What is needed to improve the quality of the digital sound we hear?
Best Headphones
The simplest way is not digital. The biggest improvement in sound quality for the money is a good pair of headphones. In-ear headphones, open or closed headphones – For the most part, it doesn’t matter. They don’t even have to be expensive, although expensive headphones can be worth it.
Remember that some headphones are expensive because they are well made, they are durable and they sound great. Others are expensive because they are $ 20 headphones that are styled for a few hundred dollars, are advertised, and carry a brand name. I won’t give any specific recommendations, but I will say that you most likely won’t find good headphones in big hardware stores, even if they specialize in stereos.
Lossless compression format
It can be considered true that a properly encoded OGG (or MP3 or AAC) file will be indistinguishable from the original at a moderate level of quantization.
But what about badly encoded files?
Twenty years ago, all MP3 encoders were very poor by modern standards. Many of these faulty encoders are still in use, presumably because their licenses are cheap and most people don’t know or care about the difference in sound. Why would companies spend money and fix something when people don’t even know it’s not working well enough?
Moving to newer formats, like Vorbis or AAC, will fundamentally change nothing. For example, many companies and individuals have used (and continue to use) FFmpeg’s low-quality standard Vorbis encoder because it comes with FFmpeg by default and they don’t care how bad it is. AAC has an even longer history of widespread low-quality encoders used for lossy compression of all major formats.
Lossless compressed formats, such as FLAC, eliminate any possibility of damage to sound quality [23] from a faulty encoder, or even a good one that has been used incorrectly.
The second reason for the proliferation of lossless formats is to avoid future losses. Each encoding and recoding loses more and more information, even if the first encoding was perfect, it is very likely that audio artifacts will appear after the second encoding. This is important for anyone looking to remix or try out music. This is especially important to us codec researchers, we need clear sound to work.
Best Master Records
In the BAS test I mentioned earlier, it was mentioned in passing that the SACD version of the recording can sound significantly better than the CD. This is not due to the increased sample rate or quantization level, but rather the fact that a higher quality master disc is used to create the SACD. When recording to CD-R, SACD still sounds as good as the original SACD and better than CD, because the original sound used to record the SACD was better. Good mastering and production techniques obviously contribute to the quality of the music [24].
Recently covered in the press “Mastering for iTunes” and other similar initiatives by other labels are somewhat encouraging. What remains to be seen is whether Apple and others will actually “tackle the problem” or if it is just bait to sell music to consumers they already have, but at a higher price.
Environment
Another “sales trick” that I would fall in love with is the “great” recordings. Unfortunately, there are some technical dangers here.
Discreet, old-fashioned “surround” sound with multiple channels (5.1, 7.1, etc.) is a technical relic, used as early as the 1960s in movie theaters. However, the surround picture is limited and the sound from nearby speakers is distorted when the listener moves out of position or sits in the wrong position initially.
We can repair and build excellent and reliable positioning systems using tools like Ambisonics. The cost of surround sound equipment and the fact that a recording encoded for a natural sound field sounds bad when played in stereo and cannot be artificially recreated correctly is a problem. It is very difficult to fake ambiphonic sound or holographic audio, the effect will be like 3D – it becomes a tasteless trick and shakes 5% of the population.
Binaural audio is also very complex. You can’t copy it because it sounds different to different people. People unconsciously move their heads to better track the source of the sound, without which they cannot determine its location. This cannot be accounted for in a binaural recording, although it can still be achieved in a fixed setting.
