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Are your ears worthy of your headphones?

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Are your ears worthy of your headphones?…

The process of human hearing sound is very complicated.

But compared to the metaphysics of headphones and audio, the complexity of the human ear is basically not worth mentioning. But before we get into whether Beats is shallow, whether Sony is good, and whether headphone noise reduction is good for your ears, let’s take a look at what we’re talking about when it comes to sound quality. It may be that when you feel that the sound quality of a certain headset is not good, the problem is in your ears or in the sound file itself.

01 What is sound quality?

The essence of music and sound is the vibration of air, and sound quality is generally attributed to three aspects: volume, pitch, and timbre.

Everyone knows the volume and the tone is Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti. And what is the tone?

The American National Standards Institute defines timbre as “…a sensory attribute by which a listener can judge that two tones of the same volume and pitch are not the same.” We can tell the difference between a guitar playing a 440Hz tone and a piano playing a 440Hz tone.

The sound reproduced by different headphones is different, and the timbre is also different. However, in terms of volume, different headphones will also have a certain volume difference due to different internal circuitry; as for the tone, there is no obvious change without accident.

02Digital recording and analog recording

There is no doubt that pre-CD audio carriers: magnetic tapes, vinyl records, etc., are all analog recording products. The word “analog” is also translated as “analog”, in short, it restores and reproduces the vibration in the air at that moment in a physical way. Whether it’s vinyl or tape, physical features such as bumps, depressions, or magnetic dust splits on tape or disc are used to restore the vibrance detail of the audio.

But in the age of CDs and computers, all audio vibrations are converted to 0 or 1 on the surface of the disc and go into the so-called binary algorithm. After decoding, it is restored to physical vibration.

In popular music recordings, there are probably three most common formats:

44.1 kHz, 16-bit waveform

320kb mp3

128kb mp3

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Mp3, is it the best format for music and sound?

People are looking for the best audio and video quality in 2022, what is it?

If you are seriously looking for high-quality audio and video, we advise you to stay away from the data-throwing fundamentalists and adopt a more practical attitude.

First of all you must ask yourself, on which devices will you listen to the audio or see the videos.

We have listened to dozens of fundamentalists who use numbers and certain statements as dogmas and have turned even this discussion of quality into a dogma.

And that is diametrically different from the simple my real aspiration to really enjoy the best audio and video quality that your equipment can deliver and that your eyes and ears are capable of detecting.

Mathematical statements are useless if you do not have an HD computer to listen to your audios and watch your videos.

Nor if the extreme is reached where the difference is already indistinguishable for 99.99% of the population.

It is fully demonstrated that for 99.99% of the population, even for those who have auditory training, an mp3 with 320 kbps and 48000 as sample rate is indistinguishable from a WAV or FLAC.

You can improve your audio with Mp4Gain regardless if you decide to continue using mp3s or prefer to switch to FLAC (Mp4Gain can convert and use these and other formats like ogg, m4a, etc)

In short, the discussion of sound quality should be based more on actually hearing the best possible audio and not a fundamentalist discussion about numbers.

The audio formats with the best sound quality

audio formats

In addition, when editing, because some details have been compressed and sacrificed, the editing space is relatively small.

audio formats

It should be noted that the sound quality will be compromised every time these formats are output. After too many output programs, the quality can be terrible, so the number of times of recompression and conversion should be reduced.

Pros: small file size, maximum device compatibility

Disadvantages: destructive compression leads to loss of sound quality, less spatial flexibility for reissue

Resume
When it comes to sound files for editing, it’s ideal to work with uncompressed formats like .WAV or .AIFF. Such a format allows users to get the greatest degree of tolerance and freedom when editing, and most of these file formats are still supported, regardless of software or equipment. Also, when the video is output at the end of the project, the music file will still be compressed, so it’s ideal to use a file format with higher sound quality from the start, which is ideal for a project that needs to go through post-edit layers. But if it is based on the premise of convenient, fast and easy-to-use transmission, .MP3 can still meet your needs without sacrificing sound quality.

Mp4Gain is a program that allows you not only to normalize the audio of your sound or cvideo files, but also to improve the quality and offers you to perform a whole series of modifications so that you have better audio quality used.

The audio formats with the best sound quality

First of all, divide all types of music files into three parts as follows:

Uncompressed file formats: .WAV, .AIFF

Lossless compression formats: .FLAC, .ALAC (Apple Lossless)

Destructive compression formats: .MP3, .AAC, .WMA, .OGG

Below are their respective advantages and disadvantages.

1. Uncompressed file format
Uncompressed music files are just like the concept of Raw files. Essentially no compression will of course have the best sound quality. (The sample rate and bit rate of the original recording are also very important. If the compressed music file is converted to an uncompressed file, the music won’t magically improve the sound quality.)

The most common disadvantage of uncompressed files is the file size. Generally, the file size of a song is around 25 ~ 40 MB. While that capacity is no longer an issue for cloud hard drives, it is still an issue for email. Also big (25MB max for Gmail attachments). Also, some portable music players or devices may not be able to play such music files.

Advantages: original sound reproduction, no compression, lossless, easier to use in post production

Disadvantages: large file format, fewer supported devices

2. Lossless compression format
The term “compressed and lossless” seems contradictory, but compression does not necessarily affect sound quality. More precisely, it’s more like “compressed to save space”. It’s like compressing a high quality file into a .ZIP and decompressing it when you want to use it, the quality of the file will not be affected.

Therefore, this type of file has a compressed capacity, but the file will be decompressed during playback to restore sound quality. Although the concept of reducing capacity without affecting sound quality is great, the downside is that support for this format is extremely low and in order to decompress the file during playback, an additional codec is required to use it, and it will. also take some performance.

Advantages: small file capacity (about 1/2 ~ 1/3 lossless files), good sound quality

Disadvantages: Decompression can eat performance when used, and support from hardware or software is extremely low

3. Destructive compression format
The destructive compression format is currently the most common music file format, the main reason is that it has the greatest compatibility with portable devices (mobile phones, MP3 players, etc.), and the files are small and have a space of limited storage. , users can store more music (compressed capacity is about one-tenth of lossless sound quality), and most of the music provided by today’s streaming media is files in this format. There is always a price to pay for smaller files. Compared to lossless formats, this destructive compression will affect the audio range that the original sound can present and will cause some distortion. So, to be safe, keep the compression rate above 320 kbps as much as possible.

What is the best audio format?

Many are known, but there is always the question of what is the best audio format. The main and most recognized for listening to music are MP3, Wav, FLAC and Ogg.

But, to choose the best audio format, you must first know that they have several conformations, and you can always choose the best. Music always goes everywhere, at home in front of the computer, in a living room with a hi-fi system, with headphones on public transport or when playing a sport. Music that gives a special meaning at all times and that encourages listening.

There are many ways to take advantage of it, but this is usually done in digital format. In audio files, there is a wide variety and normally many still use MP3 for convenience. But there are less popular alternatives that seek to provide a different, better experience. For those who do not know it, there are a number of main sound systems.

The best audio format

Beyond the fact that the MP3 format is the most popular of all the audio formats available, it is not the only one. Some others like “FLAC”, “WMA”, “OGG” have certain characteristics which, depending on what you want, can be very useful on certain occasions.

In technology, audio formats can generally be classified into 2 categories. There are those which preserve all the quality and those which involve losses of quality of the sound or information.

Those that preserve the quality of the audio are those that come from pure sources such as CDs. This is how those who lose quality and sacrifice this information must save space.

Audio quality formats

“FLAC” is a lossless audio codec or “FLAC”. It is one of the formats that best preserves audio quality and its compression algorithm is excellent. It is open source, does not generate quality losses and the file size because it is compressed, is much smaller.

Apple Lossless is known as “ALAC” and is very similar to “FLAC”. The difference is that it is not as efficient, so these files are larger, although they still have unconditional support for iOS, which “FLAC” does not.

“APE” is another and although the problem with this format is that it is not compatible with the vast majority of players, it is considered to be similar to the “FLAC” or “ALAC” format in terms of audio quality. . As it is highly compressed, it accelerates the functioning of the computer’s processor and it is therefore not recommended to use it in low-consumption computer equipment.

“WAV” and “AIFF” are not compression formats, but rather exact copies of the original content and differ in the way they record the data. “AIFF” was created by Apple and “WAV” is more universal, but both have too much disk space.

Formats with loss of audio quality

MP3, MPEG Audio Layer III or MP3, as many people already know, is the most common format that can be found. “ACC” is very popular on iTunes and is considered more efficient than MP3 because files in this format are smaller.

OGG Vorbis is one of the free and open source alternatives to MP3 and ACC. It is not limited by patents, but it is also not supported by many players. WMA is Microsoft’s proprietary format and is very similar to MP3, but without much advantage over the others.

Which audio format to choose?

The most recommended is “MP3” or “AAC” because many players support it. In addition, if they are encoded with a high bit rate, they can hardly be distinguished from the original source. However, if you want to burn music, formats like “FLAC” are recommended, because you can then convert everything to other formats without losing audio quality.

Once the audio formats are known, when choosing, the differences between each must be taken into account. In general, what the experts recommend is to use “MP3” or “AAC” as they are compatible with most players and the quality of both is very similar to that of the original source, especially if it is encoded with a high bit rate. Unless you have a specific need, “MP3” and “AAC” are the most recommended options.

However, one thing to know is that to store music in lossless formats, there is no “FLAC”. You probably won’t notice any higher quality, but it’s good for storing music if you plan to convert it to other formats later. In these cases, “FLAC” is always recommended, and it is also possible to choose the format without loss or degradation of quality