You cannot post new topics. You cannot post replies. You cannot delete posts. You cannot edit your posts. You cannot create polls. You cannot vote in polls.
By the way, We've done listening tests with FLAC and have discovered that there is an audible difference comparing an uncompressed .wav file transmitted through the internet.. to a FLAC file with no compression. The FLAC files have more bass end added. The more compressed the file, the more muddiness in the bass. It's small, but it's there...
That's interesting. Were your listening tests blind, and were you able to identify the cause of the change in audio characteristics? You mentioned "via the Internet", so do you think that is the differentiating factor?
It should be quite easy to compress a FLAC file locally, uncompress it and then do a bit-for-bit comparison with the original file. The amount of FLAC compression used doesn't actually create a lossy file, it is just slower and more CPU intensive. To be honest, I'd be really surprised if FLAC compression isn't completely loss-less, but it's certainly worth more investigation.
Have you run similar experiments on the (lesser-used) Monkey's Audio?
Thanks for the replies! I truly think that a decisive move to sell downloads beyond redbook audio quality is the way to keep quality recorded music alive. MP3s are worth at most $0.99 and CDs are damaged goods for a whole host of reasons (loudness wars, the aborted promotion of DVD-A and SACD as something better, general RIAA hate, ...).
Originally posted by cookiemarco
It happens that before started the recording we did a listening test
and found that analog was the best medium and chose to record the Blue
Coast Collection on 2", with a backup to DSD.
Pete Townsend said much the same in the EQ interview. I appreciate your honesty, but then you (the recording sellers) have a problem. It's a much less compelling sales proposition to offer something almost-but-not-as-good as the master tape. You need to keep the research going to find the perfect digital archive/mastering format. Double-rate DSD? DXD? Maybe floating-point 1-bit audio! :-) ;-)
We've done listening tests with FLAC and have discovered that there is an audible difference comparing an uncompressed .wav file transmitted through the internet.. to a FLAC file with no compression. The FLAC files have more bass end added. The more compressed the file, the more muddiness in the bass. It's small, but it's there...
?!? You must be hearing "second-order effects". http://flac.sourceforge.net/ : "FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec". I'm not disputing the two paths to audio output could sound different, but the 1s and 0s are the same.
a workshop I gave to our Bay Area Audiophile Society
Joined: 03 May 2008
United States
Offline
Posts: 0
Posted: 29 Dec 2008 at 11:20am
I appreciate your knowledge of this. The consumer tends to be educated by what they read rather than actual fact by testing themselves.
I understand the 'theory' of 1's and 0's, but it has been my job as a beta tester to do the listening tests for 20 years. I have learned (the hard way) that you can't believe what you read. My tests are always blindfold and involved several people and several retests.... as was the case with FLAC.
I must say that many mastering engineers 'trust' that FLAC is 1/0 reconstituted, but have never done the test. Frankly, I think we all want to BELIEVE that is true because it would make our jobs a LOT easier if it was. Especially for a record label, like ours. But, I wanted to make sure before luring people to buy. Certainly, moving files would be much easier if they were smaller. Which led us to testing throughly... and through the entire process, so, we emailed ourselves as our customers would recieve our files.... that's how we discovered the differences, which I'm sure are unaudible on most systems. I used my home system (Jean Marie Reynaud, Offrandes and Orfeos with Nelson Pass amps and expensive cables we build) to do the listening tests. We did it several times.
Again, I don't dispute the 1/0 argument, but I think there may be corruption to the 1/0's somewhere in the chain... which means it's possible to fix if we admit to the problem (we being the industry which hates change) and stops continuing parading falsehoods. I've already lived through ealier misconceptions with the early digital tape formats and it cost us (and others ) lots of masters dear to our hearts.
I have two businesses... mostly, I am a recording engineer and producer for others. My label is in it's infancy. They have very different business models. I am compelled to strive for excellence with Blue Coast Records, however, as a studio owner/engineer/producer I am forced to 'flavor of the day' when it comes to my clients. We must provide all the formats requested and live with what our other labels need to satisfy their customer... which is low end audio, unfortunately.
All I can do is help dispell the rumours and ask that fans do the listening tests themselves. Perhaps we can rally to force the industry to create a better format for masters. Until then, we still promote analog tape as the best method for archival, mastering, etc. It is my belief that internet audio as mp3's is best used as a promotional tool. If you can get 99 cents, great! ;) We don't offer our downloads on itunes, by the way.
thanks for your continued comments. maybe we'll make a difference someday.
Joined: 11 Jul 2006
United States
Offline
Posts: 260
Posted: 29 Dec 2008 at 6:05pm
Originally posted by Stuart Robinson
FLAC can compress 24-bit 192kHz files, in fact I have quite a few. There are a number of websites offering FLAC downloads that are greater than 44kHz 16-bit.
Stuart,
Could you give us more information about these sites? So far, I'm familiar with HDtracks, and a few punk rock sites. Reference Recordings is offering data DVDs with their 176.2/24 master files, but I'm afraid I don't have the hardware to play that yet. Deutsche Grammophon just recently started selling FLAC 44.1/16 tracks, and those are very nice, though you have to massage the ID tags a bit, like adding the correct track numbers.
In fact, I would say that it's very important for any online music seller to have correct ID tags. It seems like a small thing, but it's pretty annoying to have to edit them all by hand. I think if you make your downloadable files very easily integratable into iTunes with the correct info, pictures, and format, you'd make a lot of people happy.
The other exciting thing about FLAC (and some other container formats) is that it can do multichannel as well.
Also, I recently discovered that the Popcorn Hour box will stream 96/24 WAV, but you still need a PC to do higher than that. It seems the PS3 has all the necessary hardware to do this and higher sample rates, but can't due to software limitations.
So far, I'm familiar with HDtracks, and a few punk rock sites. Reference Recordings is offering data DVDs with their 176.2/24 master files, but I'm afraid I don't have the hardware to play that yet. Deutsche Grammophon just recently started selling FLAC 44.1/16 tracks, and those are very nice, though you have to massage the ID tags a bit, like adding the correct track numbers.
You've probably already seen the 2L files (they're promising a high resolution download service) from: http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html
Linn Records was another I was thinking of. You have to sort through their catalogue a little as a number are 44/16, but their titles are quite varied: http://www.linnrecords.com/index.aspx
iTrax have a fairly large catalogue (all AIX Records, of course). http://www.itrax.com/ Their downloads are not FLAC however, but many other formats. You could always transcode the WMA lossless or the PCM (two-channel only).
Originally posted by Andre Yew
I think if you make your downloadable files very easily integratable into iTunes with the correct info, pictures, and format, you'd make a lot of people happy.
Who uses iTunes?! ;-)
The scrobbing of Last.FM bugs me, I'm an old fuddy-duddy and have my artists as "Lastname, Firstname" and it doesn't understand that.
Joined: 03 May 2008
United States
Offline
Posts: 0
Posted: 30 Dec 2008 at 6:25pm
Stuart, you are a funny guy! Ya know, one thing I miss in this forum are the smiley faces. The European and Asian forums have lots to choose from and we use them ALOT. With a google translator, it's amazing how many 'friends' you can have in this world.
I had to give up on last name, first name during my first encounter with internet audio with Liquid Audio back in 1997... it used to bug me, but it was worse when no one had any standard and you couldn't find anything. Anyway, being in the right place, right time, it happens I was the audio engineer on the first concert upload/download piece for L.A. Worldwide availability within 20 minutes with full copy protection.. ah, those were the days....
For some reason, it's not widely known, but you can zip up any file with as many tracks as you like, whether dsd or whatever.. and send it through the internet, as we're doing with Blue Coast Records. We have 44.1/24 bit multitrack files of the Stereophile sessions for BAAS available for free.... http://bluecoastrecords.com/baas.html the trick is how the consumer is going to play them...
Since everything is on DSD, we can go higher at a later date. Thanks, for keeping this forum active!
Joined: 11 Jul 2006
United States
Offline
Posts: 260
Posted: 31 Dec 2008 at 4:03pm
Thanks Stuart. The Linn website is quite a treasure trove, especially with the 5.1 96/24 material.
How do you play back your high-rate PCM files? One way I suppose is to burn them to DVD-A, but that seems pretty inconvenient. I was tempted for like 1 minute by the Majik DS, but my good sense got the better of me.
Joined: 06 Mar 2009
United States
Offline
Posts: 0
Posted: 06 Mar 2009 at 6:43pm
We have been providing HDtracks with 88.2k files from DSD masters. This sample rate was chosen because DSD is clocked at 44.1 and to prevent files which are too prohibitively large to download.
We have been approached by several labels to start downloads of DSD and DXD files. Right now we are trying to see what the interest is and if it is marketable.
We do have all the DSD files for HDtracks in case they need for future downloads when internet speeds can support them.
IP Logged
