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| by Cosmo Lee |
Sometimes “not good” is not only good enough, it’s preferable. Jonathan Berger, a Stanford music professor, conducted tests in which students listened to the same music in different audio formats. Each year, students increasingly preferred the sound of MP3’s. (Story here and here.) He attributed this to familiarity. Older generations prefer the distortion (“warmth”) of vinyl; younger generations prefer the distortion (“sizzle”) of digital compression.
I won’t replicate Berger’s study protocol, as I have better things to do than to track down, say, the vinyl, cassette tape, and CD of the same album. But I have set up a related taste test.
Here are MP3’s of “Onward into Battle,” from Katatonia’s latest album. Using LAME encoding at highest quality settings, I ripped them from CD at constant bitrates of 320, 256, 192, and 128kbps. These are the most common MP3 bitrates today. 320 is the highest, 256 is what Amazon uses, and 192 and 128 are common in the lo-fi rips that permeate torrents and donwnload blogs.
Can you tell a difference among these?
Onward into Battle (320)Onward into Battle (256)Onward into Battle (192)Onward into Battle (128)
This test is rough, for several reasons. First, there is considerable debate as to the merits of constant vs. variable bitrates. For the sake of simplicty and uniformity, I chose constant bitrates. Second, “Onward into Battle” is hardly an ideal song for an audio taste test. It’s dense, over-produced, and mastered too loudly, resulting in dynamic-less, over-compressed sound. Ideally, I would have used, say, an original pressing major label metal album from the early ’80s. But I don’t own many CD’s now, so I made do with something I felt was varied enough in content to yield varied results. (Lo-fi black metal, for example, sounds lo-fi regardless of bitrate.)
Finally, each person’s equipment and ears are different. Much of my stuff is in storage, so right now my setup is low-quality. On $13 headphones, these MP3’s basically sound the same. When I had studio-quality nearfield monitors, 192kbps MP3’s sounded so bad that my hairs would stand on end. Since most people listen to music now on low-quality iPod headphones, perhaps bitrates above 192 are moot. Wired has a good article on how technology (e.g., MP3’s and YouTube) has shifted from “best” to “good enough.” I grew up before over-compressed mastering and digital compression, so I won’t ever prefer that sound. But for many kids now, that’s all they know.
"I grew up before over-compressed mastering and digital compression, so I won't ever prefer that sound. But for many kids now, that's all they know."
This is a good point. I've thought of this idea before in relation to vinyl vs. CD vs. MP3 but never in the context of production techniques.
I hear most of the difference in the high end, though I heard very little difference in what you posted. I am listening on desktop speakers at work right now, which, as you said, may limit the differences that come through.
I can't stand Katatonia so I only listened to until the vocals come in in all these examples, and I can't really tell the difference in anything else than cymbal crashes. Listening on good monitors.
I have what I would consider to be fairly good headphones here (Sony MDR-V6) and the differences in sound are minor but still noticeable. The clarity of the highs and lows stands out, the mid-range doesn't seem to vary much between the different samples. I rip MP3s at 256 using Exact Audio Copy, maybe that falls into "good enough" but for purposes of the iPod (only reason I use MP3s) it is fine.
I recently re-ripped my entire CD collection from 192kps to 256kps variable. The sound difference to me is noticable on the high and low ends, things like cymbals and high hat sound clearer and less trebly. The low end has a deeper feel. With some genres, the differences are negligable but with metal, jazz, and classical, it makes a huge difference.
Thanks for the topic. I'm going to listen to parts of these songs very closely.
I tend to favor AACs over MP3s because: 1. I'm an Apple whore. 2. It's a newer technology, therefore it's quite possibly better (though I have no proof of that). 3. They seem to sound better than MP3s ripped at comparable bit rates. A 128 AAC sounds way better than a 128 MP3.
I like straight rips better than variable. I have seen VBRs' volume fluctuate and that causes a big problem when you want tracks that were meant to be joined end up at different volumes. One example is Bathory's "Oden's Ride Over Nordland" and "A Fine Day to Die". Imagine abruptly turning the volume from 9 to 4 when the first bleeds into the second. It's extremely distracting and completely destroys the intended affect of the music. I deleted the MP3s I got from eMusic and found a 320 CBR from some blog.
"(Lo-fi black metal, for example, sounds lo-fi regardless of bitrate.)"
Someone on a private torrent tracker once asked me for a flac rip of "Wrath of the Tyrant," and it just about ruined my week.
To my ears, in most circumstances, a 192 will be "good enough"… passable for the conditions in which I'm usually listening to music.
With 192 or 128, I hear, as others have mentioned, the most glaring deficiency to be with cymbals and high-hats… there seems to be a digitally compressed "tinkle" of dissapation to each strike… almost like little panes of glass breaking each time. VERY distracting.
I have never noticed a difference between VBR and "CBR," but perhaps I'll make that my next Nazi-ish reiteration of honing my digital library's purity… which I realize is an oxymoron of sorts. But I guess unless you were in the studio, it's all an approximation.
There was a study done years ago when the CD had become fairly commonplace, and everything was starting to be digitally mastered. Around 1994 I think. I can't remember the name of it.
Groups of teenage boys were asked to listen to the same music. One group had the purely analog form, the other the digital.
The digital group had much higher rates of aggression and violence in their personal lives than the analog group. The basic conclusion of the study was that the brain couldn't process the digital "steps" of the newer music, and analog music soothes a savage beast (or something). Wonder if our brains have caught up?
I just sent out an email regarding this to my friends who had no clue about mp3.
Tests like this are common, here's one I agree with the most:
http://www.lincomatic.com/mp3/mp3quality.html
Mp3's are obviously digital, the goal when they were created was less file size, and that's all. So it compresses the file and lops off frequencies the human ear can't comprehend but music still reaches. The compression might affect the cymbals, but it's also missing those frequencies so there's just no way to 100% replicate music in digital form. Not that it matters much today, even "human" sounding recording is done in a studio or on a laptop, with Pro Tools or another audio recording program. I never understood "Pro Tooled" by the way. I get what it means but Pro Tools doesn't make the overproduction, it's the creator.
Using AAC is some extreme failure, it's not a big surprise that a tremendous Apple fan won't have a clue when it actually comes to the tech.
Here's how I look at it, as someone with a massive physical library (vinyls, tapes, CD's, etc.) I've got everything on its intended media and out of the incredible convenience mp3 players offer I put everything in digital format. I found ~220 VBR MP3's give the most file size v. quality, a real issue when there are thousands of gigabytes being uploaded.
Sneaking in some more Katatonia hate is strange, couldn't you just find a better audio file that actually works in a test, it's a big internet world out there.
The thing with all this is who gives a fuck? People demand high audio quality or they don't give a fuck, musicians creating music give the opportunities to experience their music, and it's up to you in what quality you want it.
Anyway, I grew up on dogshit sounding records, like me there are a lot of people who have no real preferences when it comes to the way their shit gets recorded, it's still about the passion, their songs, and how they pull it off live.
"Using AAC is some extreme failure"
Well, it's a good thing you've got a charming poor English thing going on there or I'd be genuinely insulted.
Anyway, perhaps you could elaborate on WHY you think AACs are inferior to MP3s. Or, do you just generally hate Apple and their acolytes?
Comments here confirm known facts. MP3 compression often "rolls off" high and low frequencies, as those are imperceptible to varying degrees. (However, they are often felt and not heard. This is especially true with electronic dance music with lots of sub-bass content.)
Also, transient signals (e.g., cymbals) suffer with digital compression.
AAC's and MP3's don't have any inherent sonic advantages or disadvantages against each other. Both can be encoded well or poorly. Some studies state that at comparable bitrates, AAC's sound better than MP3's.
Aspects other than sound figure into the AAC vs. MP3 debate. I don't use AAC because MP3 is a more universal format and thus more portable from device to device.
As for finding a better test song, I wanted to rip from a CD, so that (a) I had complete control of the encoding, and (b) I started with an uncompressed signal. Katatonia was the most melodic and tonally varied CD I had on hand, as standard black/death metal is fairly monolithic.
I don't know why people on the internet have to pick apart someone's grammar. Maybe to establish dominance? To prove themselves better? I don't know, but it's pointless.
Right now you need a patent license to use AAC codecs. This means products and software designed for its use, like iTunes and smart phones. It's just like any audio format, people out there create programs that people buy to use, and other developers do it in open source so it's free and able to be re-coded by others.
The thing with AAC is on its own terms there aren't standards for text-tags like there are with MP3. The AAC you're probably thinking of if you use iTunes are .m4a or .mp4 files. This makes sense because AAC are the raw files with no data support, and .m4a is the shell that holds it with all the custom tags iTunes gives you.
AAC improves the mp3 in a lot of ways and most of it is in the way it compresses and deals with the audio frequencies mp3's would just chop off. At lower bitrates AAC is superior because it's more efficient, but it's not a complete file type like mp3's are. To compare them doesn't make sense, but if you take it as mp3 v. .m4a/.mp4 then it's more up to you.
You can save your own files in .m4a without the nasty DRM the iTunes store puts on theirs. Streaming wise, AAC files are superior, but it's the nature of the file itself to be manipulated for gain. And with all the file types out there… what the fuck is the point? Mp3's are flawed but it works with virtually any media platform.
Of course I have a problem with iTunes, it's main function is to have you buy stuff from the store. Not to mention the random spyware it loads on, its bloated memory use, that tricky attempt to control your music files. No thanks. I don't care what you use, just know that most of the products Apple makes can be found cheaper and superior by companies less bent on robbing your trendy wallet.
Carry on though, look down your nose again and find some spelling error, or better yet tell me what you think of AAC and mp3s. In the end, it's all to listen to your music, emotional defense of them is so fucking stupid it makes me sick a little bit.
I guess you're right about Katatonia, my sense of dymanics is skewed at this point. I forget to think about club music because it's not my vegetable but it's true, MP3 is draining at gigantic volumes.
I'm not much of a headphones listener either so acute difference in sound quality is negligible with the washer going, engine running, etc…
Yeah, well, live still sounds best to me.
I can't really tell 320 and 256 apart, but the gap from 256 to 192 i can perceive (and it's not fun). Like you said the headphones matter–I use some Shure SE way-deep-in-your-ear headphones, which probably helps (or hurts depending on your perspective).
Also, I'll occasionally listen to an AIFF, or real CD, of something I've been playing a lot as 320 mp3s and I will definitely notice a difference. Kind of nice to remember there's a (I'll grant, very minor) reason to have them, for your absolute favorite recordings.
I didn't mean to pick a fight. I really didn't. I wouldn't have brought up the grammar if you hadn't seemed to look down your nose at Apple people. Also, I really did find it charming. I couldn't help it.
Now, I'm genuinely shocked at how knowledgeable you seem to be about the differences between MP3s and AACs. I've read a lot of non-scholarly information on the differences between the two and I always just end up frustrated. About all I can tell at this point is that AACs are sound better at low bit rates 192 or less) so it doesn't even matter now because you can't buy 128s anymore.
I'm not sure what you mean by "it's not a complete file type like mp3s are".
AACs do not inherently include DRM. In fact, the iTunes music store stopped selling music with DRM over a year ago. They lost alot of control over pricing in the deal, but now you can download AACs there with no problem.
I think the attitude that Apple users are lemmings is just plain ridiculous. As if I walk around listening to my iPod so I can be cool. I'm sure some people do, sure, but everyone? The fact is, I find their products to be superior to most PC products in almost every way.
By the way, your diatribe against an emotional defense feels… a bit… emotional…
Thanks again for the information. It was very helpful.
What I meant by emotional is the connection to it. I use mp3's because rationally I find them better, all the misguided techies I know who hump Apple spew all this stuff at me about this file type and that and how it works with this Apple program… blah blah blah.
It's not exclusive to Apple. Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, all those other companies have their flaws too. Being an internet doofus from the outset I go for the better, free versions of software. That and I'm for functionality, not silly gimmickry like a spin wheel. Also, that whole mac v. "PC" thing is weak. Apple is the only company who make macs and they are personal computers. Every other company makes "PC's, and Apple getting you to think there is a difference in their computer company from the others is thanks to their ad-men. The best thing they do as a company is sell items similar to other products on the market, and they hardly focus on the good stuff like quality materials and construction. And it's terrible to try and fix their stuff on your own. The problem is with the company; its customer base is secondary.
But enough Apple talk. If you can help it, don't meet people in the real world who talk to you about stupid shit like this.
Also, what I mean by ACC being an incomplete file is that it is a file that is used to form a different file type whereas mp3 is its own full file. AAC's raw data is found in all .m4a and .mp4 but mp3's raw data gives the entire effect like an .m4a does. If you can follow that.
I don't use iTunes anymore, but it's good they don't use DRM. That shit is a scam.
Even worse, even given the same bitrate, not all mp3 will be equivalent.
Some people might prefer LAME's psychoacoustics, while others might prefer Apple's encoder's, or the Windows one MS ships, or even some other one.
(Admittedly, they're unlikely to really notice with most music, especially black metal, but the differences are there, and real.
I don't think they're likely to overcome a 64k bitrate difference, say…)
Conduit: MP3 "technically" has no metadata either; the ID3 wrapper is not part of the MPEG 1 Layer 3 spec.
That AAC as such has no metadata and needs a wrapper like MP4/M4A or 3GP or ADIF doesn't make it any less "complete" than MP3, technically, because MP3 is in an identical state – it's just that you're so used to MP3+ID3 that you don't think of ID3 as a container.
MP3 is just as "incomplete" at the techical level, and AAC is just as "complete" at the practical one, since nobody uses either without encapsulation, in practice.
So that's a wash.
Since we're on this apples and oranges subject…. When ID3 are used they're embedded in the mp3 codec while to tag AAC you need to compose a different file type using AAC. They may be in the same state but they're certainly not the same.
Conduit & Sigivald,
Sometimes I really wish I could understand "programmer talk". But then the rest of the time I'm glad I can't… But thanks for the effort. I think I'll study your words a bit more and see if I can figure more of this stuff out.
Conduit. Do you really think that I didn't know the whole mac vs. PC thing?
How is the click wheel a gimmick? It works really well. Maybe there's an interface that works better on a hand held. I wouldn't know. I drank the Mac Kool Aid years ago.
Apple has done an excellent job with their marketing. That's only one reason to admire the company. I happen to believe their quality and construction to be unsurpassed compared to most PC manufacturers. Mac computers are beautiful! Also, I quite like the Mac vs. PC commercials. The only problem is the casting. The Mac guy seems like a smug, elitist millennial that some folks associate Mac users with while the PC is extremely likable and entertaining. I just want to give that guy a big hug. I'm already sold on Macs so I don't need to be swayed. But if I weren't I'd think that I'd go with the PC based upon those commercials.
You're right about fixing a Mac. They're also not really built to accept mods. I think that's why techie guys dislike them. But the regular guy doesn't have a need to modify. We just want something that always works.
What would be more interesting is to put a song up in all these different quality encodings and then ask readers to write in what they felt from the song and what they understood from it aesthetically. Prefferably not a Katatonia song because there wouldn't be much to deduct there. I don't think there'd be any difference between encodings, songs are Ideas, or expressed Will, perhaps, to quote a smarter man.
I think the "am I listening to my music in high enough encoding?" thing is partly consumerist-psychological, it means "am I being robbed of possibly marginally better versions of the same material I could be consuming right now?". It's a good impulse to learn to control because it doesn't really help in appreciating or understanding the object of art as such.
Helm,
That would be an interesting study, but I think it would take a very long time to conduct.
The next paragraph perfectly sums up what I go through when deliberating ripping bit rates. I think what I'm afraid of is unwittingly consuming an album entirely in a format which was not intended by the artist. It would be awkward to return to that album after discovering the superior version later on. I have a lot of respect for the album and I do everything I can to preserve original presentation in a digital environment. Sound quality is a big part of that.
It is an interesting thing, for sure.
If you don't mind answering, do you also listen to the album undisturbed and give it your undivided attention (if so, every time?), lyrics sheet in front of you? Do you ever skip ahead/shuffle the tracks or do you adhere to the format as the artist presented it?
I've listened to records on 3rd generation tapes full of hiss and on expert digital remasters and on 192 klps mp3s and in the end it doesn't matter much. I enjoy the extra clarity where I get it but the music rests on other strengths than those of its sound quality.
Perhaps the best way to explain how I operate is that if something is good enough where it makes me worry if I'm listening to it on good encoding, then it's worth searching for.
Miskatonic, if you want to learn more about the technical side of ripping, hydrogen audio is a good place to start.
Like everyone else, I've found myself stressing over format and bitrate wars too. Generally, I prefer lame -v0 for most music, since it seems to keep a lot of the ends intact. If it's something I REALLY love, I'll go with flac.
At the end of the day though, I realize the differences in audio fidelity do very little to affect my enjoyment of the music. It's kind of like watching a movie, where after I've seen it, it doesn't really matter if I watched it streaming as a .flv on my computer or on a 52" 1080p lcd tv. It won't have changed the plot or characters or anything fundamental to the meaning of the film. Same goes for most media. It's not really practical IMO to obsess over minute details of quality. It's pretty fun to argue about though.
Helm – I see what you are getting at with your first set of questions. Of course I don't listen straight through with no breaks. Rather, I do keep a close eye on my play counts in iTunes. I'm pretty fastidious about listening to albums straight through. I may have to pause it, but when I return, I go right back to where I left off. None of the tracks on the album are listened to more than the others. I don't like compilations because I'd rather listen to the hits in their original context. I want to know where the artist was artistically at the time of the recording. So, yes, I do strive to adhere to the format as the artist presented it. It pains me that I can't 1)afford vinyl or 2)listen to it where ever I go like I can with an iPod.
In high school I put Nirvana's Nevermind on one side of a tape and Cannibal Corpse's Butchered at Birth on the other. I'm probably the only person on the planet who associates those two albums with one another. I don't think either artist intended that. I don't regret it, but it just goes to show that primacy is a very strong force.
Jxk – I'll look that up. Thanks!
I get what you are saying with the movie metaphor and it's certainly a perfectly workable POV. But that doesn't work for me. Presentation adds a lot to the meaning and the efect. For example, I watched the first half of The mist last night in the comfort of my dark house. It was quite moody and set up the situation really well. I watched the second half at lunch at work today. I wasn't scared at all.
That's interesting with going back in the record where you left it off although if you think about it more that's also unfair to the artist, because the effect is dispelled even if you technically didn't miss a second from the music, just because there was a gap of otherness in the middle there.
Some people think I'm odd because when they ask me to do something or talk to them I go "yes, please wait until the song I'm listening to is finished" but I think you'd understand why I do it.
No longer being teenagers life is faster and listening to 60 sometimes 70 minute records on one sitting with a lot of attention paid just doesn't seem to fly, so I've adopted the vinyl sides self-imposed rule even for stuff that was never meant to be cut in halves. If I start listening to something attentively, I must listen to half of it before I go do something else. 20-25 minutes of attentive listening are much better than a whole day of stuff playing in the background while I surf the internet.
Cosmo (or anyone else that knows), I am curious what it means to overproduce/overmaster a record. I've been hearing a lot about that lately. What precisely does it mean? How can I tell which records are plagued by this malady?
incandenza,
Mastering is a process where the harmonics and levels of the final mixes that comprise a record are made to play well with each other, and with various consumer stereos.
Every song, as recorded on a multitrack, might not have the same volume level at the end. Less/more instrument tracks, different settings on amps, just louder on quieter playing in performance can make as big a difference as 6 db (that's a lot). It's odd when you end with track 1 of a record and when track 2 comes in it's all quiet as hell, right? A mastering engineer's job is to get everything nice and even, also punch up some harmonics that might have been buried in the mix through very expensive equipment (there are many records where the bass guitar has been saved in mastering, for example) or perform other boosting/limiting that makes the record behave pretty much the same on all stereo systems.
The difference between mixing and mastering is that in mastering you can manipulate the final mixdown waveform only, you can't go back and put the guitar channels 2 db down for example (though you can approximate this by cutting in an equalizer in the range where the guitars get their character). Things that are very easy to solve in the mix are almost impossible in mastering, but also things that you can't do in the mix easily are very easy to do in mastering (the more holistic sound manipulation of a song).
Mastering's not a very huge thing for the artistic merit of music, but it's a very huge thing for how it will operate in the market. For example, records where songs are uneven in volume are considered amateurish, or records that haven't had their bass end shelved and so boom/distort on specific monitors or iphones or in the car can grate.
The shape of the harmonics is the end touch that makes sure that your material will play as much the same as possible on all machines people use to play it. A Mastering engineer is a force of good in this regard.
As for evil, it has to do with American radio, first of all. It's been sorta proven that when you listen to the radio or to the tv playing music on rotation and one song is louder than the others, it catches your attention more. This as you understand has tremendous implications in the music market.
It's part of the master engineer's work to deal with volume signal in recordings. Put this and the above fact together and you realize how his job was in the last 10 years usurped from being a 'conscientious' technician that would fix common faults of mixes to being a 'make everything louder than everything else' hired gun.
Master engineers like to make a big deal out of compression and how good compression can make music sound great, and that's mostly bullshit. If you play music loud enough, your ears will slightly close inside to compensate for the loudness and to keep from hurting, and this creates natural compression. You don't need compression ON the final mix to get that effect, you just need a volume knob on your stereo, which (most of us) have.
Compression is the process of taking a waveform and running it though algorithms that push the lower volume bits up, and limit the higher bits so they don't distort. There are many compressors (some worth tens of thousands of dollars) that can do a good or better job of this. The characteristic effect when you look at before/after waveforms is that the original has more peaks and valleys and sharp spikes whereas the compressed waveform is a 'brick'. When you pay a mastering engineer to master your music one of the parts of what you're paying effectively is him running the signal through the expensive machine that makes it sound loud without distorting too much.
The end result is a song whose dynamic range has been squashed. The low volume bits are as loud as the loud bits and the loud bits are louder but without digital distortion (hopefully, there *have* been botched limit jobs). Mastering engineers like to rationalize how metalheads like their music 'close to the red' (read: close to the upper edge of the dynamic (volume) range of a cd) but really, we don't. We like it loud and we have a volume knob to compensate, you don't have to turn the volume up for us, guys. Against this they usually reply with how the compression they run their stuff through gives it extra 'grime' or 'character' (read: specific types of distortion that their analogue machine that costs so much is known for) and I can agree with that but… don't metal records have enough 'grime' and 'distortion' to begin with?
The big problem with overcompression in the mastering stage is threefold:
a) it alters the mix and distorts the signal. Compression is naturally 'destructive', it alters the waveform. The band might have wanted it to sound one way, but in the process of overloudifying everything, the end result can be drastically different from what recorded.
b) ear fatigue. Just why you don't listen to metal at 11 all the time, your ears/brain get tired and unable to appreciate what it's listening to after a while. The wonderful Mastering engineers have been paid off now so that you don't even have to have the music very loud for it to tire out your ears!
c) uh, dynamic range. I mean, it's good to have some quiet parts somewhere in there, just for contrast, right? Metal, under the regime of over-compressing engineers has become a very 'binary' sounding music. Either absolute quiet, or absolute noise. If you listen to a Judas Priest record from the 70's you can actually notice when the guitarists are hitting the strings as hard as they can or relatively softly (bridge on "The Ripper" comes to mind) and that's a wonderful facet of heavy music like softer music.
I appreciate some metal thrives on this mechanization (Messhuggah come to mind) but not everything needs a Messhuggah mastering job, right? Well, they're getting it anyway!
For example, imagine Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" driven through an overcompressor. That original music is as brutal as metal will never get, *exactly* because it has moments of quiet. They're taking those away from us!
Metal bands as of late have been trying to fight against this Loudness war, for example the latest Iron Maiden has received a very gentle compression/mastering job so if you play it on your stereo you might *ghasp* have to put it from 3 to 6 before it sounds as loud as you're used to now. I hope more bands pick up on this.
I think a lot of artists are 'tricked' into accepting hot mastering on their albums because they go in the mastering studio and the engineer plays them 10 seconds of the record pre-mastering job and 10 seconds post-mastering and they go "whoa! it sounds so much more aggressive and in your face, man!" (meaning it sounds louder/dirtier) and high-five each other. Though if they had taken the disk home and listened to it 10 times in a row they'd have noticed how much dynamic and harmonic nuance has been traded for being shallowly more bad-ass. Some more careful artists realize that and that's when you hear in the metal news that this or that band was unhappy with the mastering and sent the album to someone else to master. Thankfully now that musicians are becoming themselves more tech-savvy (lower barrier of entry with digital recording) they won't be as easily fooled.
For an example into a Mastering engineer's mentality, listen to this : http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3785598/Metallica_-_And_Justice_For_All_1988_(Unique_Custom_Remaster__20 and read what the dude that did the alterations has to say on the original material. He's also done Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets. It's really educational to listen to this stuff and compare with the original mastering jobs to see where we've been, where we're heading.
Thank you so much for the wonderful information Helm! That all makes complete sense. Do you do this sort of stuff for a living?
Don't worry about it. I was never employed in any engineering capacity, no. I record my own music which is why I've had to learn things.
I can tell the difference between anything 128-320 kbs apart. However, I tried apple lossless at 936 kbs. Using some very nice Sennheiser headphones, I could not tell the difference between 320 kbs and Apple lossless.