So I had the privellage and honor to spend a couple hours with Vince Bruzzese of Totem, our area rep and a few other integrators. It was some great discussion, especially looking at the new Element Series driver.

Our rep had a pair of Totem Forest's dialed in for his space (this was at his home) running on a big Bryston amp pushing 600 watts per channel. He had some other PS Audio gear as well, I probably should have taken better note of what was there.

At one point he played a demo of a song ripped in Apple Lossless and ran through some a nice DAC and maybe a few other tricks. It sound really nice, I was very pleased.

Then he played the CD direct...WOW what a HUGE difference, the music performance just blew wide up with a wider stage and much more depth. I was extremely impressed with how good it sounded.

So I have decided to revisit and do some tests myself. I have a few CD's that I have taken and ripped both with WAV and in MP3 320. I really can't say for sure how much of a difference I can notice if any.

I'm just playing on my computer system, so i could definitely use a DAC out of the PC to improve sound. I happened to have a Niles SI-2125 amp that I'm using to power a couple of very old B&W V202 Monitors. Far from a high end setup.

So I guess the question is, can you tell and describe the difference on your system? And what is your system?

I'm thinking most of my clients don't have system good enough to reveal the better sound, but my test ares still premature.

Are you asking if people can hear the difference between lossy MP3 and CD/WAVE rips?

If so, and the data rate is as high as you state (320Kbps), majority of people cannot.

That said, you can train yourself to hear them if you fall in above category. Whether you want to though, is another matter :). So hit the back button if you do not :).

To understand the issue at hand, one needs to understand how we compress a file so much yet have it sound so close to close to the original. I am finishing an article on this but for now, the tricks work well on busier soundtracks, and ones without too many transients.

What is a transient? It is something going from nothing to something without other stuff playing. Think of a solo acoustic guitar. Find some music with that in it and encode it at 128kbps. Yes, I said 128. See if you detect "pre-echo" which is the transient having a ghost version added to it before the actual sound. It should sound grungy and rougher in texture. If you don't hear it, find another track until you do. Alternatively, encode at lower data rate (be mindful that frequency response drops but that is not an issue at higher rates so ignore that effect).

Now this is why I said you don't want to learn this: Once you hear the artifact at lower rates, then you will now hear them at higher rates! Keep upping the bit rate and search for the pre-echo. You will notice its level is going down but it never disappears.

Once you know what to search for, you will be able to hear it even in systems that have poor fidelity.

There are other artifacts however that might be more difficult to hear and hence require a better system. For example, the loss of ambiance comes from elevated noise level (we call that quantization noise). If you don't have a good resolving system to start, that noise level would be below your audio system and hence, not impactfull.

Let me know if I answered the wrong question :)

I got a pair of ear buds from a distributor and although I almost never use headphones or ear buds and don't own an iPod/iPhone/iPad, I though I would give them a shot using iTunes. There was nothing I could do to make them sound good and I immediately decided that they were still like the original Sony Fontopia ear buds from the early '80s, when the Walkman first came out. I was wrong. I have a ReQuest music server and it has a feature called NetSynch for iTunes and it transfers the music in the same form as what's on the servers' hard drive, per my setting it for whatever bit rate I want. I used 192KHz and it sounded like absolute crap. A few days later, I needed to use the Media Direct that my Dell laptop has and I was amazed by the difference, even though the music is also MP3 (AFAIK). Huge difference- not like my speakers but he sound was decent, especially considering the retail price of $29.95.

Audioholics did an interview with a recording engineer and he played some files at different bit rates, showed that the info lacking is significant and that there's not much chance of lossless files sounding truly great. It's all about convenience, after all.

It doesn't take a really great system to reveal these deficiencies but it does require a critical ear and many end users don't know what this means.

The 'pre-echo"- are you referring to older, analog recordings? If so, you might be hearing print-through.

NOpe, I'm very curious about the technical side of compression but also real world expereince from those on these forums.

I have a couple tracks by Sara K that have great acoustic guitar, but I can't remember if I still have the CD or just the ripped version now. I'll have to go through my unorganized CD collection.

Do you have any tracks in mind that you are referring to? I would love to just share a song or two ripped at 128/320/wav and have everyone compare and descrive their expereince with there system. However, putting a music file in my dropbox and giving it away probably isn't a good idea.

Yes I can tell. I can tell in my truck and I can tell In my house...

I can even tell on my head phones.

Lossless is not lossless. You loose fidelity for sure!

128 kbps, 320 kbps - lossy compression

sofa king said he heard a difference between Apple lossless and the CD

I'd like to know the difference between lossless and the CD - what's missing? Should be nothing, really.

Maybe one of the FLAC enthusiasts will chime in.

I don't use Apple audio encoding nor decoding so I can't comment on Apple Lossless.

I do however listen to a LOT of music at differing sample rates with different delivery mechanisms.

I can't think of any reason a CD would sound better then a properly encoded lossless file, other then the rest of the audio chain.
Quite a few people find hard disk reproduction superior to CD reproduction and there are some interesting reasons why that might be true.

Higher bitrate lossy (be it AAC, MP3, WMA) can sound pretty good, but are not what I would chose to listen to at home (other then background/around the house music).

So if I have a CD I rip both WAV and MP3. Even with a good quality rip (EAC/LAME high bit rate (VBR)) it always a relief (and that is the right word!) to play the CD, even in the car! (granted the car audio is a decent aftermarket system).

In terms of quality for listening in my main room, it would be

* Bluray/DVD-A/SACD/ high bit rate FLAC
* WAV (from hard disc, digitally delivered to processor via DigiLinX)/CD/Vinyl
* MP3 (from hard disc, digitally delivered to processor via DigiLinX)
* MOG (via Roku)
* Radio Paradise (direct decode internet stream via DigiLinX)
* XM

The actual source recording can easily move somthing around int he ordering (really good LP, crappy DVD-A master etc)


Since storage is so cheap, I see no reason not to have a hi res rip in addition to a lossy one for portability.

Even on my desktop setup it is pretty easy to tell lossy from lossless...


Some resources for you to burn precious time reading up (just listen to music as you do so and it evens out the loss :))

[Link: hydrogenaudio.org]
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/
[Link: forums.naimaudio.com]

No, I am not describing tape print-through. The artifacts is a function of how lossy compression algorithms work where the quantization noise gets spread over an encoding window and hence, you hear the transient before it occurs. Print-through plays what's on the other side and not correlated noise relative to what is about to come.