Incorrect. You're mistaking one type of compression from another. There is no dynamic range correction as part of lossy encoding (at least MP3, MP4, oog, AAC, etc.)
Peak normalizing will make no difference to anything.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Neil Young speaks out against excessive compression
- Thread starter chuck3
- Start date
Incorrect. You're mistaking one type of compression from another. There is no dynamic range correction as part of lossy encoding (at least MP3, MP4, oog, AAC, etc.)
Peak normalizing will make no difference to anything.
A few years back, I was traveling frequently and it made a big difference as to how much of my music library I could fit onto an iPod or iriver player with a finite amount of storage. I ripped all of my CDs to FLAC or WavPack for archival purposes, but for purposes of being able to load up a portable player and listen to what I wanted to on a plane or in a hotel room, lossy compression made much more sense, and actually, still does considering that storage space on portable players has not significantly increased in several years. When I went through the exercise of doing ABX testing to see what compression rate to use, I was really shocked at the results.
No, I'm not. And one of the several ways that you can squeeze data down to a 10th it's size is by caring less about fine grained dynamic differences. Every one of those codecs will reduce the crest factor of the source material.
That's a nice companion "grouchy old man" comment because it ignores the fact that anything that takes 30 minutes to dowload today, won't take 30 minutes to download next year, the year after, etc. because transmission technologies are constantly improving. Anything that, today, can only hold 30 albums worth of this space-music will be replaced by something that can hold 10-times that in a year or two. And VERY soon you'll be dinosaur for even talking about storing 30 albums on a portable device because that approach has lost out to cloud storage, streaming services, whatever. The not-enough-audiophiles argument loses because Neil's concept could ultimately be a feeder for streaming services -- so you wouldn't NEED consumers for that tech itself, just streaming services that can find enough subscribers willing to pay $1.50 per track instead of .99. From a technology standpoint there are so many reasons why current limitations like these are simply not relevant. Neil-land is thinking ahead, and that's a good thing.
Do one of three things please:
a) Find any literature backing up the claim that any of the lossy codecs we're describing here use dynamic range compression. Many of these encoders (including LAME, the gold standard for MP3) are open source, so you should have an easy time with this.
b) Take a lossless or uncompressed sound file. Compress it using LAME. Run a RMS or loudness level analysis on the two files. (foobar does this too - it's magic!) Post your results.
c) Take a listening test of your own using foobar. Post your results.
No, he doesn't have to prove anything. He's pushing for a technological innovation -- and the point missed by many here is that you can't just say FLAC and assume that NY's plans are already moot. He wants something else -- if he gets it, THEN you can say whether or not it's the same as FLAC, better, worse, whatever. THEN you can say "there's no difference." THEN, assuming he says "Yes, this is better than FLAC," you can say "PROVE IT." Until then, attacking what you believe to be his hearing ability is meaningless. It's an indisputable fact (based even just on the negative comments in this thread) that there ARE people who feel digital formats are too lossy -- right or wrong, those people exist. So there's a market, there are consumers, there is a need -- however you want to put it.
I'd also point out that, as a nearsighted person with glasses, the poor state of my vision doesn't prohibit me from assessing the quality of corrective eyewear technology. In fact, the worse my vision gets, the more I appreciate improvements in lens technology. If a guy has bad hearing to start with, is it plausible he would hear more from a perfect audio stream (say, live) than a 16kbps MP3 recording? Would he hear more in a 320kbps than a 16? We're talking about relative quality of the recordings, so the efficiency of the listener's ears don't necessarily mean he is unqualified to have an opinion.
I'm looking for anywhere NY claimed that. But for the car he DID have built, and continues to invest in the evolution of, and intends to share the technology from, and that he DOES drive around, is easy to find if you just go look on google...hell type "neil young water powered car" and you'll find his actual project...
I've already educated myself as to how this stuff works. You should do the same.
Here's something: Invalid Link Removed
Note the correlation between encoding errors and high crest factor sections in the material. Lossy codecs absolutely change the fine scale dynamics of the material.
Or you could spend a couple decades listening to a wide variety of source material on a wide variety of very good monitoring chains, after which this stuff would be obvious.
Here's something: Invalid Link Removed
Note the correlation between encoding errors and high crest factor sections in the material. Lossy codecs absolutely change the fine scale dynamics of the material.
Or you could spend a couple decades listening to a wide variety of source material on a wide variety of very good monitoring chains, after which this stuff would be obvious.
My own personal unscientific-unblind-arbitrary-for my own amusement experiment:
Last week I went and bought the New Lamb of God album, Resolution on cd. Being a "noisy" metal album this one went into my own personal category of "not buying on itunes" So, I just went and downloaded the track "Number Six" from itunes I chose it because there is a lot going on in the song, plenty of meedley-meedley guitars, bass only moments, moments with sounds all across the spectrum from , etc. I then burned the song onto a cd. And went to my car, which has a pretty freaking solid system in it and A/B'd them.
The downloaded track does NOT have as much "punch" or "air". EDIT: It is a VERY subtle difference.
Is this scientific? No.
Do you have to believe me? No.
Is it placebo effect? Anything is possible.
Am I going to take the time to perform a scientific study and present my results to the world? No.
Will I agree that there is never any discernible difference in the mp3's you get from itunes and cd's? NOOOOOOOO.
Last week I went and bought the New Lamb of God album, Resolution on cd. Being a "noisy" metal album this one went into my own personal category of "not buying on itunes" So, I just went and downloaded the track "Number Six" from itunes I chose it because there is a lot going on in the song, plenty of meedley-meedley guitars, bass only moments, moments with sounds all across the spectrum from , etc. I then burned the song onto a cd. And went to my car, which has a pretty freaking solid system in it and A/B'd them.
The downloaded track does NOT have as much "punch" or "air". EDIT: It is a VERY subtle difference.
Is this scientific? No.
Do you have to believe me? No.
Is it placebo effect? Anything is possible.
Am I going to take the time to perform a scientific study and present my results to the world? No.
Will I agree that there is never any discernible difference in the mp3's you get from itunes and cd's? NOOOOOOOO.
Does your car CD player have a setting that allows you to play random tracks from a CD?
I think so. but I only downloaded the one song and don't really intend to pay to download the rest of the album since I already bought it on cd...so what are you driving at?
Same here! My first player held 512mb. So I would generally have 96k copies for my player since I really didn't care all that much -- I just wanted a lot of music on the player. But now I have a 16GB device and, really, it's never full because the dozen or so albums I listen to regularly don't change so frequently that I need a ton of storage.
But I'm surprised by this:
It has changed dramatically in the past several years and there are big improvements that show you exactly where things are going, and what the near-future likely holds. That is unless, of course, the cloud fad takes hold and everyone buys into the even-more-vast on-line storage options...
Uh nope! Not going for it! I've recorded tons of stuff with ambient and loud background noise, in wav format, using pro field recorders and also a Zoom H2! When encoded to mp3, nothing audible was eliminated. To the best of my knowledge, the encoding process eliminates most 'inaudible' artifacts! Or frequencies outside the normal human ear's range! Nothing audible is eliminated!
If what you're saying happened in any study, my opinion is that the encoder was manipulated to do so (if it's possible to do) in an effort to convince folks that lossy is 'bad'! Just my opinion. I've been at mp3's since the beginning and have always strived for the best results. I have fooled many an 'audiophile'!
You said you're using iTunes. Rip that track in ALAC. Rip the same track in AAC. Burn both files back to a CD, put your car player on random, and without looking, so how many times out of 20 you can correctly identify which one you're listening to.
bongomania
Commercial User
It was a 2008 interview with Neil on the Charlie Rose TV show.
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
Maybe I misheard him, but I distinctly recall him saying his giant Detroit car runs on water. I'm not going to watch the whole 53 minute thing again to find out if that wasn't exactly what he said.
DWBass said:
That's what I am saying. When the vacuum cleaner is on, you friend's voice becomes inaudible, relative to louder sounds in the same frequency bands.
This is not merely an analogy. This is what happens.
Merely removing inaudible bands wouldn't do enough. This is the magic of the MP3 revolution.
Has it? Perhaps I've lost touch with the market, but it seems to me that aside from the iPod Classic, no-one even makes a high capacity portable audio player any more.
