A good soundcard is certainly a start but you're also comparing MP3's to CD's. It doesn't matter how good the card is, you are never going to get the quality of a CD from an MP3

That is a well known fact. To prevent further misunderstanding, let's just say I want to play a CD from my laptop and get the same quality than playing it from the home audio system cd player. I used "playing mp3s from laptop" because it is what i intend to do and most people using laptop intend to do as well. But this is not what we are talking about. The source of the audio signal might be a poor quality 30 khz sine wave. We want to have the same poor quality sine wave without further signal degradation coming out of the home audio system speakers.

Just replace "playing mp3s from laptop" with "playing high quality unscratched polished CDs from laptop" and the problem is still there and is exactly what this thread is all about.

Let's just not fall into these useless details and keep this thread about the main subject please.

Ok, I understand now, you don't want to further the degridation of audio with a poor quality card.

CL cards have always been poor quality. their marketing dept. and support for gaming is what keeps them alive. Going with an M-Audio card is going to yeild the results you want.

Do you mean technical quality, or perceivable quality, when you're speaking about MP3 vs. CD? If you mean perceivable quality, then you have to provide ABX-results or otherwise shut up - if you just wanted to troll, then as well shut up.

- Lyx

No I wans't trolling, I wanted Vorker to understand that MP3 are going to sound worse then CD's. I had no idea of his hearing abilities. Many people don't understand the difference. He has stated he knows the difference so we can move on from the assumtions.

The "average" person who encodes mp3's use 128kbps and many many times they state they can hear no difference between this bitrate and a CD. Anyone who has descent hearing and a good audio system (as I would assume Vorker has) can certainly hear the difference.

If you have to abx a 128kbit mp3 against a cd to hear the poor quality then you have some pretty lousy hearing my friend.


Again, without people stating their knowledge of MP3's or knowing how well their hearing is it's impossible to know if thye are hearing the differance in the quality of the card or the lossyness of an MP3. My appologies if I have offended anyone.

ack our network glitched, sorry about the double post.

You're welcome to prove that you can tell the difference between lossless and LAME --preset extreme

You can also ask anyone with a good hearing for help in performing a successful ABX-test under valid conditions and with normal music.

Or you could retract your above statements and say that 128kbit CBR doesn't have the same perceivable quality as CDs(there are enough existing ABX-tests for that to be backed up). You partially already hinted into that direction.

- Lyx

Perhaps at a later time. As Volkar said let's keep this thread about the main subject

I don't need to. I've been a sound engineer for both live production and studio recording since 1979. I know good and well what sounds good and what doesn't.

Ok, for the sake of ending this rediculous argument I'll say that 128kbit CBR doesn't have the same perceivable quality as CDs.

Very wrong, here you need to to be allowed to post on this board. No one cares here about your profession and background when it comes claims about perceivable quality - your profession won't save you from placebo and doesn't prove anything because you're still human. Anyways, since the claim has been rendered void, i agree - back to the original topic.

Actually you do

You are in effect claiming that you can ABX all possible LAME modes against lossless. I really doubt you can, so I would like to see your test results, or the retraction of this statement until such time as you can provide results:

Um... old news?

Oh no, not again!

How many "I'm an industry professional - I know what good audio sounds like - I've heard a transcoded 128kbps on a friends walkman so I know that all mp3s sound awful - why should I ABX - Oh OK then - oh dear I failed" threads do we have to have?

Still, maybe we need one per year, and I don't think we've had a really good one yet this year have we?

(Links to similar threads from previous years welcome - just to save us a few pages!)


Kurt, you might enjoy music very much, and you might be very sensitive to sound and quality - and indeed there are some very gifted people who can pick faults in lossy codecs more than most - but everyone has to prove themselves around here. It is possible to ABX the best of mp3 on some sounds under some conditions, but not across the board. Unless you want to prove that you can?

All you've proven so far is that you're a member of a group of people who typically have quite severe hearing loss. No offence meant - but 26 years of live gigs? I suspect you, like me, don't have quite the high frequency hearing that you used to!

Cheers,
David.

Come on people, give the guy a break. I'm beginning to think that some of you are professional lawyers, by the way you try to use everthing he says against him. Read between the lines! Is it so difficult to understand that all Kurt is trying to say is:

- If you have a problem with the sound quality of mp3's, there is a reasonable chance that you encoded them "too small for your hearing".
- At least some people can hear the difference between --alt-preset extreme MP3's and lossless encoding. Since the industry should strive to provide everyone with a copy that sounds as good as possible (yeah, and because artefacts can be exaggerated during mixing), lossless encoding is used. Kurt works in the industry, and although he may or may not be able to ABX --alt-preset extreme MP3's, he doesn't need to. He works in the industry so he knows that lossy encoding is not good enough [for everyone under all circumstances].
- And I think the most impotant thing Kurt was trying to say is, that if Vorkar wants to compare the quality of sound cards/speakers, he should use the same encoding on both, not a CD on one and a ripped MP3 on the other. However transparent your MP3 may be, technically spoken, it's not the original. Equipment with a very screwed response may in theory render the artefacts audible, as may extremely good equipment. And even if it doesn't, it is just "best practice". If you want to test the influence of parameter x (equipment) on result f (sound), you vary ONLY parameter x, and not parameter y (encoding). I hope you ABX freaks don't deny that.

I'm sorry if I'm a little bit harsh, but this discussion is so ridiculous. If you can't derive the above out of wat Kurt said, you're *****
[Calming down. Must... control... blood... pressure]

Lyx, if you must, why don't you just reply to ambiguous posts like Kurt's: "surely, you mean that ....", eventually followed by a smiley? It's a lot more sympathetic than trolling the original topic into oblivion and wasting everybody's time in doing so. Get a life! Kurt already kindly retracted his ambiguous claim, and yet you're not satisfied. What do you want? Public apologies on every f***ing HA forum? Well, at least, it's clear to me who is the troll here.

--- Edit ---
Calmed down again (should stay off that coffee). In defense of everybody who attacked Kurt, I recon that if the first message of this thread would really be the first message of a thread, it would indeed very much look like a troll. Even worse, the inappropriate subtitle "Yet Another TOS #8 violation" confirms this. However, things are not as they seem. As made clear by the second post, it was meant as a reply on an earlier thread "playing mp3s from laptop", started by Volkar, and should be seen in that context. Only, it's a mistery what happened with the original thread; HA's search function doesn't reveal it (or perhaps it's me not understanding the search function ). This may be a mistake by Kurt, or a technical glitch. I've seen this happening before, on usenet and on mailing lists; a technical glitch ripping a statement out of context and firing off a relentless flamewar. I'd suggest some forum administrator to set this right, if possible, before any victims fall. Or at least replace that subtitle.
As for my "trolling" statement above, I aplologise. I shouldn't have been so hot-tempered. Yet, neither should you. So, my advice stands:
- thouroughly read all previous posts
- think about what the poster would have ment with what he wrote before starting a flamewar
- if you must react, be nice rather than pedantic and always give your "opponent" the benefit of the doubt
- don't "kick him when he's down". It's nasty. If someone corrects his mistake, shut up about it unless you have something to say about the original topic.

The original thread is here:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=33176

Kurt's reply was split off into a seperate thread exactly because it was certain to generate this kind of (offtopic) responses. See also Volkar's reply.

The unqualified statement that Kurt started with *is* effectively a typical 'TOS8' post. It was 'somewhat' clarified later, fine. But better to explain oneself clearly the first time, and not have others having to second guess what you're actually trying to say. We have no way to know if your interpretation of his statements is the fully correct one or not.