
Vinyl snobs rejoice as study shows MP3s make music less pleasurable - lnguyen
http://www.avclub.com/article/vinyl-snobs-rejoice-study-shows-mp3s-make-music-le-246959
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disposablezero
Bullshit from the audiophile gossip forums / strawman to justify irrational no
true purist audiophile religious dogma. MP3's can be encoded crappily as that
article gleefully compares apples and oranges, or over-encoded resulting in
huge file sizes given an original source encoding. Nyquist bandwidth is an
incontrovertible fact of physics: depending on the audio stream rate of
frequency changes, humans simply can't distinguish rapid changes following
each other. Proper lossy encoding is a balance of file size vs. psychoacoustic
artifacts. It's also likely compounded by an "expensive wine" / "sunk costs"
placebo effect where people experience less pleasure due to perceived
"cheapness" of not spending millions of dollars on scratchy, finnicky gear and
not having to contend with dust.

A blind test of an original playback from a record compared to a 320 kHz MP3
encoding human-indistinguishable from a raw PCM 48 kHz 16 bit recording of
said analog playback is such that a $10 million bounty for anyone able to
distinguish the two that would be safe from ever being collected.

Physics wins, in-group zealotry fails. Can't wait for the Thunderf00t debunks
vinyl Patreon video.

~~~
dTal
Am I allowed to play the record through a surround matrix decoder? Because I'd
claim your $10 million in a flash. This is true of basically any lossy audio
encoding because phase information, which is used to reconstruct a surround
field, is usually lost. Your statement would be correct for a lossless digital
recording (which "audiophiles" often claim is still inferior to vinyl) but I
think it's overstating the case for such a crime against fidelity as mp3.

>Nyquist bandwidth is an incontrovertible fact of physics: depending on the
audio stream rate of frequency changes, humans simply can't distinguish rapid
changes following each other

Can't make sense of this but it sounds super muddled. What humans can
distinguish has nothing to do with Nyquist. Not sure what a "audio stream rate
of frequency changes" is either.

320 kbps (not "kHz") mp3 is a waste of time if you ask me - no added value
over lower-bitrate mp3. If you're willing to throw that kind of bandwidth at
your audio, just spend a little extra and use FLAC.

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geophile
I grew up with music vinyl, when the only alternative was cassette tapes. Both
of those were terrible choices. They are both fragile, and degrade with each
listening. CDs were a fantastic invention. I understand that MP3s are a step
backward in quality, although they are more convenient. Actually, I don't
understand why we don't go back to far less compressed music, now that
bandwidth and storage are so cheap.

Going back to vinyl is incomprehensible to me. It would be akin to giving up
my nice keyboard and 4k monitor for a keypunch, (which I would type on when I
wasn't listening to vinyl).

Actually, come to think of it, those IBM 026 keypunches had _amazing_
keyboards. They make my DAS keyboard seem like I'm typing on jello.

~~~
mingus88
We are going back to far less compressed music.

Every vinyl purchase I've made in recent memory has come with a download code.
More often than not, these are 320kbps MP3s, which are indistinguishable from
CDs, although stores like Bleep.com offer flac and wav formats, too.

BTW, the study tested against three levels of LAME compression -- 112 Kbps, 56
Kbps, and 32 Kbps.

Buying vinyl these days is the smart choice for music lovers. You get all the
convenience of MP3s and sound quality of CDs (via the download code), the
superior artwork of the LP, and the aesthetic joy of using a turntable when
you want to.

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swehner
The "study" is based on 20 test subjects.

Doesn't seem right to publish a paper based on such low numbers, especially
when, as here, the experiment seems to be pretty cheap.

Direct link to study:

[http://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20161206/18523.pdf](http://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20161206/18523.pdf)

~~~
mingus88
The bitrates they chose were also a joke. I haven't seen an mp3 lower than
128kbps in over a decade unless it was a podcast.

It all seems obvious when you skim the study. Of course introducting artifacts
will affect the emotional impact of media. It's distracting.

No different than poor jpg quality images or bad movie rips.

~~~
brokenmachine
Yeah what a load of garbage, only 20 subjects and bitrates 112kbps and lower.

Clickbait title and garbage content.

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forgottenpass
I don't read them much, but I had the impression avclub was better than
publishing such claptrap? What happened?

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jaclaz
Slightly OT, the famous coat hangers experiment:

[http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/speakers-
when-i...](http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/speakers-when-is-good-
enough-enough.2512/page-2#post-15412)

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cardiffspaceman
Vinyl is great. I'll never forget that moment in childhood when my parents
stopped me from dancing in front of the stereo system because it might make
the cartridge jump out of the groove.

~~~
brokenmachine
I don't get it.

Are you being sarcastic, or are you alluding that the music from vinyl sounded
so good you were dancing too aggressively?

