What is the difference between MP3 and lossless sound quality?


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What is the difference between MP3 and lossless sound quality?

MP3 LOSSLESS
MP3 LOSSLESS

 

Is it possible to distinguish Mp3 quality from CD Quality?

 

mp3 lossless
mp3 lossless

 

Although the sound quality of a CD does not reach the true hearing limit of the human ear, it is impossible for most people to tell the difference between a CD and a higher sampling rate, so everyone assumes that the CD sound quality is 44.1 kHz can be converted to lossless sound quality.

In the past, the capacity of storage media was not large. To store more music and make it easier to stream, we used to compress large CD audio files. High frequency and low volume sounds are removed to achieve the purpose of reducing file size. Similar formats include 3GP, M4A, AA3, WMA, etc.

With the development of the Internet and storage media, the size of audio files is no longer important, so lossless compression has gradually become popular. Common formats are APE, FLAC, etc., which are similar to the beginning of ZIP compressed files, compress audio files AND packed, the final file size is basically only half of the original CD file. Here it is emphasized that the WAV format we often say is a waveform record file, which uses uncompressed PCM encoding, which is also a relatively large WAV file. 44.1 kHz 16-bit WAV audio can also be considered uncompressed. Lossless sound quality.

Since different devices support different audio compression formats, we often need to transcode, and each transcode will cause some loss in audio. For example: If you convert MP3 to lossless format, you can only achieve the sound quality of the original MP3 file. This lossless can also be called false lossless. This is the case for most lossless music provided by music portals.

I have been recording for many years and have used speakers ranging from tens of thousands to millions of dollars. Why do I rarely use speakers under 10,000 yuan? Because speakers under 10,000 yuan cannot be used as monitors. I advise everyone not to charge money for listening to music on music portals for lossless sound quality. Untrained ears will not be able to hear the difference between true and false without loss. For normal ears, MP3 with a bit rate of 320 kbps is already the best.


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What is the difference between MP3 and lossless sound quality?

What is the difference between MP3 and lossless sound quality?

Mp3 Lossless
Mp3 Lossless

Now, many people think that it is impossible to listen to MP3, so they search for lossless music everywhere on the Internet.

Mp3 Lossless
Mp3 Lossless

So what is the difference between lossless music and MP3? What about the various lossless music formats?

A few days ago, a friend of mine bought a Porsche sports car and then came to ask me for lossless sound quality music. I told him there was no need to play MP3s, but people weren’t happy. The sound in the car was fine. Playing MP3 is a loss of audio.

Now there are many music websites that give lossless to the myth, but do you know what lossless is? What is the difference between lossless music and ordinary MP3? Today I come to talk to you about those things that have no losses.

I remember when Apple held the Iphone4 conference, it came up with a definition: retina display. In short, it has been replaced by a high resolution screen with pixels that exceed the recognition limit of the human eye since the Iphone4. I must say that Mr. Qiao’s trick is very good, he defines a word that everyone can accept and makes Apple mobile phones sell all over the world.

However, the same concept is much older in the world of acoustics. Sound is a type of energy wave. After the experimental research of countless generations of ancestors, it is believed that 40 kHz is a value that can well restore the sound heard by the human ear. Later, for various commercial reasons, some record companies defined the sample rate of CDs at 44.1 kHz, which they considered to be the “retina display” that the ears could hear. Later, 44.1 kHz brought innumerable problems to subsequent generations, because it is not an integer and cannot be divided and multiplied simply by performing SRC sampling, so early Inter defined the output sample rate of the sound card as 48 kHz to save problem. , which creates a sample rate conversion problem that all sound engineers hate

MP3, FLAC, WAV and other digital audio formats

MP3, FLAC, WAV and others: digital audio formats, from compression to high definition

Let’s try to take some marks in the jungle in digital audio formats …
For a few months, Neil Young has opened a public debate on the quality of digital music, made a crusade against MP3 and announced his project to launch Pono, a portable music player dedicated to reading digital files in Very High Definition. . In addition to the sarcasm that is already on fire, as Trent Reznor compares Pono’s design to a Toblerone, one might wonder if this hype is not the implementation of a beautiful marketing operation, inspired by Dr. Their success Beats helmets?

 


Neil Young presents his Pono on the David Letterman show

Because the prophecy announced by Neil Young has already been fulfilled: audiophile digital music players are there: we can especially mention music players from the manufacturers Sony (Japan), Cowon, Astell & Kern (Korea) or Fiio (China), HifiMAN (USA) ), Colorfly (Germany). This type of player’s contribution is to reproduce high quality files.
Add to this that the latest generation of Android smartphones can also play high-resolution files with the appropriate player (Poweramp type, Neutron Music Player). Likewise, the latest generation of Apple products (Iphone, Ipad, Ipod) are partially compatible with HD audio (today with up to 24 bit / 48 kHz resolution with ALAC, AIFF, WAV formats).

Sony, Fiio, Cowon brand audio players

CD quality / High resolution, what difference does it make?
The audio files on a CD are encoded in 16 bits at a frequency of 44 kHz.
High resolution (or high definition) files (such as SA-CD or Blu-ray Pure Audio) are in 24-bit frequency 44, 48, 88, 96 or 192 kHz
What does it mean?
16 bits – 44 kHz = 65,536 bits (2 at the effect of 16) x 44,100 Herz x 2 (stereo) per Second
24 bit – 192 kHz = 16,777,216 bits (2 at the power of 24) x 192,000 Herz x 2 (stereo) per second So,
an hour of high-resolution music takes over 2 GB vs. 635 MB for CD quality
. We measure the gap in information volume and computing power between a CD quality file and a high-definition file.

Which format should you choose?

We must first distinguish between:

Tabbed compression formats: MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA
Lossless or compression-free compressed formats: AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, WAV, DSD, mono sound, lossless WMA
Today, if we are looking for sound quality, we have to choose from 3 requirements:

-High quality: MP3 from 196 to 320 kb / s, AAC from 128 to 256 kb / s, OGG vorbis from 160 to 320 kb / s

Loss without CD quality: FLAC, ALAC, WMA, WAV, AIFF (16 bit – 44.1 kHz)

– High resolution quality: FLAC, ALAC, WMA, WAV, AIFF, DSD (24-bit – 44, 48, 88, 96, 192 kHz)
Choosing MP3 encoding at 320 kbs or FLAC (16-bit – 44.1 kHz) seems like a good compromise.

And streaming?

Audio format selection is also important for streaming platforms (especially as it is subject to bandwidth and bandwidth limitations):

Deezer uses MP3 format with 2 quality levels:

128 Kbits / s for the free version,
320 Kbits / s (HQ audio) for the paid version of the transmission

Qobuz uses 2 formats:

MP3 at 320 MHz for your “premium” service and
CD quality FLAC (16 bit 44.1 kHz) for Hi-Fi option
(Qobuz also sells 24-bit master study quality files ranging from 44.1 kHz to 192 kHz in WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC, lossless WMA format)

Spotify uses the Ogg Vorbis format for streaming with three quality levels:
96 kbps: Spotify app “Low Speed” setting
160kbps: standard transmission quality for the mobile application / “High quality” setting of the mobile application
320 kbps: “High quality” setting available in Spotify Premium / “Extreme Quality” setting of mobile app (currently available on iOS and Android only)

YouTube uses the AAC audio format at 128 or 192 kbps to transfer the sound of medium and high resolution videos (and also 64 kbps MP3, to low resolution videos) (source)

Equip yourself with a portable listening system

Equipping yourself with a hi-fi player means paying attention to all the elements of the “chain”: the quality of the initial recording, encoded file, streaming material, software (player) and headphones. . This requires a comparative and empirical approach to evaluate each parameter separately. For example, if you Can listen to 24-bit 88Mhz files with an Android smartphone, the rendering is not the same, depending on the choice of audio playback application