Re: Why bother with lossy encoding?

I've seen many streams in AAC or MP3. To me, anything above 128 kbps has no
quality difference. That is, if I didn't know the file format ahead of time,
I don't think I could tell the difference between an mp3 recorded at 44.1
kHZ 128 kbps from a wav recorded at 44.1 kHZ 16 bit. Not being well-versed
in audio processing setups at radio stations, I can't tell you what a
difference wav vs. MP3 makes. I'm told however, that KBPA 103.5 Bob FM in
Austin, TX is one of the best sounding stations in that market, and there
library is all wav files, I was told it was 11 tb! That being said, if I
were to record them off the air, I don't think I'd need to go way overboard
with a huge file format, especially since if I ever find myself in that
area, the radio I'd bring only has 2 gb of memory, not enough to record as
many stations as I'd want with wav format. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Roger [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2017 4:55 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Audacity-users] Why bother with lossy encoding?

>   depth recording settings really accomplish anythinhg? I have the
previous
>   incarnation of the M-Audio M-track plus and it maxes at 48k and 24 bits.
>   Even then, the DAW has to step it down to 44k/16 bits which appears to
be
>   the same as 160kbps mp3

If you're afraid of audio quality loss, typically 24 bit 48000hz sample rate
are considered slightly beyond the human capable range of hearing. (... if
not 
well beyond depending on who you talk to.)   CD quality, 16 bit at 44100hz
does 
sound "tinny" (or metallic tin) to me.  Given that CD quality (eg. 16 bit at
44100hz) standard was set quite some time ago for CD media storage
limitations, was likely adequate for that time period of the 1990's.

If I do any audio recording, I will always use 24 bit at 48000hz sample
rate, and save as PCM WAV.

Either way; the audio streams likely still experience some loss (at 24 bit @
48khz) while the stream is being digitized, as the digitization process is
not absolutely perfect...  yet.

For me, I keep everything in PCM WAV format, and use OGG Vorbis for portable
devices.  PCM WAV is likely the most compatabile format versus FLAC.  On the
flip, file metadata is not really a standard for PCM WAV files, unlike
somebody just mentioned as FLAC having no problems with additional file
metadata.  
(Similar to PPM/PBM/TIFF versus PNG image formats, etc...)  File metadata
embedded into PCM WAV files can be nightmarish or cause significant
incompatabilities, but not also to further mention, UTF-8/UTF-16 can also
cause further anomalies instead of using just ASCII for filenames.  (eg.
Hardware vendor FAT16/FAT32)

I'm seeing more and more audio streams either resort to either "MPEG 1.0 L
III
cbr96 44100 j-s" if they desire license free audio streaming, or migrating
to AAC/FAAC (MPEG-4) if they can handle paying a few licenses.  MP3 from
what I understand has several patents, inhibiting adaptation by hardware
companies and stream providers, etc.

-- 
Roger
http://rogerx.freeshell.org/


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