open question about audio compression

cfleck

cfleck

tired
i know the audio peeps out there have issues with lossy-compression formats like aac, mp3, and what not. it also occurs to me that hard drives are getting ridiculously huge now-a-days. so my question is this...

when do small music files no longer become a priority given that huge hard drives will have no problem holding them? i know its not to that point yet, but i think the time is near. what do you folks think?
 
It depends on the context. If you're ripping tunes to stream online, then you want files as small as possible with the best compromise between size and quality. To get smaller files, you have to turn down the quality, and vice versa.

For storing files on your hard drive, like your own personal music collection, it basically depends on the amount of hard drive space you have left, and, more importantly, how much you're willing or able to dedicate to storing tunes. With 80+ GB hard drives coming standard in many Macs nowadays, this is much less of an issue than it was, say, 3 years ago. If you're ripping tunes from CD's, then you should go with at least 128 kbps (kilobit-per-second) files, 160 or 192 or more if you have lots of room, and 44.1 kHz rate or better.

What exactly are you referring to?
 
cf25 said:
personal collection.

are there non-lossy ways to compress music? how small do the files get?
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Basically, yes, but I don't know of any music compression system that does that in realtime. Would probably require too much processor power. Perhaps in the future, with 64 bit optimized compression algorithms and all.
 
What exactly do you mean by lossy? Its all relative, by the time that the recording studio burns a CD the audio quality has allready gone through a downgrade. You can trace the Loss Tree all the way back to the microphone itself, which degrades sound quality. Its what is acceptable that cannot be standardized... Hell, a 128kbps AAC barely sound different than an CD that ya buy in the store. Im my oppinion more is excess. Also, so much depends on the sterio system that you have your computer hooked up to. A pair of sony headphones wont bother to pump out AAC or .OGG quality audio. Nab a pair of Sennheisers (which I have and recomend) and youll hear the diffrence. Its all relitive..
 
cogito is right - you're probably not going to hear the differnece unless your monitoring device is of studio quality. 128kbps AAC should do anyone.

Sennheiser headphones are the best money can buy. I seem to remember they custom made a pair a few years ago that cost GBP 50,000. The HD25's are the ones to get. They cost about GBP 99.
 
Well, that's not exactly the question here. Once a sound file is AAC compressed, it will always have that loss of sound quality. That's the definition of "lossy". And no matter how good your headphones or speakers are, that isn't going to change that fact.
 
This is a bit like a dog chasing it's tail... As we all seek to have lossless "CD Quality" compression the pro audio gear is already WELL beyond CD Quality...

CD's are 44.1khz(samples/second)/16bit(resolution of each sample). Pro gear has already exceeded 90khz/24bit. As these numbers get higher so does the amount of disk space. (Much like a high resolution image or movie).

Also don't forget that most audio is now dual-channel (stereo), which doubled the disk requirements. Most of the new formats are 5.1 ("five dot one") or higher which is actually 6+ discrete channels.... thus consuming 300% more disk space than stereo in the un-encoded raw form.

So by the time you have enough hard drive space for CD Quality that will already be low-res compared to what you'll be getting in the stores. (think DVD-A...)
 
ksv said:
Basically, yes, but I don't know of any music compression system that does that in realtime. Would probably require too much processor power. Perhaps in the future, with 64 bit optimized compression algorithms and all.
Click to expand...
One of the interesting differences between MP3 and AAC is the amout of CPU horsepower it takes to encode vs. decode.

I forget which is which (I think AAC is easier to decode), but if the decoding is too intensive, then your computer will sputter trying to play it back.
 
ksv said:
Well, that's not exactly the question here. Once a sound file is AAC compressed, it will always have that loss of sound quality. That's the definition of "lossy". And no matter how good your headphones or speakers are, that isn't going to change that fact.
Click to expand...

Depends. To hear the difference between the original and various compression methods you need to listen to the files on a reasonable set of speakers or headphones. Whether it's a good or bad quality file, the difference will be more apparrent on a set of Genelec monitors than it will be on iBook speakers, and nothing is going to change that fact.
 
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