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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.

Best digital quality audio formats

Best digital quality audio formats

WAV vs MP3

It is often a measure of the quality of a track. There is a lot of debate about which is the best music format. So I recently witnessed a similar dispute. Not virtual, but real. In general, I decided to write an article on audio formats and try to explain in human language which is the best audio format. I’ll try to avoid abstruse terms and feature descriptions, so as not to hurt the brains of readers again.

High quality audio formats

I immediately admit that I am not going to sing praises in honor of any particular audio format, just as I am not going to “disappoint” anyone. Let everyone decide for themselves. I will not go into the “jungle” and review the most famous formats of high quality music.

I believe that these disputes are conducted by people, to put it mildly, not well versed in this matter. Because professionals (that is, people who know what they are doing and why they are doing it) will not do it. With today’s abundance of audio formats, anyone who needs it will find what they need. Agree, a dispute between a tractor driver and a driver about which is better – a tractor or a car will look silly. For some purposes a tractor, for others a machine. Here it is the same.

WAV is rightly considered the highest quality music format. This audio format is not compressed or lossy. Used for recording and processing sound, this is the highest quality sound, as the WAV recording is not compressed. Encoded to any other audio format. Well, as a result, it “weighs” a lot, so it is mainly used for sound recording.

Lossy audio compression

I’ll start with the well-known and widely used (though not always loved) MP3 format. This audio format is actively used everywhere and everywhere, where it is needed and where it is not needed. But this does not mean that it is not worthy of the place it occupies in its niche. Very worthy. Although he has been “sitting” in his niche for about two decades, no one has “kicked” him out of there yet. And there were many who wanted to say it. And the main favorite of them is WMA (Windows Media), which was conceived by Microsoft as an alternative to MP3. As a result, it is an alternative and it is, despite the best efforts of the developers. The next character is OGG. Despite the broader possibilities than MP3, for example, it never received widespread acceptance. Although it is compatible with many operating systems. Perhaps the AAC audio format is worth mentioning, which was supposed to change on the relay. Encoding quality has been improved and compression loss reduced. But Ay.

The main advantage of these formats is their small size. The downside is the loss of quality.

Lossless audio compression
FLAC is perhaps the most popular lossless audio format and encoding codec. Music lovers are gradually switching to this format. WavPack competes with it, but it is not that popular. It’s the same story with Apple Lossless, which reduces the size to 60%.

Here the story is exactly the opposite: the quality is better and the size is greater.

Skeptics say that it is almost impossible to distinguish MP3 (320 kbps) from Losless by ear. “And if there is no difference, why pay more?” In fact, on ordinary equipment, it is quite difficult to feel the difference in audio formats, even for music lovers. But there are those who immediately feel this difference (they personally attended the experiment). But when listening to a good device, the difference is huge. The problem is that not everyone can afford a good device.

Compressed using special lossless audio codecs, it can be restored with absolute precision if desired.

If you take a normal audio CD with analog sound, record it in WAV format for uncompressed sound, then compress WAV using lossless codec, then decompress the resulting sound file into WAV and burn the result to a blank CD, you can get two completely identical audio files COMPACT DISCS.

The advantage of lossless for storing an audio collection is that the quality of the recordings is much higher than that of lossy codecs and they take up less space than uncompressed audio. It is true that lossy files are smaller than lossless music files. Most modern playback programs understand the lossless format. Programs that cannot play it can easily learn it using the lossless plugin. What are lossless audio formats?