Comments on: Understanding sound quality in the digital domain, part 1

By: Ralf Napierski

Ralf Napierski — Fri, 12 May 2017 07:29:00 +0000

In reply to volumio.

I think the
metaphor is not appropriate, it’s wrong! In lossless formats you have a perfect
(lossless) representation of mathematical transformed physical values. In an
image you don’t have a mathematical transformation. You just quantify the
intensity of a point to one digital value. If you transform it back to analogue
world, you lose information. (You cannot exactly restore the wavelength of one
colored point )

If you transform
digital audio back to “real” world you don’t lose information. You only add
noise! (In this case you can restore the wavelength 100%)

It is one
of the biggest misconceptions to compare digital images with digital audio!

Please view
this video and it will open your eyes J : https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml

By: volumio

volumio — Thu, 11 May 2017 22:26:00 +0000

In reply to Ralf Napierski.

I started by saying “The experts among you might find those explanations oversimplified, however our goal is to put in simple term a complex matter like audio quality and digital audio reproduction”, and this is how you should take it.
In any case I think the metaphore is appropriate, since the resolution in audio domain, at least in lossless formats, is correlated with how good the approximation to reality is in the file encoding.
While those were two completely different way to encode a phisical event into a digital representation, we both agree.

By: Ralf Napierski

Ralf Napierski — Thu, 11 May 2017 15:14:00 +0000

„The most
obvious is its resolution which is measured in bits and kHz (comparable to megapixel resolution in an image).”

Sorry, but this is absolutely wrong. Digital music (16 bit, 44 kHz) has ENDLES resolution like the analogue (live) performed music! The bits in digital music have nothing to do with image resolution.

Even 10,8 or 1 bit stored music have endless resolution. This is very surprising but it’s simple math!
Very good info can be found here: http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
The video is great: https://video.xiph.org/vid2.shtml

By: Michelangelo Guarise

Michelangelo Guarise — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 09:06:00 +0000

In reply to unphased. Yes you're right, but as always its the neverending battle beetween quality and convenience... Images on websites should be as lightweight as possible. So I choose the highest compression possible while still keeping them "understandable"

By: unphased

unphased — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 08:17:00 +0000

The thing that’s great here is that you go on and on about quality (which is great!) and then post highly compressed JPEG screenshots of spectra. It doesn’t quite add up for me. Admittedly I’m being a little picky here.

By: Marek Bieńkowski

Marek Bieńkowski — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 11:29:00 +0000

In reply to magriii. I think, that's because lower quality files take less storage place and for most customers they're good enough. Not many people have music equipment on which they will actually hear the difference between 192 (or even 320) kbps mp3 and FLAC. Most of the will even don't know, what difference they should expect.

By: magriii

magriii — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 11:03:00 +0000

I don’t understand why we still get so many crap audio files. Musicians should have the highest interest to get their music to people in the best possible quality. Bandwidth, storage and performance are no longer an issue.
Why do I have to pay MORE to get the music in a way that was intended by the musicians?
For the distributors creating a high res flac file costs almost nothing. All music clips should be provided in a high quality format derived from master recordings free of additional charge.
The record companies tell me that I cannot own the music. I’m not allowed to resell the clips that I’ve bought legally. At least they should provide the best quality.
Musicians should take more pressure on the distributors.