?

[list]

Media Info, is still saying my ogg vorbis files are CBR, while i know they're VBR ^^

[shakey_snake]

All the little nonsense that has gone into ID3v2. Then watching people try to add these tags to non-mp3 formats (namely FLAC).

This post has been edited by shakey_snake: Feb 8 2011, 02:35

[mjb2006]

I think the most surprising/unintuitive thing I learned was that on a CD, a "gap" ("pregap", whatever) isn't really a space where there's no audio data, and each track isn't a separate band of pits and lands as I had apparently assumed. Rather, the pits and lands are in a single spiral, much like on a vinyl record, and a gap, which isn't necessarily silent, is just a designated section of the one and only continuous stream of audio data encoded therein. Naturally I was also surprised to learn that these "gaps" have virtually nothing to do with "gapless playback."

[Sebastian Mares]

All the little nonsense that has gone into ID3v2. Then watching people try to add these tags to non-mp3 formats (namely FLAC).

Pretty much the same. Plus the additional problems introduced by crappy software leading to multiple ID3v2 tags in an audio file.

[C.R.Helmrich]

My biggest surprise was to find out how your ears can fool you during blind tests. Thought I heard a quite clear difference between two audio files A and B, much prefered the sound of file A. Did the same test again, again heard the difference, but it turned out that in this second trial, I had prefered B. Conclusion: human hearing creates its own artifacts, which you need to familiarize yourself with to separate them from the "real" artifacts during blind tests.

SamDeRe81, here's one more surprise for you: AAC is both, CBR and ABR And also VBR, as a matter of fact. At least the AAC standard is. The particular AAC encoder or application (use case) you employ might be limited to certain configurations only, though.

Chris

[IgorC]

My biggest surprise was to find out how your ears can fool you during blind tests. Thought I heard a quite clear difference between two audio files A and B, much prefered the sound of file A. Did the same test again, again heard the difference, but it turned out that in this second trial, I had prefered B. Conclusion: human hearing creates its own artifacts, which you need to familiarize yourself with to separate them from the "real" artifacts during blind tests.

That has happened to me too. I think it make sense to conduct the same particular blind test on some sample twice or even more times. That's why from now I perform not only lossless vs codec_a, lossless vs codec_b and then give my final score but aslo perfom ABX/ABXY on codec_a vs codec_b and after that give my final score. And maybe a few hours later or next day it make sense to perform the same test with the same conditions.

After all the blind tests are much more complicated as one should expect.

This post has been edited by IgorC: Feb 11 2011, 01:43

[Fandango]

When I realized that you don't need that small grey cable connected from your CD-ROM drive to your sound card in order to "record" a CD to your HDD.

[SamDeRe81]

When I realized that you don't need that small grey cable connected from your CD-ROM drive to your sound card in order to "record" a CD to your HDD.

Yea that surprised me too LOL xD

[Sebastian Mares]

When I realized that you don't need that small grey cable connected from your CD-ROM drive to your sound card in order to "record" a CD to your HDD.

And when you realize that you might even introduce noise to your audio output because that small grey cable acts as an antenna and picks up all kinds of noise.

[owh]

When I learned that making an exact bit-for-bit copy of an Audio CD wasn't as simple as doing the same for a Data CD -- and then having to explain the phenomenon to others who steadfastly refused to agree - for a while at least

[skexu]

When I realized that CD tracks hasn't really 44 bytes of length...

[.halverhahn]

When I realized that I can't distinguish MP3 from CD (except killersamples) - that was in 1997.