Original cd vs burned-in 320kb mp3 cd quality
- Thread starter hfvuser
- Start date
Whoa, that sounds serious. I hope you have or will fully recover soon.
There is only one thing I would like to add to the discussion. For the people who talk about lossless vs lossy in a theoretical way, a CD is lossy too. All you are listening to is a bunch of digital samples of the original music.
Hence any comparison between CD and mp3 has to be made on a subjective basis.
Oh ...you are opening the same can of worms that has been done in several forum discussions before.
As seems to be universally accepted - lossy and lossless refers to compression and nothing to do with CDs....
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I think perhaps the reason this issue comes up often is because of the different ways one looks at these terms - lossy and lossless.
I understand that these terms were introduced to provide terms defining compression rather than to be taken literally, which is the route that these forum discussions often take. Note that these terms do not provide an answer to whether a CD's sampling and bit rate is "good enough"....
I am cut and pasting the post that I like best on the subject (credit to Halcyon) and hope this is of interest to other here:
In signal theory terms, any real working implementation (not just a theoretical mathematical formula) from analog to digital (consisting of both sampling and quantisation) and back to analog is inherently lossy. This is more often the case, if analog signal is not frequency (or more generally bandwidth) limited, but holds true even if it the analog signal is bandwidth limited.
Most people who blindly quote Shannon fail to understand that what works in infinite time in calculus may not work in real-time in a dsp. So, in practise the situation is a little bit worse than in theory (yes, even for sampling only sans quantisation and back to analog).
Now, do analog to signal digital conversions in general have practical audible implications in bandwidth limited audio ment for human consumption?
Sometimes yes, at least for sampling rates much below 44.1 Ks/s and/or word lengths much below 16 bits. However, CD bandwidth at 44.1 Ks/s and 16 bits is sufficient in terms human hearing to capture a good (if not theoretically perfect) audio signal that has been digitized from an analog source.
Whether this can be audibly improved upon (for human listeners) by increasing either the sampling frequency and/or the quantisation space, well... that's a very heated debate. Quite many seem to believe that things can be improved by upping sample rate / bit depth, although some think it's a waste of bits in terms of engineering and what are the practical limits of audio reproduction in most circumstances. That is, some consider that we can't even get anywhere near the 44.1kHz / 16-bit theoretical maximum performance out of our state of the art playback equipment (in an ordinary listening room), so it's not perhaps wisest to try and fix playback problems by increasing sample rate and bit depth in the signal.
However, most seem to agree that a higher sampling rate and longer word length has practical and audible benefits for audio archival and for later processing of the digitized audio signal in such a manner that the processing artifacts do not become as easily audible as they would come with a 44.1khz/16bit original signal.
As to the "is CD lossy" question, that can be answered in many ways. My personal stance is that no, CD is not lossy. The digitisation of analog signals for CD use purposes is often lossy (for good practical reasons). So, the complete preparation of analog material for digital distribution is lossy: microphone recording, pre-amplification, mixing, sampling/quantisation, production, mastering, etc. These all lose information in signal theory terms, when compared to the original analog waveform of an acoustic space in which the recording was done.
However, the transfer of 44.1 Ks/s / 16-bit digital signal to CD does not (and most often is not) lossy. It's just (practically, in terms of data retrieval) a perfect transfer of bits onto a medium that can be re-read over and over again and still get the exact same bits out (practical limitations apply).
I understand that these terms were introduced to provide terms defining compression rather than to be taken literally, which is the route that these forum discussions often take. Note that these terms do not provide an answer to whether a CD's sampling and bit rate is "good enough"....
I am cut and pasting the post that I like best on the subject (credit to Halcyon) and hope this is of interest to other here:
In signal theory terms, any real working implementation (not just a theoretical mathematical formula) from analog to digital (consisting of both sampling and quantisation) and back to analog is inherently lossy. This is more often the case, if analog signal is not frequency (or more generally bandwidth) limited, but holds true even if it the analog signal is bandwidth limited.
Most people who blindly quote Shannon fail to understand that what works in infinite time in calculus may not work in real-time in a dsp. So, in practise the situation is a little bit worse than in theory (yes, even for sampling only sans quantisation and back to analog).
Now, do analog to signal digital conversions in general have practical audible implications in bandwidth limited audio ment for human consumption?
Sometimes yes, at least for sampling rates much below 44.1 Ks/s and/or word lengths much below 16 bits. However, CD bandwidth at 44.1 Ks/s and 16 bits is sufficient in terms human hearing to capture a good (if not theoretically perfect) audio signal that has been digitized from an analog source.
Whether this can be audibly improved upon (for human listeners) by increasing either the sampling frequency and/or the quantisation space, well... that's a very heated debate. Quite many seem to believe that things can be improved by upping sample rate / bit depth, although some think it's a waste of bits in terms of engineering and what are the practical limits of audio reproduction in most circumstances. That is, some consider that we can't even get anywhere near the 44.1kHz / 16-bit theoretical maximum performance out of our state of the art playback equipment (in an ordinary listening room), so it's not perhaps wisest to try and fix playback problems by increasing sample rate and bit depth in the signal.
However, most seem to agree that a higher sampling rate and longer word length has practical and audible benefits for audio archival and for later processing of the digitized audio signal in such a manner that the processing artifacts do not become as easily audible as they would come with a 44.1khz/16bit original signal.
As to the "is CD lossy" question, that can be answered in many ways. My personal stance is that no, CD is not lossy. The digitisation of analog signals for CD use purposes is often lossy (for good practical reasons). So, the complete preparation of analog material for digital distribution is lossy: microphone recording, pre-amplification, mixing, sampling/quantisation, production, mastering, etc. These all lose information in signal theory terms, when compared to the original analog waveform of an acoustic space in which the recording was done.
However, the transfer of 44.1 Ks/s / 16-bit digital signal to CD does not (and most often is not) lossy. It's just (practically, in terms of data retrieval) a perfect transfer of bits onto a medium that can be re-read over and over again and still get the exact same bits out (practical limitations apply).
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ranjeetrain
New Member
I fully agree. If loss of information is the sole criteria, Analog is lossy too. No method can ever reproduce exactly what was recorded. If digital loses something, so does Analog. Only the way in which these losses occur changes. Hopefully this doesn't get into Digital vs Analog again 
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TaureanBull
Active Member
Could n't you guess? My guess would be 300kbsx5 times = 1411 (approx) numbers!
. See we need to clarify this too...Else the OP clarify!
The OP(first post) should rip from an original CD and play on his system before he decides to quit his plans to buy the setup because of some internet downloaded pirated lossy format burned to cd thing!
ranjeetrain
New Member
Heheh, I really laughed the first time I read that "5 times" claim
Staxx I was not trying to rake a controversy. But to quote what you wrote yourself, CD is accepted as a good format because its sampling rate is deemed ad good enough for human ears. If that is the justification for CD, the same claim can be made for 320kbps mp3.
I'm only trying to o say that people who use waveform analysis etc and show losses etc should look at the CD losses to begin with. Such kind of technical analysis is meaningless beyond a reasonable point. Heck, I cant even listen to frequencies beyond 16khz and I have normal ears.
That's why I said this can only be a subjective discussion not technical.
Thad E Ginathom
Well-Known Member
That's true, but thankfully my experience was not too lossy --- life is intact! So is my head! I was very dazed for a few minutes but didn't get knocked out.
The bottom line for the subject under discussion is the actual claims made for each format. This is a better starting point than assumptions, especially where the lossy formats are concerned.
MP3: there is no claim that MP3 recreates the exact musical experience, only that what is removed does not matter very much, and it matters less and less as the bit rate is increased. The software expertise has improved to the point where it seems that very many people cannot, in blind testing, tell the difference between high, VBR MP3 and CD quality --- but it still does not claim to reproduce all of the music. Let us, then, accept it for what it is: a convenient way to get a lot of music onto a small storage device. In that context, modern MP3 encoding will probably actually exceed our expectations, and we can be happy. That does not mean we have to use it in other circumstances.
FLAC: Does claim to reproduce exactly the same result as the original, uncompressed medium. So long as the technology actually does what it says on the tin, we have no need to be concerned about this at all. The uncompressed data will be the same as the pre-compressed data, just like your spreadsheets and documents are the same after being zipped. I'm making a big assumption here: that the data compression/uncompression algorithms and code do works as advertised. It's been around for ten years and it's open source: problems should have been spotted by now. Anyway, given all that, FLAC claims to reproduce its source, and can be judged accordingly.
CD: 44.1k/16bit PCM. Claims reproduce all the music, and even to do so better than some analogue sources. Leaving aside the much-discussed question of whether it does or not, it is the benchmark of the current thread.
So far as lossy compression is concerned, it would be useful to discuss which is best, eg is ogg superior to MP3 or not?
--- life is intact! So is my head! I was very dazed for a few minutes but didn't get knocked out.The bottom line for the subject under discussion is the actual claims made for each format. This is a better starting point than assumptions, especially where the lossy formats are concerned.
MP3: there is no claim that MP3 recreates the exact musical experience, only that what is removed does not matter very much, and it matters less and less as the bit rate is increased. The software expertise has improved to the point where it seems that very many people cannot, in blind testing, tell the difference between high, VBR MP3 and CD quality --- but it still does not claim to reproduce all of the music. Let us, then, accept it for what it is: a convenient way to get a lot of music onto a small storage device. In that context, modern MP3 encoding will probably actually exceed our expectations, and we can be happy. That does not mean we have to use it in other circumstances.
FLAC: Does claim to reproduce exactly the same result as the original, uncompressed medium. So long as the technology actually does what it says on the tin, we have no need to be concerned about this at all. The uncompressed data will be the same as the pre-compressed data, just like your spreadsheets and documents are the same after being zipped. I'm making a big assumption here: that the data compression/uncompression algorithms and code do works as advertised. It's been around for ten years and it's open source: problems should have been spotted by now. Anyway, given all that, FLAC claims to reproduce its source, and can be judged accordingly.
CD: 44.1k/16bit PCM. Claims reproduce all the music, and even to do so better than some analogue sources. Leaving aside the much-discussed question of whether it does or not, it is the benchmark of the current thread.
So far as lossy compression is concerned, it would be useful to discuss which is best, eg is ogg superior to MP3 or not?
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Definitely, mp3 was made to crunch space and it is much there. As far as FLAC is concerned, it's downside is that it puts extra load on the processor to uncompress it during playback but still it might introduce certain errors that arise from compression and decompression but never came to see an article on that.
As far as the 16bit/44.1khz is concerned, it is pretty good if the CDs are mastered well. I have worked on some documentary films and videos so I know that during recording and editing, 24bit/96khz is preferred to retain as much detail but during mastering, all audio is downgraded to 16/44.1 unless you need a Blu-Ray release. Even the raw video files are massively huge in size but most of the details can be scrapped away before release. Even canon 550d has a 330mb/min video rate (with audio rec) but during full HD release on youtube, it can be safely compressed without the common viewer noticing any loss in quality.
As far as the 16bit/44.1khz is concerned, it is pretty good if the CDs are mastered well. I have worked on some documentary films and videos so I know that during recording and editing, 24bit/96khz is preferred to retain as much detail but during mastering, all audio is downgraded to 16/44.1 unless you need a Blu-Ray release. Even the raw video files are massively huge in size but most of the details can be scrapped away before release. Even canon 550d has a 330mb/min video rate (with audio rec) but during full HD release on youtube, it can be safely compressed without the common viewer noticing any loss in quality.
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