Do you listen to mp3s ?

[sam9s]

This is like doubting whether the zipped archive file on your computer is the same as the original document file. Yes, it is the same. That is the definition of lossless and how the lossless algorithm functions. There is nothing to confirm on high-end equipment.

Yea I know this and I understand, but I was just wondering that a player that "unpacks" the audio and does that extra processing, could that effect the result,...........in comparision to a player that is directly playing the audio.... theorically no, I know but practically, in real world sense????

Just a curiosity not questining FLAC in itself....and ofcourse no backing for my theory......

 

[venkatcr]

Copied DVD is not crapy.....they are exact digital replica, no data or A/V signal loss. Yes MP3sss can be termed as crappy on an High End equipment....

Sam, this is not necessarily true. Most original DVDs have some form of stated or unstated copy protection. When playing the original DVD, the player software is given the right information in terms of the track and sector to seek. On the other hand, when copying, the copying software is sent to erroneous track/sectors that are basically just noise. As this is written on to the DVD/RW, the copied version will cease to be a exact duplicate of the original. As more and more copies are made, this noise increases in the copies down the line. The noise starts gradually and goes on increasing till you reach a copy that is just not watch-able.

Some of the copy protection techniques used include CSS, RC, RCE, UOPs and Sony ARccOS. There are also numerous instated copy protection techniques.

Cheers

 

[alcy]

If one has the means, FLACs can have more details than what can packed on to a CD. For eg., recently I downloaded the album The Slip by Nine Inch Nails. The download was for free, as a gift to their fans. Now, the download options were various, quoting directly from the download link they provide once you register your email address: (options are highlighted in bold)

to download the slip, choose your preferred audio format below. MP3 is the best option for most users. you can download multiple formats if you wish.

due to their large file sizes, we are distributing the FLAC and apple lossless formats via torrents. when you click the links below for either of those formats, you'll receive a small .torrent file which you must open in a torrent application in order to download the audio files. if you are not comfortable using torrent files, you should avoid choosing the FLAC, apple lossless or wave options. visit this site to learn about torrents and how to use them.
high-quality MP3s (87 mb)

will play in any MP3 player. encoded with LAME at V0, fully tagged.
recommended for most users.

the files will arrive as a zip archive. in most cases, double-clicking the zip file will open it. if you need more help with zip files, go here.
FLAC lossless (259 mb)

CD quality - will not play in itunes or many other popular media players. (more info)
recommended only for advanced users.

this link will download a small .torrent file, which you must open with a torrent application in order to download the audio files. visit this site for information about using torrents.
FLAC high definition 24/96 (942 mb)

better-than-CD-quality 24bit 96kHZ audio - will not play in itunes or many other popular media players. (more info)
recommended only for advanced users.

this link will download a small .torrent file, which you must open with a torrent application in order to download the audio files. visit this site for information about using torrents.
M4A apple lossless (263 mb)

CD quality - will play in itunes. (more info)
recommended only for advanced users.

this link will download a small .torrent file, which you must open with a torrent application in order to download the audio files. visit this site for information about using torrents.
high definition WAVE 24/96 (1.5 gb)

better-than-CD-quality 24bit 96kHz audio (more info)

for advanced audiophiles only! although you will be able to play these files with most players that support WAVE format, you will not get any benefits from the higher resolution audio unless you have extremely high-end audio equipment. if you're not familiar with 24/96 audio, this download is not recommended.

this link will download a small .torrent file, which you must open with a torrent application in order to download the audio files. visit this site for information about using torrents.

all files are 100% DRM-free.

 

[cooltoad]

Gobble, thanks, listened to her on lastfm once , but never thought of downloading. will give it a try.

Susheela Raman

Cheers

 

[sam9s]

Sam, this is not necessarily true. Most original DVDs have some form of stated or unstated copy protection. When playing the original DVD, the player software is given the right information in terms of the track and sector to seek. On the other hand, when copying, the copying software is sent to erroneous track/sectors that are basically just noise. As this is written on to the DVD/RW, the copied version will cease to be a exact duplicate of the original. As more and more copies are made, this noise increases in the copies down the line. The noise starts gradually and goes on increasing till you reach a copy that is just not watch-able.

Some of the copy protection techniques used include CSS, RC, RCE, UOPs and Sony ARccOS. There are also numerous instated copy protection techniques.

Cheers

With all due respect I dont buy that, what I presume you are talking about is if a user copies the content of a DVD (and not the full DVD) possibally to bypass the copy protection or something, that might occue a quality loss, more probable other reasons are......if a user re-encodes the video mostly to fit in a DVD-R, like a DVD9 to DVD5 or if you Transcode a movie for any reason (again mostly to fit in to one single DVD-R) or apply any compression......there would be a loss in quality....... What I am talking about is an exact digital copy, or in other words ripping a DVD, which is done bit by bit and has the exact bytes stored on the HDD as the disk. DVD Decrypter is one such "Awsome" tool for ripping without any quality loss.

 

[svenkateshsmart]

With all due respect I dont buy that, what I presume you are talking about is if a user copies the content of a DVD (and not the full DVD) possibally to bypass the copy protection or something, that might occue a quality loss, more probable other reasons are......if a user re-encodes the video mostly to fit in a DVD-R, like a DVD9 to DVD5 or if you Transcode a movie for any reason (again mostly to fit in to one single DVD-R) or apply any compression......there would be a loss in quality....... What I am talking about is an exact digital copy, or in other words ripping a DVD, which is done bit by bit and has the exact bytes stored on the HDD as the disk. DVD Decrypter is one such "Awsome" tool for ripping without any quality loss.

Hi,

A genuine doubt, are we not doing the same thing, to rip or duplicate, which is copying the extracting the original source?

From my experience, I have seen a small if anything degradation in quality after ripping. Blu-ray DVD pictures which look sharp (with grains) originally turn out to be smooth after ripping. Also, I did watch the movie "Black" a few months back which had a good quality but I could see some pixelation after ripping it.

Probably I am missing something here, like a good dvd ripping software?

Cheers!

 

[soulforged]

I spend 3-4 hours a day in commute...in the blr traffic, I hang on to my sanity listening to music. For music on the go, mp3 is a lifesaver. I rip my music at 320VBR and to my ears they sound good.

Just wanna tickle a thinker here...how many of us can actually distinguish between a lossy mp3, a high bit-rate mp3, flac or wav??? suggest you try this with a friend -

get one song in various formats, ask someone to play them at random. you note down what you think the format is while your friend notes down the actual format. compare you notes...you'd be surprised with the results!

in the end, its not just in the ears...its in the mind as well... (IMHO...plz don't flame me)

 

[alcy]

@soulforged: Although people with good (great ?) ears will be able to note the differences even on average/common music systems (run-of-the-mill PC speakers, earphones etc.), but mostly the differences become easily noticeable on good hi-fi systems (most of the setups on these forums will qualify I guess).

Also, mp3s can be encoded with a bit-rate of 320 kbps max (theoretically more also, but usually they aren't) whereas FLACs & WAVS around 1411kbps (and can go higher). That is a lot of details in there isn't it ?

But then again all of this discussion is pointless unless we take the music production/recording at the artist's end under consideration. Most of the mainstream music production houses out there do not care about production values anymore. They are producing music solely with the intention to please iPod (and the likes) owners.

There are only a handful of artists/bands I know who still care for good recording - Porcupine Tree/Steven Wilson (of course), Tool (Lateralus was encoded using HDCD technology), NIN (check out my previous post regarding their album The Slip) and a few others.

So, really everything is involved in this debate.

 

[sam9s]

Hi,

A genuine doubt, are we not doing the same thing, to rip or duplicate, which is copying the extracting the original source?

From my experience, I have seen a small if anything degradation in quality after ripping. Blu-ray DVD pictures which look sharp (with grains) originally turn out to be smooth after ripping. Also, I did watch the movie "Black" a few months back which had a good quality but I could see some pixelation after ripping it.

Probably I am missing something here, like a good dvd ripping software?

Cheers!

copying can be just the usual copy the VOBss and past it in you HDD then use a burning sw to recreate the DVD structure and burn the DVD. (This might result in quality loss - although technically it should'nt)
Ripping is as I said is an exact digital copy of the source. And yes if you are visually seeing artifacts your ripping s/w is crap or your media player is not reading the media correctly (if playing on PC).

For ripping use this Awsome FREE tool called DVDDecrypter. While ripping it removes the CSS copy protection. Once on the HDD use the burning s/w to burn the DVD on DVD R. This is applicable for DVD5, for DVD9 you have to use 2 DVD Rs. A comprehensive guide can be found HERE

For comparision use a DVD player to play both the discs, the original and the ripped one, you wont find any difference.

PS :: If you are talking about BluRay, ripping BR is still in its infancy stage and I can'nt comment on it right now. However DVDFabDecrypter does seems to do the trick.

 

[sam9s]

Just wanna tickle a thinker here...how many of us can actually distinguish between a lossy mp3, a high bit-rate mp3, flac or wav??? suggest you try this with a friend -

get one song in various formats, ask someone to play them at random. you note down what you think the format is while your friend notes down the actual format. compare you notes...you'd be surprised with the results!

in the end, its not just in the ears...its in the mind as well... (IMHO...plz don't flame me)

I agree with you on few points, but my notion changed when I stated Auditioning high end equipment, with a normal iPod or a usual Sony Deck, there was never a difference (CD, MP3, WMA all sounded more or less same). But when you play CDs on those wharfdales or Missions or Quads with a Marantz amp, you can "clearly" make out the difference, atleast I was, and hence the shif from MP3 to FLAC.....courtsy HiFi Audiophile GuRus........Now I am dying to get my Home completed and get that actual worth music equipment......

 

[soulforged]

Sam and Alcy,

agree with both of you. my point, however, was related to the typical way ppl listen to mp3's...on portables.

If you are using a high-end setup, the difference would be apparent (even then you might have to listen hard enough to feel it).

 

[venkatcr]

For ripping use this Awsome FREE tool called DVDDecrypter. While ripping it removes the CSS copy protection. Once on the HDD use the burning s/w to burn the DVD on DVD R. This is applicable for DVD5, for DVD9 you have to use 2 DVD Rs. A comprehensive guide can be found HERE

The guide says that DVDDecrypter 'doesn't work on many newer titles that use structural protection' so I have my doubts.

The protection methodology seems to understand whether the DVD is being played on a DVD Player or on a computer based system. One of the easiest ways of doing this is the way the read head moves and sense that. On a player, the read head always moves sequentially in the forward direction - starting from 0 track, 0 sector and moving forward. On a computer, since data could be kept anywhere and there is large buffer involved, the read head also reads in the backward motion - very similar to what the read head of a HDD does. When the protection software senses this happening, it is supposed to send it a scrambled information for the next track/sector it is supposed to read. When this happens, the head will be reading incorrect information that could lead to noise, lip sync issues, or even disturbing the sequence of scenes in the movie.

Irrespective of what is claimed, DVD copying/ripping software have not reached a level where they can beat copy protection. The differences, as I said before, are subtle that you may not see in the first copy. But as the copying moves forward, the differences will extrapolate and become quite visible.

One of the ways to see this is to use the copied DVD and scale the images. You will start seeing issues that were not present in the original. Most rips that are available downscale the images to overcome this issue.

Cheers

 

[sam9s]

The guide says that DVDDecrypter 'doesn't work on many newer titles that use structural protection' so I have my doubts.

Where does it say that......Anyway I have yet to come across a DVD (OLD/NEW) that I could not rip, or whose copy protection could not be by passed. checkout the FAQs of ripping DVD from the same site Doom9....

1# Q: I have this disc XY that none of the ripping programs I tried could rip. Is this a new method of encryption?

A: There will never be a new encryption on DVDs. We have roughly a 100 million DVD capable devices worldwide, if not more. Now imagine making these superfluous... you simply cannot do that. The point of having a standard is that you can play anything anywhere or it wouldn't be a standard. The oldest 1st gen DVD players must be able to play every DVD that will ever be released. Of course, that's theoretical.. the oldest players may have problems with advanced discs because when they were manufactured nobody had ever created a complicated DVD project so there was no software out there to test the hardware. But rest assured.. DVD will always remain DVD and will always use the exact same technology.

Irrespective of what is claimed, DVD copying/ripping software have not reached a level where they can beat copy protection. The differences, as I said before, are subtle that you may not see in the first copy. But as the copying moves forward, the differences will extrapolate and become quite visible.

Above quoted text says otherwise............

Also if there are no bits lost in the Ripping/Burning, the subsequent copies would never loose quality unless as I said you recode,transcode or compress.........

 

[alpha1]

@soulforged: Although people with good (great ?) ears will be able to note the differences even on average/common music systems (run-of-the-mill PC speakers, earphones etc.), but mostly the differences become easily noticeable on good hi-fi systems (most of the setups on these forums will qualify I guess).

Also, mp3s can be encoded with a bit-rate of 320 kbps max (theoretically more also, but usually they aren't) whereas FLACs & WAVS around 1411kbps (and can go higher). That is a lot of details in there isn't it ?

But then again all of this discussion is pointless unless we take the music production/recording at the artist's end under consideration. Most of the mainstream music production houses out there do not care about production values anymore. They are producing music solely with the intention to please iPod (and the likes) owners.

There are only a handful of artists/bands I know who still care for good recording - Porcupine Tree/Steven Wilson (of course), Tool (Lateralus was encoded using HDCD technology), NIN (check out my previous post regarding their album The Slip) and a few others.

So, really everything is involved in this debate.

Actually its mostly placebo.

I did an ABXY test with a musician friend of mine at my place.
Norge + Quad setup.

He wasn't able to distinguish even 130kbps VBR mp3 (also known as V5) files from original CD file.

Regarding your data about numbers, agreed CDA is at 1411kbps, which is bigger than 130kbps of mp3.

But, the question is how much of that data is relevant to your ears?

Its the same thing about image. You can have a real high resolution raw image. You can also have a high resolution JPEG image.
To human eye, it will look same. Though the raw image would be 5-50 times larger.

Of course if you want to do editing and playing around - then raw image is better, so in similar vein if you plan to do sound recording and production - its better to go ahead with raw audio - but there is no point in using so much storage space for finished product whihc is intended for direct listening.

 

[Muthusami S]

After I listened to a FLAC file, I stopped listening MP3 files in addition to audio CDs. There is a huge difference between MP3 (even at 320 Kbps) and FLAC. In search of a CD/DVD player that play FLAC files

 

[iaudio]

I do listen to mp3s, lots of them, at home and on the go. Mp3s are quite decent if well encoded. But my favourite tracks I try to collect on flac orwav or CD.

Muthusami, The Marantz cd6003 and denon dcd710( me thinks) play wav.

 

[sam9s]

He wasn't able to distinguish even 130kbps VBR mp3 (also known as V5) files from original CD file.

I am surprised that he could not make a difference, but I bet most will do.....I did, atleast on a Marantz amp and Whraf spks.

But, the question is how much of that data is relevant to your ears?

I Agree..... and that was the whole concept of MP3, but I dont think its just a question of "how much data", but how much relevent data.......while compressing, user can only decided the amount of data (kbps), but not which data to omit, its not always the algorithm omitts notes that are irrelevent. A song with a complex variation in amplitide would might need more bits to exists and the algo might ignore that information trying to keep the rest intact. That is the reason not all MP3 sound same......even for the same song, some would sound pretty close to CD some totally crapp, but CD in all probability would sound same and provide the same audio quality, so you have that trust/comfort that atleast you have the best source. With MP3you would never know how would that sound even if given a high end amp and a spk.

Its the same thing about image. You can have a real high resolution raw image. You can also have a high resolution JPEG image.
To human eye, it will look same. Though the raw image would be 5-50 times larger.

You are wrong here.......a high res raw image or a jpeg or a compressed jpeg would look same to human eye "at a certain scale". Say on 17" monitor.........raw image and a jpeg would in all possibility look same, transport that same image on a 50" LCD and you will noticing the difference.........there is a reason raw image is x times larger......

 

[alcy]

He wasn't able to distinguish even 130kbps VBR mp3 (also known as V5) files from original CD file.

That's random. Being a musician doesn't really put him ahead of people generally in terms of listening ability, unless of course he's seriously into recording/production in which case I am pretty sure the files would have sounded different to him.

Regarding your data about numbers, agreed CDA is at 1411kbps, which is bigger than 130kbps of mp3.

But, the question is how much of that data is relevant to your ears?

Its the same thing about image. You can have a real high resolution raw image. You can also have a high resolution JPEG image.
To human eye, it will look same. Though the raw image would be 5-50 times larger.

Of course if you want to do editing and playing around - then raw image is better, so in similar vein if you plan to do sound recording and production - its better to go ahead with raw audio - but there is no point in using so much storage space for finished product whihc is intended for direct listening.

As sam9s already pointed out, JPEG images don't scale the way RAW files do ! So, that analogy isn't true.

 

[alpha1]

Well regarding the picture analogy - I was talking about a photograph with a fixed projected size. Say 6"x4" or 7"x5".

You can ofcourse magnify it till you can see individual pixels.

And the same you can do about music by slowing it down so much that each and every quantum bit of digital file comes to your ear separately.

But I am talking about normal ppl, normal timescale, normal sensitivity.

mp3 V5 was just an example.

A more filling (freq spectrum) sound with more emphasis on higher end will obviously require more bits.



anyway, why don't we try an ABX test in real life?
Send me CD/WAV/FLAC file of your favorite track that you know thoroughly.
And the one where you can make out difference even at mp3 v0.

We can do a listening test, wherein we see for ourselves - whether we can differentiate.

 

[spirovious]

Old hindi songs are mostly in mp3(easily available). I DL them & listen,if it is not well converted,I delete.
New Bollywood mp3 songs too sounds exiting with D2X.