> There's been a lot of discussion lately about bit rates, and this topic j=
ust came up on NPR: http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473=
508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
>
> What I personally found was that for the quieter pieces, I could relative=
ly easily tell the difference using only Apple earbuds into my iPhone (whic=
h has a worse DAC than the iPod).
....
>
> I know that nature recording isn't the same as music, but if I can hear t=
he difference here I would think it's even more important with the dynamic =
range and quiet that one encounters in nature recording.
Charles,
I'm not into pop as I find it too synthetic. I listened to the Mozart Piano=
but had to use IE which they said was unsuitable, and I heard no difference=
.
What I did hear was volume compression even on the piano which again sounde=
d
synthetic because that is what is expected these days. I've heard enough an=
d
recorded enough real pianos to know the difference.
Studio recordings have quiet, often down to using noise gates, and very
little is free of volume compression. BBC Radio 3 often transmits classical=
music with both natural background noise and free from compression. It's no=
t
so good in a car, but I a quiet lounge it is very pleasant to hear music as=
it is played as in a concert hall. Warts and all is reality. :-)
What I have checked on my own recordings of birdsong is the difference
between WAV and 320kb/s MP3 digital compression which is marginally audible=
on a strict A/B test, but in practice truly lost in a natural background.
MP3 at 192kb/s is beginning to sound a little ragged around the transients,=
and 160kb/s is OK for people who don't know or hear the difference.
Where there is a more marked difference with the various MP3's is with
random sounds. MP3 is aimed at music, and much birdsong is tonal, so it
digitally compresses quite well. Where MP3 shows up is with random or atona=
l
sounds which MP3 has to handle as tone bursts as you can clearly hear at
lower MP3 rates.
The key test for word size, bit rate and compression is for someone to be
able to guess how a recording was made and played back - without a
comparison. The recordings on the web page given above all sounded too
synthetic to make a judgement on their audio quality.
David Brinicombe
"While a picture is worth a thousand words, a
sound is worth a thousand pictures." R. Murray Schafer via Bernie Krause.
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