In what format is it better to listen to music? PART 4
What has changed today
A rare sound engineer makes a digital master recording (which is then played back on physical media), using modern technologies to the full. So the chance that a 24-bit track is actually only 16-bit is extremely high.
High-quality analog recording on high-end gear is even harder to find today, if only for fans of this sound. Such is, for example, Jack White, the former leader of the White Stripes. At the same time, some of his recordings reference lo-fi variations, and looking for the scandalous sonic characteristics of the song becomes something of a foodie treat.
If you imagine an ideal source, only the trained ear or listening on high-quality audio equipment will allow you to find a compressed file. And already based on this (and without forgetting perception), it is worth drawing the following conclusion:
AAC is necessary and sufficient for medium-priced equipment, in the absence of which (and in the absence of sources that can be encoded in AAC) – MP3 with a constant 320 kbps bit rate, created with the Lame 3.93 codec (recommended keys for decoding: -cbr -b320 -q0 -k -ms).
The exceptions are recordings originally recorded in high quality, say, recorded on DVD-Audio, SACD, or recordings originally collected in DSD (or similar format) with a high bit rate.
Although without losses it has some characteristics. And we will tell about them next time.
The author does not like Apple. The author greatly appreciates the achievements of the Fraunhofers and was greatly surprised to learn that AAC is his work. 🙂
