I think there are valid reasons to complain about 160kbit CBR even without being able to ABX it. For example:

* Better audio gear may bring out the flaws.
* People may start noticing artifacts after practice.
* Transcoding.
* Even if you don't hear it, some people are perfectionists. Logical or not, it makes them uneasy.

It is to the most extend a myth, that recognizing artifacts is a matter of high quality equipment. A very successful codec - i dont remember which one (was either LAME, Vorbis or MPC) - was developed and tuned on really crappy equipment. Sometimes, it is even the opposite: low-quality gear can create distortions, with which the codecs cannot cope - that way making artifacts audible. Current psychoacoustic compression works a bit different than you think it does. Simplified one could say, that it works by hiding the flaws in other sounds - those asumptions are based on normal "proper" playback. Thus, "accurate" equipment does not conflict with that technique.... inaccurate equipment however could change the scenario so much, that the asumptions which the encoders made, are no longer true. The only reason why owners of really crappy equipment dont seem to care when that happens, is because it sounds crappy anyways.. and because such people often do not pay close attention to the sound.


Thats true. But someway i really doubt that most people are thinking about this scenario, when they are complaining.


MP3 generally is the worst format to transcode from. If you buy mp3 tracks to transcode them, then you are shooting yourself in the foot. MP3 definatelly isn't meant for transcoding.


Audiophiles think so too. However, audiophiles are at least more consistent in that regard, than the ha.org V2 fanbase: They go for lossless since they are "perfectionists".

To clarify: what i disapprove of is neither VBR nor V2. There are reasonable arguments for both. There are also arguments for other settings. What i disapprove of is a mentality, which has forgotten the reasons and rationale behind certain conventions.... and is instead just pushing conventions for the sake of the conventions themselves - this is called a "dogma": Marching blindly into a direction without knowing anymore why - and thus no longer recognizing when it doesnt make sense.

I find this thread interesting.

1) My feeling about this is that Radiohead messed up an opportunity to make a clear statement. Offering the album in MP3s encoded at say -V0 LAME 3.97 would have been the brave thing to do and would have sent much larger ripples through the very unimaginative music industry (Radiohead have, I imagine - though don't know - plenty of money and will make plenty more on touring and merchandising and some CD sales for people who like objects to have and to hold - and thus could have afforded to be this generous).

2) Also, I remember some restaurants doing the same "pay as much as you like" thing. The big difference is, of course, you pay after you've consumed the product. That's how that model works best --- "did you like it? if so pay us what you think it was worth". What Radiohead said in effect is "pay us what you think it will be worth" but we're not going to give you any idea of the ingredients or the quality of those ingredients.

To continue with this rather clumsy metaphor -- whether the punter can taste the difference between 160kbps and 320kbps does not really affect point (1) --- it merely means the punters know that Radiohead have watered down the gravy (and thus diluted their statement - to the point where instead it reeked of marketing.

And yes I've heard the album and no I don't think I could ABX it against 320kbps or lossless - though I may well give it a go.

Rachel.

Playing devils advocate:

If radiohead decided, that they wanted to offer NO CHOICE over the format/quality, then 160 kbit CBR MP3 was the best choice they could have made. How come? Well, consider this:

- if you offer just one format, it must be guaranteed to be compatible with any player which the customer may have. In rare circumstances, stupid players have issues with VBR/ABR. Pling! ABR and VBR is off the table.
- if you offer just one format, and consider that transcoding is evil (especially with mp3) - and that transcoding is an additional hassle for the user - then you would want to offer the files in a way, so that transcoding isn't necessary. Now, people will want to also load them on their DAPs.... maybe also flash-based ones where not that much space is available. Pling! Anything above 160 kbits is off the table.
- You want to seem better than the competition qualitywise.... so standard 128kbit would seem a bit mediocre..... thus, we are left with just one setting which fullfills all mentioned criteria: 160kbps CBR MP3.

The catch in the above reasoning of course is in the preasumptions: Why not offer the user the choice between multiple formats? This is where radiohead missed up a big chance. That doesn't make what they delivered bad... its "okay".... but without too much effort, they could have made it even better and that way giving their "marketing stunt" even more punch.... that would have been a win-win for all involved.

To continue the above thoughts:
If i would be releasing an album on the web, i would do the following, depending on how many options i am capable to offer...

1 Format only:
I would do the same as radiohead: 160kbps CBR MP3.

2 Formats:
If i had lots of traffic available, i would go with 128kbit MP3 and FLAC bundled with an easy to use transcoder. If my traffic were limited, i would go with 128kbit CBR MP3 and 256kbit CBR MP3 (still no VBR here.).

3 Formats:
I would offer 128kbit CBR MP3, V1 MP3 and FLAC.

Where i would strongly differ from radiohead however, would be the pricing. I would offer no option of paying less than 1$ for the entire album. If people dont even want to pay my traffic, then dont waste my traffic and instead get it from filesharing! High bitrate lossy and lossless would only be available at 2$ and up for the same reason.

holy hell - how are you guys still arguing about this...

Only if you pre-ordered...

Correct. The problem is that the people who would have pre-ordered were the fans - and that's not exactly best bunch of people for Radiohead to short change/dupe.

But yes, I get your point.

For once it is LAME...

I agree it's not all bad.

1. It's Lame (and I don't think CBR has really changed much since 3.93 so that's no problem)

2. It's joint stereo, so they got that part right.

3. 160kbps Lame is not bad quality. Sure it could be have been better but I assume they were making a trade-off between quality on one hand and compatibility, download filesize and server bandwidth on the other. Remember that they might not have made a whole lot of money from this "name your price" method but they still have to pay for the server costs. So to do some downloaders for that matter. You know some people still pay per MB with their internet service and lots of people still think that 128 kbps MP3 is just about "perfect" anyway (so potentially some people might even have been alienated if the download was too big). Personally I think they should have gone for 192kbps mp3 if they were to offer just one format, but 160kbps is not all that bad.

And would be thought of utterly insane outside the boundaries of this forum..

There are about 10 more people around the world who would complain about such an act.

what about conducting a listening test, once the CD is out? ^^

Not true, they said you would get the new album by Radiohead. They just didn't mention what size plate it would be served on

I think they did the right thing, they pulled off a great publicity stunt in the mean time. Of course they knew their album would be downloadable right after the release anyway. And nobody in their right minds expected a lossless download, or did you?

I personally waited until it became clear what the bit rates would be, now I know it's LAME 160 kps I can go and pay what I think that is worth.

Article on State.com regarding Radiohead's digital download.

edit: surprisingly, it's fairly accurate regarding encoding and transparency.

More on common misinformation:

How much is Radiohead worth? (the Inquirer.net)

The band are clearly doing this with at least the acceptance of Big Music. " In Rainbows" is being published by industry bigwigs Warner/Chapell, and there will still be a standard CD release. This perhaps goes some way to explaining why the MP3 files supplied are in low quality 160Kbps format, and therefore unsuitable for playing on a home stereo system. It's possible that this will have affected some people's buying decisions, although the download site doesn't exactly make this easy to find out.

................................

And my answer to that:


It's practically impossible for any listener, even with golden ears, to distinguish a well-encoded 160 kbps CBR MP3 file, encoded with the LAME encoder

Read this article on slate.com and learn a bit about MP3 compression:

http://www.slate.com/id/2175882/fr/flyout

I defy you to distinguish a CD from a 160 kbps LAME-encoded MP3 file in a home stereo system. 99.99% sure you won't be able to do such a thing.

Grrr... this is what the unfounded backlash of a few idiot self-proclaimed audiophiles has done: turn the general media into audio snobs.

The whole thing is being tainted by a few people who are looking at kilobits per second.

"the MP3 files supplied are in low quality 160Kbps format, and therefore unsuitable for playing on a home stereo system."

Feckin eedjuts.

Ya, well... this whole thread could have been avoided by giving folks a choice in the first place: 128, 192, 320 MP3 as well as FLAC and perhaps mid-bitrate OOG as well. Hell, bandwidth is dirt cheap. Most companies will offer nearly unlimited bandwidth for sub-$150.00 per month. And for a band the size of Radiohead - WTF is $150.00 bucks!? Hell, they could always hire a geek to set up their own mini-server-farm of perhaps a dozen Ubuntu Servers and lease a line for less! PCs are freakishly cheap and the OS is free.

I take issue with the convoluted process of purchasing the tracks on the site, what a load O lameness! I found it klugy – for Pete’s sake, just make the godforsaken things available as a series of clickable links with a 'donate' option. Additionally, what about 30-second streaming previews so folks could see if they even wanted to bother with the band's music in the first place? This stuff is definitely ‘not for everyone’.

Have been listening to the new album for a few days now (playing it on the PC at this moment in fact), and while I'm not a huge fan of their work, I must admit, the lads have loads of talent - a shipload more than me for starters! However, would I have paid for the music in the first place had I been able to hear streaming previews of say, 30-second clips – nope… Their sound isn’t exactly my cup of tea, and I should have the ability to hear at least tidbits of it, at any bitrate / at or over / 96Kb/s, before I offer them a cent in the first place.

Andrew D.

www.cdnav.com

I thought it was intrusive of them to demand my home address and mobile phone number just for a free download. I put in fake values, of course.

And for everyone saying that nobody can tell the difference between 160 kb/s and CD, it's not that cut-and-dry. The CBR part in particular can really hurt the quality. At -V 4, most music will produce bitrates averaging around 160, but the encoder can use much more bits if it's necessary. But with CBR, the encoder's hands are tied, and it might have to make sacrifices. It's not like MP3 is really secure at those bit rates anyway. AAC or Vorbis, maybe.

I'm pretty sure I can hear characteristic MP3 artifacts on cymbals at points in the album. When lossless rips hit the internet in December I'll be sure to try ABXing it.

I've been noticing that too. I don't know if it's an effect they put there, if it was caused during mastering, or if it's an MP3 artifact. Regardless, they aren't intrusive to my listening, I still think it sounds good. I'll be buying this album when it comes out so I'm anxious to see if I can ABX them.

Here's an interesting perspective on this issue.

"Maybe "backlash" is too strong of a word, but the band's noble experiment is looking a little less noble after some of the comments made by Radiohead and its management about bitrates and CD sales. (See the Financial Times and this Bit Player post).

While it's true that 160k exceeds the standard iTunes quality, it seems that some fans were treating the download as a substitute for the purchase of a CD and paid CD prices (or even a little extra). If the 160k decision was made to preserve CD sales, which seems likely, then the failure to disclose the bitrate before thousands of people paid for it (with some paying more for it than the 256k versions of the band's previous albums at Amazon) was a tad disingenuous."

Most of it has all been said before, but the idea of belatedly uploading 320kbps files for dissatisfied users to download is an interesting one.

Need I point out that many bands have their album available on iTunes at (in the UK) 89p a track and still release a CD?

From FT link:

"If we didn't believe that when people hear the music they will want to buy the CD, then we wouldn't do what we are doing," Bryce Edge of Courtyard Management told Music Week, the UK's industry magazine."

Oh dear, they still haven't got it, have they? Not everyone is going to go out and buy 'the cd'. God knows how loud the CD will be. I'd have to rip it and replaygain it.

Radiohead and co. - you stink!

Edit:

"You can't listen to a Radiohead record on MP3 [the digital music file standard] and hear the detail; it's impossible," Mr Edge said. "We can't understand why record companies don't go on the offensive and say what a great piece of kit CDs are. CDs are undervalued and sold too cheaply."

What a buffoon.

Edit again:

thanks bruce. I am now going to bin all my mp3 albums and I can now experience the convenience (once again) of constantly having to change the volume of the CD, and get up to change the CD when I'm bored. that's progress...

I paid $0 for the download. I think I got an absolutely fantastic bargain. 160kbps CBR MP3 is not great, but it's also not altogether lousy, and I have to consider that whoever created the download package may have been ignorant of MP3, or they may have had constraints such as bandwidth to deal with.

Anyway, I was so happy I ordered the $80 package.

Talk about successful marketing.

I've came across a problem. I read 3.93 was a bug ridden version of lame, which was very quickly replaced by 3.93.1, so i wonder if my issue has anything to do with that.

When i try to decompress them to (44.1) .wav files, i get the following errors (top pic EAC, bottom Soundforge):




It was to be a temp solution until the boxset comes through, and i can do proper rips for myself. but alas...

take_the_veil,

I encounter no problems when decoding these files with LAME.exe from a command line.

May i ask how i go about doing that?

with the --decode switch.

If you don't know how to use the cmd line, try lamedropXPd

start lamedrop ... drag-n-drop

Thank you very much, it worked perfectly. I wonder why EAC and SF had a problem with them?...

7digital are now offering In Rainbows at 320 CBR or in FLAC, on pre-order for 31st December.

£9.99 for the FLAC version though; I suspect I would be able to get the CD for cheaper.

Maybe soon we can see some ABX results.

Edit: Looks like I was right. CD Wow has it on pre-release for £7.99.

I'm sure the rest of the world can get it for half that price.

$10 $80 pay bad


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