No lossless sound for Xbox 360 Elite system

[nebrazca78]

I'd also like to say that doing a blind test on music you've never heard is near useless. Just because one "sounds better" than the other doesn't mean it's better. The point of being an audiophile is to try and reproduce music (and other audio) exactly as it was recorded. Compression is known to "color" the sound.

For instance if the MP3 algorithm cut out some midbass making the lows and highs seem lower and higher, people might say it "sounds better". And you know what? It might! But that is NOT what was originally recorded and to me that is not being true to the artist(s) who made and mixed the program material. If artist "X" wanted it to sound a certain way, that's the way I want to hear it.

So to do a true test, use a CD that you know well. Make sure you've heard it on a decent system. Then make a MP3 from it and perform the blind test (also on a decent system). Personally I think a lot more people than you would expect will know the difference.

I was also wondering, why did they ever come out with SACD if no one could tell the difference? Why is DVD capable of better sound than CD if there is no difference?

[jajaja]

You have to take compression into account with MP3.

16 x 44.1 x 2 x ? (Compression thingy). The more compressed the lower the bit rate. But it doesn't mean less data. just less data is being read from the file.

For example the Bit rate on LPCM is higher then the Bit Rate on PPCM.

Ah.. of course, i didnt think of the compression hehe. But.. 320kbps MP3 VS CD audio? Possible to get the exact same quality? Unfortunatly no.

But one thing uncompressed sound (or data in general) got in advantage is that it doesnt need to use CPU power to decompress it Now, exactly how much that its required for decompressing sound i dont know, but its some atleast. When you dont have to decompress you can used this CPU power to other things (thinking of gaming wise)

[njiska]

I was also wondering, why did they ever come out with SACD if no one could tell the difference? Why is DVD capable of better sound than CD if there is no difference?

The answer to that is largely surround sound. The better question is, if those formats truely sound better, why haven't they taken off?


Also i do my audio testing using Hotel California. pretty recognizable song.

[nebrazca78]

The answer to that is largely surround sound. The better question is, if those formats truely sound better, why haven't they taken off?

I think that's obvious. Most people can't tell the difference, making it a niche market, which also makes it much more expensive, and higher cost is prohibitive to most people. I mean, I don't have those technologies, and I am by far the biggest audiophile within my group of friends. If the cost were more reasonable, I would have it.

Also i do my audio testing using Hotel California. pretty recognizable song.

True, but how about if you don't count the people who have only heard it on the radio, cassette tape or vinyl? I've heard that song a million times but I wouldn't trust myself to know it anywhere near well enough to perform a test. I've never heard the CD. I suggest that individuals listen to a CD of their own and then convert the music to MP3 and then back to WAV. Once you are familiar with how it's supposed to sound, then test yourself on a standalone CD player.

And really, if you don't have a decent setup MP3s are fine. I wouldn't say that I could even tell the difference on most DP'ers home systems (including mine).

I would wager to say that unless you've spent $1000 or more (not to say price is always consistent with quality, but as they say, you get what you pay for) on your setup, which few have, all of this is moot anyway.

[njiska]

I think that's obvious. Most people can't tell the difference, making it a niche market, which also makes it much more expensive, and higher cost is prohibitive to most people. I mean, I don't have those technologies, and I am by far the biggest audiophile within my group of friends. If the cost were more reasonable, I would have it.



True, but how about if you don't count the people who have only heard it on the radio, cassette tape or vinyl? I've heard that song a million times but I wouldn't trust myself to know it anywhere near well enough to perform a test. I've never heard the CD. I suggest that individuals listen to a CD of their own and then convert the music to MP3 and then back to WAV. Once you are familiar with how it's supposed to sound, then test yourself on a standalone CD player.

And really, if you don't have a decent setup MP3s are fine. I wouldn't say that I could even tell the difference on most DP'ers home systems (including mine).

I would wager to say that unless you've spent $1000 or more (not to say price is always consistent with quality, but as they say, you get what you pay for) on your setup, which few have, all of this is moot anyway.

$790 Jbl speakers
$400 Sub (not sure of brand)
$1000+ Onkeyo Reciever

It's a pretty good setup. Also using a panasonic 5 disc dvd-a player and using the multi channel outs for MLP. I ripped hotel california to DTS from the MLP and then compared it to the straight DTS tracks on the disc. all three sound the same except that the DTS has a slight bass gain. This is a known effect of the encoder. It's hard to notice though.

I only used myself, my brother and a friend for testing. All of whom are familar with the song.

[Jorpho]

Do you think there is a market for people who will pay like 10k for a reciever just because the salesman say its better than a 1k reciever? Or that they use millions for reseach and developement on making newer stuff thats better on the paper only and relay on salesmen to sell thing from specs only? No dice

It is the salesman's job to convince you that the 10k reciever is better than the 1k reciever, and if he can tell you that millions of dollars were spent on research and development for the newer reciever, it may be that much easier to convince you.

This is the case for far more things than just audio equipment.

[jajaja]

It is the salesman's job to convince you that the 10k reciever is better than the 1k reciever, and if he can tell you that millions of dollars were spent on research and development for the newer reciever, it may be that much easier to convince you.

This is the case for far more things than just audio equipment.

Of course, but my point was that the sale were only based on techs on the paper, not by personal experience with the equipment. You dont go into the store and ask to buy a TV, only listen to what the salesman say and base your purchase on that. You will check out the TVs for yourself before buying them, seeing picture quality etc. If the 10k and 1k TV looked exactly the same for every human being, 99% would buy the 1k TV. Then there would be no need to use millions on researching to make better stuff.

[Gillian Seed]

Most of the audiophiles I know have completely missed the boat on music. Spending half of their time purchasing or encoding the same music they listened to 20 years ago in supposedly superior formats. They spend the other half of their time on forums like Hydrogen Audio and conducting blind tests, all the while forgetting why it was they started listening to music in the first place.

[nebrazca78]

$790 Jbl speakers
$400 Sub (not sure of brand)
$1000+ Onkeyo Reciever

It's a pretty good setup. Also using a panasonic 5 disc dvd-a player and using the multi channel outs for MLP. I ripped hotel california to DTS from the MLP and then compared it to the straight DTS tracks on the disc. all three sound the same except that the DTS has a slight bass gain. This is a known effect of the encoder. It's hard to notice though.

I only used myself, my brother and a friend for testing. All of whom are familar with the song.

Why would there be DTS tracks on a music CD? DTS in itself uses compression. And what is MLP?

[njiska]

Why would there be DTS tracks on a music CD? DTS in itself uses compression. And what is MLP?

Show's how much you know about current audio. :P

First of All DTS CDs have been around for many, many years. They conform to all Red Book standards except for how the music is encoded on the disc. I beleive most are 44.1 KHz/24-bit inorder to keep the bitrate the same as the fixes bitrate of a normal Audio CD.

Now that that's out of the way if you look back you'll see that i used the Hotel California DVD-A disc for my testing.

It Contains the Album in full surround in 96/24 MLP, 48/24 DTS and 48/16 DD. There's also a stero 196/24 track that i couldn't test because i don't have a reciever capbable of playing it.

MLP or Meridian Lossless Packing, is a form of lossless compression owned by Dolby Labs that is the standard for DVD-A.

I choose to use DVD-A for my testing because it's already a much higher quality file then a CD.

I ripped the MLP and the DTS tracks off the DVD-A. Then i convered the MLP to 44.1/24 DTS, which is the standard for DTS-CD.

I then made my own DVD-Audio Disc comprising of 1 track with 4 Audio Channels.

1 - 96/24 MLP
2 - DTS 48/24 (Original)
3 - DTS 44.1/24 (DTS-CD)
4 - Dolby Digital 48/16 (Made from MLP Source)

I could not tell a difference between the DTS and MLP tracks aside from the fact that DTS had boosted the Bass, which the encoder is known to do.

The Dobly track was the only one with a notable difference and it wasn't so much in quality as it was the volume levels were off. This is because of mandatory audio level adjustments preformed by the encoder. I tried as much as possible to normalize it, but to little success.

In short in a blind test no one could tell the difference between the MLP and DTS aside from the bass. Both sound equally clear.

Lossless and lossy have no noticable difference to a selection of normal people if the encoding is done right.

If you're interested i used some expensive Surcode encoding programs to do the encoding.

[Jorpho]

Of course, but my point was that the sale were only based on techs on the paper, not by personal experience with the equipment. You dont go into the store and ask to buy a TV, only listen to what the salesman say and base your purchase on that. You will check out the TVs for yourself before buying them, seeing picture quality etc. If the 10k and 1k TV looked exactly the same for every human being, 99% would buy the 1k TV. Then there would be no need to use millions on researching to make better stuff.

And what I'm saying is that the 10k and 1k TV may look exactly the same for every human being until the salesman says that one TV costs 1k and the other TV costs 10k and has millions of dollars of research behind it. I would venture that a substantial number of sales of the proverbial 10k TV are all a result psychology.

[nebrazca78]

Show's how much you know about current audio. :P

First of All DTS CDs have been around for many, many years. They conform to all Red Book standards except for how the music is encoded on the disc. I beleive most are 44.1 KHz/24-bit inorder to keep the bitrate the same as the fixes bitrate of a normal Audio CD.

I'd like to note that these are NOT standard music CDs which is what I thought we were talking about. These are special music CDs encoded is DTS for use with surround systems. Not only are they a total niche market but there are very few titles available. I use a stereo receiver to listen to music so this is useless for me anyway. Moreover, they are still encoded in DTS, thus by default are using compressed data.

Now that that's out of the way if you look back you'll see that i used the Hotel California DVD-A disc for my testing.

You didn't make that clear. You never said you were using a DVD-A disc, although you did reference MLP.

It Contains the Album in full surround in 96/24 MLP, 48/24 DTS and 48/16 DD. There's also a stero 196/24 track that i couldn't test because i don't have a reciever capbable of playing it.

I would be very interested to hear that stereo track...I bet it's phenominal.

MLP or Meridian Lossless Packing, is a form of lossless compression owned by Dolby Labs that is the standard for DVD-A.

Thanks for the info.

I choose to use DVD-A for my testing because it's already a much higher quality file then a CD.

I ripped the MLP and the DTS tracks off the DVD-A. Then i convered the MLP to 44.1/24 DTS, which is the standard for DTS-CD.

I then made my own DVD-Audio Disc comprising of 1 track with 4 Audio Channels.

1 - 96/24 MLP
2 - DTS 48/24 (Original)
3 - DTS 44.1/24 (DTS-CD)
4 - Dolby Digital 48/16 (Made from MLP Source)

I could not tell a difference between the DTS and MLP tracks aside from the fact that DTS had boosted the Bass, which the encoder is known to do.

The Dobly track was the only one with a notable difference and it wasn't so much in quality as it was the volume levels were off. This is because of mandatory audio level adjustments preformed by the encoder. I tried as much as possible to normalize it, but to little success.

In short in a blind test no one could tell the difference between the MLP and DTS aside from the bass. Both sound equally clear.

Lossless and lossy have no noticable difference to a selection of normal people if the encoding is done right.

If you're interested i used some expensive Surcode encoding programs to do the encoding.

I respect your opinion but I still don't agree. As an audiophile just the bass boost alone is enough keep me away. The fact of the matter is that some of the musical data is gone. If you 're telling me it's not possible for anyone to tell the difference I think that's ludicrous.