iPod Apple Lossless?

[WinterMute]

Can I just point out that no "Audiophile" worth the name would ever dream of using a lossy codec like AAC or MP3, most true audiophiles claim to be able to hear the differences between different makes of cable let alone different bit rates.

The term audiophile is widely abused today, which is OK in itself, but don't call yourself an audiophile at a Hifi convention while listening to your iPod, cos the iPod doesn't sound very good at all.

For the record, I can hear the difference between MP3 and AAC at the same rates, and I can hear the coding in .aiff files through good speakers, I record at 96Khz, 24 bit habitually now.

Yes I own an iPod, you can't examine audio quality on a tube train...

I rip CD's at 320Kbps AAC and often Lossless for quality recordings, 60Gb makes for a lot of listening.

 

[FoxyKaye]

Well besides the fact that music is a bit subjective, 128 isn't that great. It will sounds decent on an ipod or through a "standard" stereo. I'm becoming much more of an audiophile than i was before. I played around with different bitrates when ripping CDs. I ripped in a few formats 128, 192, 256 and 320 AAC. Then went even further and burned them back to a cdr. so i essentially had 6 version of several different songs. I then took them to my car since that stereo happens to be much better than my home stereo, (eclipse deck, Boston acoustics pro series speakers and arc audio amps for those of you who are curious) and basically played with each. My opinion for all bitrates covers the AAC file..and Cd burned from it. In my opinion 128 was crap, 192 really was crap too, but more livable With both of those there is a huge loss in sound, highs lows and mids suffer, but really it's fine for cramming music into a shuffle when you're working out. 256 was definitely much better a fair amount of vitality is restored. If you have the room though definitely go with 320 AAC. I'll never use anything less than that again. Basically i would say minimum requirement 192 because it maintains "enough life" and is still pretty small; recommended requirement of 256+. But this is just my humble opinon.

Wow - great writeup. I'm not as much of an audiophile as a "good-enough-for-government-work-audiophile" but I also have noticed significant quality differences going from 128 to 256 AAC audio rips. Now that my hard drive is much larger, I've started ripping in Apple Lossless, BUT it won't work on my 2G iPod so I wind up converting for its playlists to 256 AAC. MP3 is still OK too, though since AAC came out I haven't used it much and am in the process of re-ripping all my old CDs that were imported as MP3.

Here's a really old thread that was still on my subscriptions list about AAC importing as well: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/37229/

 

[ham_man]

Can I just point out that no "Audiophile" worth the name would ever dream of using a lossy codec like AAC or MP3, most true audiophiles claim to be able to hear the differences between different makes of cable let alone different bit rates.

The term audiophile is widely abused today, which is OK in itself, but don't call yourself an audiophile at a Hifi convention while listening to your iPod, cos the iPod doesn't sound very good at all.

For the record, I can hear the difference between MP3 and AAC at the same rates, and I can hear the coding in .aiff files through good speakers, I record at 96Khz, 24 bit habitually now.

Yes I own an iPod, you can't examine audio quality on a tube train...

I rip CD's at 320Kbps AAC and often Lossless for quality recordings, 60Gb makes for a lot of listening.

Just curious, but what equipment are you using? Because most of the audiophiles I know have transperency at LAME-MP3 APS, or LAME-MP3 APX...

 

[fanbrain]

Now I have a question

I've ripped some music using the Lossless encoder and I still get static and noise during intense parts of the music. This happens only when I listen to organ music. The pipe organ plays beyond the range of human hearing, both high frequency and low frequency, but I thought Lossless was supposed to include the whole range. It doesn't static etc when I play the CD. What gives? Do I have my computer's output levels too high? I'm wondering if there is better way to encode this type of music.

I listen to music on a Klipsch Promedia 4.1 system.

 

[mactastic]

Lossless on your laptop? You got to be kidding me. Not until HDs can hold a LOT more than they do today. I've only got 5000 songs or so on my laptop, and it's taking up at least a third of the drive right now. The whole point is to have your entire music collection (plus some room to grow, and a couple megs left over for new programs and stuff) with you. How much can you possibly fit in your 50 gigs of free space? You're going to college, remember? The place where everyone's music collection mystically swells to gargantuan proportions despite the lack of much cash outlay for CDs...

Lossless will choke your HD too quickly. Use a high-bitrate AAC so you can keep everything on your laptop drive and still use it for PShop. If you're really feeling choked up about it, buy an external HD and rip lossless to that, then convert to AAC on your laptop.

 

[WinterMute]

Just curious, but what equipment are you using? Because most of the audiophiles I know have transperency at LAME-MP3 APS, or LAME-MP3 APX...

I'm a commercial recording engineer turned to lecturing, I use Focusrite or Amek Purepath preamps into either a Digidesign 192 interface or a set of Apogee 24-bit A/Ds into Protools or Logic for recording.

I listen through Dynaudio BM6a monitors in the smaller rooms and Dynaudio M1/M2's in other rooms by choice although the PMC TB2's are nice as nearfields. I like the Chord or Bryston amps.

For home kit I run KEF 105.4 reference monitors with twin Quad 303's and a Quad Pre, I have a Marantz CD and a Garrod slate turntable with an Adcock carbon fiber tone-arm and an ADC capsule.

I like what Sony are doing with Super Audio CD's and a good DVD-a 96Khz recording is nice, but I grew up on analog multitrack and 2-track machines and they still sound better than digital to me at high speeds.

Digital is getting there, especially the high sample rate pro stuff, but I don't know of a single pro engineer who would use a lossy codec as a master format, a target format sure, but most masters go 96 or 192Khz 24-bit directly back to the multitrack system, depending on the session.

 

[NicP]

Just curious, but what equipment are you using? Because most of the audiophiles I know have transperency at LAME-MP3 APS, or LAME-MP3 APX...

i dont think u know any audiophiles then

 

[Demon Hunter]

I'm a commercial recording engineer turned to lecturing, I use Focusrite or Amek Purepath preamps into either a Digidesign 192 interface or a set of Apogee 24-bit A/Ds into Protools or Logic for recording.

I listen through Dynaudio BM6a monitors in the smaller rooms and Dynaudio M1/M2's in other rooms by choice although the PMC TB2's are nice as nearfields. I like the Chord or Bryston amps.

For home kit I run KEF 105.4 reference monitors with twin Quad 303's and a Quad Pre, I have a Marantz CD and a Garrod slate turntable with an Adcock carbon fiber tone-arm and an ADC capsule.

I like what Sony are doing with Super Audio CD's and a good DVD-a 96Khz recording is nice, but I grew up on analog multitrack and 2-track machines and they still sound better than digital to me at high speeds.

Digital is getting there, especially the high sample rate pro stuff, but I don't know of a single pro engineer who would use a lossy codec as a master format, a target format sure, but most masters go 96 or 192Khz 24-bit directly back to the multitrack system, depending on the session.

But I thought Rome was sacked in 390 BC...

 

[Xeem]

I just thought I'd point out that 90% of the population probably can't tell the difference between 128 AAC and CD quality unless they are actively comparing them right after each other; it's a little like the Quake 3 60 fps limit argument from a few years ago.

 

[.:*Robot Boy*:.]

*sigh* Why do these threads always turn into an 'audiophile' pissing contest .

Does anyone know what goes on during the Lossless encoding process? Surely some data has to be lost during that process? Or is it just that the Lossless encoder/decoder is capable of describing and decoding audio more efficiently than .wav or .aiff?

 

[WinterMute]

*sigh* Why do these threads always turn into an 'audiophile' pissing contest .

Does anyone know what goes on during the Lossless encoding process? Surely some data has to be lost during that process? Or is it just that the Lossless encoder/decoder is capable of describing and decoding audio more efficiently than .wav or .aiff?

The basic form of any lossless encoder is the ability to reproduce the original wave form identically when compared with the original source recording, and to do it while using less information. Theoretically there should be no audible difference between copy and source, but obviously using less data.

The maths is beyond me, but Dr. John Watkinson has some interesting things to say about lossless encoding. His book "The art of digital audio" is a set text at the Uni.


dferrara:

New ain't necessarily better... The power supplies and Capacitors alone in those 303's are worth the effort...


I don't claim to be an audiophile, I'm an engineer, I'm listening for different things in music. The systems I use need to be flat and un-coloured, most Hifi systems are deliberately enhancing the sound, who wants to spend thousands on a system that sounds crap when you play a crap record? Most audiophile systems I've heard make poor records sound good, I need a system that sounds crap when the recording is crap, otherwise I've got no idea what I'm listening to.


.:*Robot Boy*:.:

My hifi's bigger than your hifi...

 

[RAS admin]

This coming from a person with 1.2 TB of hard drive space

Actually, I have 1.65 TB of hard drive space, but who's counting...

 

[dubbz]

Does anyone know what goes on during the Lossless encoding process? Surely some data has to be lost during that process? Or is it just that the Lossless encoder/decoder is capable of describing and decoding audio more efficiently than .wav or .aiff?

Like when using Zip on a Word document, there's no loss of data.

And there should be no audiable difference in audio between a Apple Lossless file and a WAV/AIFF.

If there is, it's most likely because of a buggy Encoder or Decoder. Winamp on Windows suffer (or used to suffer from, don't know if it's fixed) from this in regards to the FLAC decoder, which have resulted in that some people erroneously belie that FLAC (or any other lossless format) isn't truly lossless.

 

[Capt Underpants]

Actually, I have 1.65 TB of hard drive space, but who's counting...

Ahh Someone needs to learn multiplication

 

[Dave00]

[...] I then took them to my car since that stereo happens to be much better than my home stereo, (eclipse deck, Boston acoustics pro series speakers and arc audio amps for those of you who are curious) and basically played with each.[...]

You didn't mention whether you did a blinded test or not. What's really interesting is to do exactly what you did, burn it on six unlabelled CD's at 6 bitrates, and try to put them in order of quality. I've found that around 192 AAC, it becomes virtually impossible to reliably differentiate bit rates. Even if you can, you really have to think long and hard about it.

The bit rate at which you encode really depends on your use for the music. If you're using it because you want to ditch your CD's and move totally to a compressed format, you can convert everything to apple lossless and then from that central repository resample at different bitrates depending on the use. The disadvantage to this is that you suck up a lot of disk space for something you already have on CD.

If, on the other hand, you're trying to save space, you'll want to encode at the lowest bitrate your ears enjoy. Lower bitrates also conserve iPod battery power. If you're basically using the music for a dormroom and playing through the headphone jack to a set of small speakers, the most sense would be to go with a bit rate between 128-192.

Dave