Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions General opinions of lossless formats

So I am hard pressed to hear the "night and day" difference between old Dolby/DTS tracks and their lossless counterparts that many people claim. I have yet to get an educated, non biased reviews on it from others. Do you guys enjoy it, or find it relatively the same as the older codecs? Any references to particular scenes between DVD's and the Blu Ray counterparts also appreciated (that is assuming they didn't change anything in the mix other than giving you the bit for bit identical copy).

Erik, the tests , blind and otherwise, run by Home Entertainment Magazine a couple years ago have been discussed here. You'll note that the difference compared with the higher-rate DD and DTS compressed tracks used in BluRay discs was essentially inaudible. This of course measures the capabilities of the formats themselves and doesn't necessarily mean that as applied on a specific disc there couldn't be an audible difference, including a difference(e.g., loudness level)which isn't due to the format.

The point is that the horrors of digital compression are grossly exaggerated in some quarters and can very closely approach audible transparency in some cases.

I believe he might be looking for the difference from old standard DVD tracks to the new lossless tracks, not the new lossy tracks compared to the new HD tracks on a BR.

Jay, the tests addressed that as well

I guess I should have looked at them

I’m with you Eric. I find when I can tell any difference between it’s not the lossless codec but rather that the audio was re-mastered. I have noticed that more Blu-rays have DTS tracks which I have usually preferred to Dolby especially for music. I’ve found the same thing with SACDS vd standard ones.

In my apartment I did a test of 128bit, 192bit and 320bit mp3s against FLAC and the original CDs using my headphones and found that only with the 128 and 192 bit mp3s could I consistently tell the difference with the FLAC or original. With the 320bit I really couldn’t tell the difference. And had I not known I was randomly comparing different bit rates there is no way I would have detected any difference.

I honestly can't say that I've heard a difference.

Dean,
Have you done the same experiment with your speakers instead of the headphones? That's something that I have planned to do for a while but never got to it.

That's my experience as well Erik and Dean. Mostly depends on the source material. On the Live at Radio City (Dave M and Tim R) Blu-Ray I did a comparison of the new HD track and the 'standard' surround track. Switching back and forth through the audio menu of my PS3 I did prefer the HD format as the soundstage was just 'bigger' - seemed to extend beyond the walls of my HT. But then again this was not a blind level matched comparison so YMMV.

Cheers,

So in reality, if the studios would record properly we could all live in audiophile nirvana.

Well, except Bigweelz, who lives in a nirvana of his own making.

I'm still going to claim there's a significant audible difference, even if I have no research to back me up. Who needs blind listening tests when you have blind faith?

Blind Faith, that was a good group. Didn't they open for Negative Orange on one tour?

Basically it was harder to tell the mp3s from the FLAC using the speakers vs the headphones though this was with my M22s and not M80s nor was the room setup very good. I should rerun the test using my M80s which were boxed up for moving at the time to get a better “full range” comparison. Several posts down is a brief description of the results I got using my M22s.

Here’s my original post on the test I did showing the results of the 128 and 320 bit comparisons:

http://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/ubbthre...true#Post241538

The type of stereo encoding used to rip the mp3 had a profound impact (at least as much or more than bit-rate) on the SQ and ability to distinguish is from a lossless track. Listed from best to worse:

“Stereo” 320bit indistinguishable from FLAC in blind tests.

“Joint Stereo” 320bit only distinguishable from FLAC in blind tests on tracks w/discrete instrument placement.

“Dual Channel” 320bit easily from FLAC in blind tests.

Note that lower bit-rates did fare worse but the stereo encoding method was most easily detectable.

I'm going to be annoying and say it should be 320 kbps, not 320bit.