In what format is it better to listen to music?
Understanding digital audio formats is not easy. It is even more difficult to come to an unequivocal conclusion in which format it is better to listen to music. If you look at the audio formats comparison table on Wikipedia, your eyes will start to flutter with columns of silent numbers. Let’s try to find out what’s behind this.
Let’s make a reservation right away that the article talks ONLY about general characteristics and will not include some details. In the future, Lifehacker will conduct its own unbiased investigation. And today we will try to generalize the already known experience in one way or another.
The analog is good, but short-lived and inconvenient. Therefore, analog media, despite high vinyl sales, will not make a comeback.
Digital audio can be of three main types:
in a format that does not use compression;
in a format that uses lossless compression;
in a format that uses lossy compression.
At first glance, lossless formats show more promise. This is not always the case, as we will discuss in more detail in one of the following materials. Uncompressed formats don’t make any sense other than storing the master recordings needed to create audio content. They are easier to repair. Storing and listening to home recordings is superfluous.
Of the many parameters of digital audio, the user must first be concerned with sample rate (the accuracy of digitizing an analog signal in time), bit depth (the accuracy of digitizing in amplitude – volume) , the bit rate (the amount of information contained in the file per second).
Today we will talk about lossy.
For compressed sound, the concept of the psychoacoustic model is very important: the idea of scientists and engineers about how a person perceives sound. The ear perceives the entire spectrum of acoustic waves that reach it. However, the brain processes the signals.
The reference value of the human audible range is 16 Hz to 20 kHz, but it is not able to hear and be aware of all incoming sounds simultaneously.
Hearing is discreet and your hearing sensitivity is not linear.
Modern psychoacoustic models accurately assess human hearing and are constantly improving. In fact, despite the assurances of music lovers, musicians and audiophiles, to the inexperienced middle ear, the initial appearance of MP3 in the highest quality has become extremely noticeable. There are exceptions, they cannot cease to exist. But they are not always easily noticed by blind listening.
Formats using psychoacoustic compression models
There are many of these formats for lossy audio compression. The most common today are the following.
OGG (Vorbis)
In general, a file with the extension * .ogg is a “container”: it can contain several sound recordings with their own labels and characteristics. Most of the time, the files stored in it are compressed with the Ogg Vorbis codec, although others can be used, including MP3 or FLAC.
Its main advantages include a wide range of possible parameters for encoding: the audio sampling frequency can reach 192 kHz, the bit depth is 32 bits. By default, OGG uses a variable bit rate (although this is not indicated on the properties screen), which can go up to 1000 kbps.
MP3
Unlike the free OGG, MP3 was developed by the Fraunhofer Society, an association of German institutes for applied research, which is very important for modern acoustics. Among audiophiles, by the way, this is an extremely respected office, yet they don’t like to admit it. But its developments are closely watched.
Unlike OGG, it can have variable (VBR) and constant (CBR) bit rate. By the way, it was thanks to MP3 that it was discovered that not all recordings can be encoded with high quality with a variable bit rate (see the above reasons, the encoding algorithms and their results in this case may be different when encoding the same source).
Due to its advanced age, MP3 has significant limitations: the capacity can be 16-24 bits, the sample rate is expressed only in discrete values (8, 11,025, 12, 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, 48) , the bit rate is limited to 320 kbps. Also, in the normal MP3 version, the number of channels is limited to two.
AAC
The same rake, only in profile. Also developed by the Fraunhofer Society. Later and uses a different, more modern psychoacoustic model. The publicly available information allows us to conclude: yes, they managed to improve their own creation.
