

High-Fidelity Digital Music, Tidal, and You - gkefalas
http://blog.vlgroup.com/post/117614999108/high-fidelity-digital-music-tidal-and-you

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gkefalas
Hey all, I did a technical breakdown of high-fidelity audio recently for our
company and thought that it might be of interest to hackers. I'm especially
interested in ideas & criticisms to lead to a more thorough test methodology
for when we revisit this topic in the future. I know I simplified or explained
away a lot of complex subjects in digital audio, but otherwise this would have
been an even more massive post!

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com2kid
It is a good analysis! The null test was surprising, I'm sort of interested
how bad the result would be if you went up against something like 192kbit MP3!
My music collection is in FLAC and MP3 (256kbit VBR actually), just because
MP3 is so widely supported.

Thank you for the interesting read!

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byproxy
In my own testing the only thing that stands out in null testing is artifact
noise and stuff that's lost in the higher frequencies, i.e. cymbals. The more
compressed you go, the more artifact noise introduced and high frequencies
lost. As someone who can enjoy classical music (for simplicities sake
"classical" and not some other classification), I notice that a bunch of
"audiophiles" seem to think that's where their money is going - to increased
listening satisfaction of classical - when that tends to be the type of music
where least is lost in compression. Music with constant cymbal hits (e.g. rock
music with drumkit) seems to lose the most.

Again, my own personal null testing with music spanning various genres in my
library.

