The title of your post was a deliberate incitement. The combination of "compressed" and "better" is bound to cause alarm. I addressed the Trojan Horse: any answer restricting itself to the technical issue appears to accept a more fundamental proposition about value.
On the technical issue
Is this true? There must be a lot of different ways of going about the general aim of file compression, which is to reduce data whilst retaining information. Removing certain frequencies may be part of that, but surely not all?
Sounds to me like some forms of compression aim for "sounds the same", and others for "is equally intelligible". Whichever, I think if compression is done well, it should reduce the load on your mind so it can process the essentials with the minimum of effort. The quiet may be lack of HF noise, but the blackness is just zero brain activity
Which demonstrates the danger of sweeping generalisations. Most times I hear music it is compressed to some degree, at source or destination. Nearly all music is first heard by most people in compressed form, via browsing, radio, musak, etc. We try to grab the best bits from the public domain and ruch back to our nests to disassemble them, morsel by tasty morsel, in private. For that we might want the hi-res version. I just want the real McCoy.
Yes.
Ian
The title of your post was a deliberate incitement. The combination of "compressed" and "better" is bound to cause alarm. I addressed the Trojan Horse: any answer restricting itself to the technical issue appears to accept a more fundamental proposition about value.
On the technical issue
Is this true? There must be a lot of different ways of going about the general aim of file compression, which is to reduce data whilst retaining information. Removing certain frequencies may be part of that, but surely not all?
Sounds to me like some forms of compression aim for "sounds the same", and others for "is equally intelligible". Whichever, I think if compression is done well, it should reduce the load on your mind so it can process the essentials with the minimum of effort. The quiet may be lack of HF noise, but the blackness is just zero brain activity
Which demonstrates the danger of sweeping generalisations. Most times I hear music it is compressed to some degree, at source or destination. Nearly all music is first heard by most people in compressed form, via browsing, radio, musak, etc. We try to grab the best bits from the public domain and ruch back to our nests to disassemble them, morsel by tasty morsel, in private. For that we might want the hi-res version. I just want the real McCoy.
Yes.
Ian
Of course you don't remove all frequencies in a range but rather as Dirk95100 described you cut down on resolution where it matters the least which is the high frequencies. How much resolution is lost depends of course on how much space you want to save. There are also special compressions like voice where they remove frequencies not supposed to be in the voice range but that is a different kind of compression.
KatieandDad: You are confusing digital file size compression with dynamic compression, what you are describing is dynamic compression done by the masterer. MP3, OGG and similar doesn't do this but rather just reduces the file size while for the ear sounding identical or as close to identical as the file size constraint allows.
You are confusing dynamic range compression with data compression - again.
They are not the same thing.
well, in time, who knows
maybe they will learn something
but as said previously, here or in another thread, it makes a difference to know what you deal with before doing the compression
in any case, Im sure you get the best result if you choose your own compression, and do it yourself
and ofcourse start out with someting 'clean and untouched'
but I have heard compressed music sound surpricingly good
at very loud SPL
classical music
that is a really big problem
something important definately gets lost, no matter how you do the compression
but listening to the radio
boy that hurts my hart deeply
its never going to the same, ever again
thinking about the hard core tuner enthusiasts, poor lads
its gone, period, dead fish
funny to think that musicians love 'compression' on their instruments
actually, I think its preferred for voices as well
so, the music is compressed from the very beginning
and because imstruments sounds better that way
or at least the amplified ones
but if its good for voices as well, I suspect acoustic instruments sounds benefits from compression too
but then, theres compresssion, and theres compression
actually, I think its preferred for voices as well
so, the music is compressed from the very beginning
and because imstruments sounds better that way
or at least the amplified ones
but if its good for voices as well, I suspect acoustic instruments sounds benefits from compression too
but then, theres compresssion, and theres compression
To remove noise. you need to research the differences between noise reduction methods Dolby and DBX stand out as leaders in this field.
In my opinion DBX were always ahead of Dolby. DBX requires commitment to use that method during and after recording, its reward is obvious. Whilst made in the days of 15 ips and 30 ips reel to reel, type 1 DBX use with CD is excellent using a dedicated hard disk recorder like a yamaha CDRHD1500
http://usa.yamaha.com/products/audi...ts/cd-players/cdr-hd1500_black__u/?mode=model
See: dbx® Vintage downloads
Cheers / Chris
In my opinion DBX were always ahead of Dolby. DBX requires commitment to use that method during and after recording, its reward is obvious. Whilst made in the days of 15 ips and 30 ips reel to reel, type 1 DBX use with CD is excellent using a dedicated hard disk recorder like a yamaha CDRHD1500
http://usa.yamaha.com/products/audi...ts/cd-players/cdr-hd1500_black__u/?mode=model
See: dbx® Vintage downloads
Cheers / Chris
dbx, like all compressors, has issues with fast transients. More audible on dbx than Dolby because of higher compression ratio. Atack and release. Music is "pumped", sibilant consonants are accentuated...
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The problems that are attributed at wikipedia are from variable attack release control available on early models such as the 117. The end user either used type 2 rather than type 1, or got the adjustment wrong. this was not the fault of DBX.
Where in contrast the exact ratio of compression to expansion is provided as provided in the 150x, none of these problems occur.
Its a case of once heard ...never going back the other way. I should know owning 5x 150x and 5 Yamaha hard disk recorders.
Cheers / Chris
This is correct and should become a clear distinction in converstation.
Bit compression can be data lossy, but I dare anyone to tell the difference when you use 320 VBR with a LAME encoder vs. the original CD it comes from.
Much like a JEPEGed photograph is VISUALLY indistinguishable from an uncompressed TIFF file as long as the DATA is compressed a maximum of a 6:1 ratio. YMMV based on image content of course, plain color backgrounds will yield smaller files while maintaining visual integrity of the subject.
Same goes for music.
The biggest complaint in the industry is DYNAMIC RANGE compression, which sound like crap on CD or MP3 or AAC..............getting to the root cause of the problem.
"File compression" has wide currency in computing, but it is generally assumed to be lossless. "Data reduction" seems OK to me, but not everyone has a clear concept of the difference between data and information.
The apparent confusion with dynamic range reduction actually makes some sense. If you look at a CD audio file from a distance, this kind of compression appears as a loss of information. Some tracks look pretty much the same from end to end.
I would expect data reduction techniques to show up in the small detail, apparent if you look close up. Perhaps it would appear differently, depending on all sorts of things.
There must be heaps of different data reduction algorithms. The popular file formats are only destinations. For pop, a filter to recognise the key and subtract everything except the three major chords would work well.
Midi is good because you can leave out all the information about who's playing what. Silences are really black. 100% lossless and more! Synthesisers are much more interesting than DACs, too. Can't think why it never took off.
Ian
The apparent confusion with dynamic range reduction actually makes some sense. If you look at a CD audio file from a distance, this kind of compression appears as a loss of information. Some tracks look pretty much the same from end to end.
I would expect data reduction techniques to show up in the small detail, apparent if you look close up. Perhaps it would appear differently, depending on all sorts of things.
There must be heaps of different data reduction algorithms. The popular file formats are only destinations. For pop, a filter to recognise the key and subtract everything except the three major chords would work well.
Midi is good because you can leave out all the information about who's playing what. Silences are really black. 100% lossless and more! Synthesisers are much more interesting than DACs, too. Can't think why it never took off.
Ian
Perhaps this is true. However I'm a firm believer, like the Unsharp Mask tool in Photoshop, that it's better to whisper than shout.
Never use a sledgehammer to drive a tack, which is what overly compressed audio is like.
Define old.
Today I heard a grammophone. You could actually hear the diaphram bottoming out, yet the sound was pronounced "clear". Noise was horrific, dynamic range of a few decibels.
The problem will be the same no matter what format is used:
In its infancy, a few people will pick it up, and find their equipment is outdated shortly after being purchased, as the new technology is being developed. Quality at that point won't be fantastic, as people haven't finished "getting it right" - remember when some stereo recordings had the LF content panned to one side? - silly idea (with hindsight), but it was done.
As it develops, more and more start to take up the new technology, so the manufacturers go from taking the time over each new development, to making as many as possible, as fast and cheap as possible. Non-optimal, sure, but profit must be made!
The solution (for me, and, I suspect, others) - make your own music. I've found more joy in playing an instrument than listening to my stereo.
Chris
With 24 bit depth ((over 16 million discrete subdivisons of signal strength (voltage)) We can capture dynamic range from wind blowing across blades of grass at 5 MPH to a jet plane on take off..............but there are a very few loudspeakers in the correct, quiet ambient environment that can reproduce it. IOW, you don't need 120 db of uncompressed digital dynamics, but we have had it available cheaply for quite some time. But there is a very small market for it, unfortunately.
Reality check: It's the young teens that spend the money on music, and the accumulation of # of tunes at an "acceptable" amount of compression is what drives the business of selling recordings, not the over 50 audiophile males.
Reality check: It's the young teens that spend the money on music, and the accumulation of # of tunes at an "acceptable" amount of compression is what drives the business of selling recordings, not the over 50 audiophile males.
I think he literally meant the earliest meaning of a gramophone - the fully acoustical type and an acoustical not electrical recording. (1920s or earlier technology)
Don't worry, there are no ADC/DAC capable of real 24 bit resolution. They all top at some 18-20dB. The rest of the bits are just noise and distortions (THD+N).
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