Three steps to quality sound.


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Three steps to quality sound.

Sound Quality

We all listen to music every day, but did you ever think about the fact that you’ve probably never heard your favorite bands, albums, and songs? That it was just an empty shell of a “real” melody?

Sound Quality

If this question is interesting to you, you want to feel new emotions from compositions that you already know, then you are welcome.
Three steps to quality sound
First, let’s find out what makes high-quality sound. I won’t delve into technical definitions, after all, this article isn’t about numbers, but I’ll try to describe the main postulates that will hopefully help you open up music from a slightly different angle.

Step 1: Headphones
I focused on headphones, not speakers or an audio system, as headphones are the cheapest way to play music and get to know the world of good sound. To get similar sound quality from an audio system, you will have to spend an amount several times, or even tens of times more than the cost of decent “ears”.
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B&W and Beats, headphones for a completely different kind of music
Many believe that it is the purchase of expensive headphones that guarantees high quality sound, but this is only partially true. In fact, buying expensive hearing aids without thinking is not the best solution. First of all, the make and model should be chosen based on your musical preferences, not price. Almost all headphones (except booster headphones) have their own “sound color”, which means that the models are perfect for listening to jazz and classical music, and quite often do some nasty work with D&B or hard rock. Find the right headphones for you and the genres you love to avoid muffled sound or overly overbearing bass (hi Beats).
You have finally chosen and purchased headphones and are now ready to enter a wonderful new world of good sound! But don’t be too quick to rejoice, this was just the first step …
Step 2: Source
Today, almost everyone has a sound source in their pocket: their smartphone. However, the quality of this font tends to be poor. It doesn’t matter iPhone, Sony or Samsung, sound is almost equally common everywhere. If you plan to listen to music from your phone, then you can safely remove your expensive high-impedance headphones, which you have chosen so carefully, their potential will simply remain untapped.
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To get the most out of your headphones, you need the right equipment. It can be a Hi-End player (Sony, Astell & Kern, COWON), amplifier, DAC or sound card.
You don’t have to start with expensive hardware. Trust me, even a portable amplifier or USB-DAC is enough to get you started.
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AudioQuest DragonFly: Miniature USB DAC, great value for money.

Step 3: Source
And now we come to the main point, without which even buying an expensive source and headphones is useless. If you want quality sound, forget about MP3 and streaming services (except Tidal, maybe). Only no losses! And stock up on hard drive space, you’ll need it …
Lossless Data Compression (Engl. Lossless Data Compression) – A method of data compression (video, audio, graphics, documents sent in digital format), whereby encoded data can be recovered with unique bit precision.
If lossless is lossless compression, then as you understand, there is lossy compression. You are most likely listening to the latter. I will not dwell on the characteristics of lossless and lossy in detail, I will limit myself to listing their fundamental differences and basic formats.
Lossless: FLAC; A THE C; APE
lossy: MP3; AAC; WMA; OGG


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Sound quality

Sound quality

Sound quality

The lower the bit rate, the worse the sound quality of the compressed and recoded file. The audio bit rate is measured in kilobytes per second. To clarify what sound is, depending on its bitrate, the following table sheds light on this issue:

800 bps – 800 bps – minimum quality for voice to be recognizable.
8 kbps – 8 kbps – the quality of telephone voice transmission.
32 kbps – 32 kbps – AM quality.
96 kbps – 96 kbps – FM quality.
128-160 kbps – 128-160 kbps – quality standard.
192 kbps to 192 kbps digital streaming with DAB quality (digital audio streaming). Become the new standard for MP3 music. At the same time bitrate, only professionals can tell the difference in sound.
224-320 kbps – 224-320 kbps – quality close to CD quality.
1411 kbps – 1411 kbps – PCM audio format, similar to CD “Compact Disc Digital Audio”.
Of course, you must remember and understand that the sound will depend on one more characteristic of digital sound, such as the sampling frequency, which is responsible for representing the spectrum of the signal.

If we talked about each of the audio formats, we would be here all day. Of course, you have other responsibilities and a lot of music to produce. This is the best use for each of these formats. They take up a lot of hard disk space. For one simple reason: it has the best of both worlds.

They are compressed, which makes them easier to handle in terms of size. But they also offer a nice, rich sound. If you’re listening to streaming music, chances are you are. They are useful for transferring multiple files at the same time, navigating an entire directory, or quickly sharing and linking tracks.

8,000 Hz: telephone, enough to talk, Nellymoser codec;
1,025 Hz;
22,050 Hz – radio;
44 100 Hz – used on audio CD;
48,000 Hz – DVD, DAT.
96,000 Hz – DVD-Audio (MLP 5.1)
192,000 Hz – DVD Audio (MLP 2.0)
2822 400 Hz – SACD Super audio CD 5.1
The most common format, especially on the Internet, is MP3. It uses a compression algorithm in such a way that, while reducing the size of the data required to reproduce the recording and ensuring the quality of playback, the loss of sound quality is minimal. The file size depends on the compression ratio, so when you create an MP3 at an average bit rate of 128 kbps, the result is a file that is approximately 1/10 the size of the original CD-Audio file.

By the way, don’t forget any format.
Try and judge for yourself. Choosing the correct format depends on each context. So think about what kind of sound you are sharing and where you are sharing it. Are you using the correct format? So make smart decisions and use the correct format. Digital audio can be saved in various formats. Each of them corresponds to a specific file extension that contains it.

It is not an audio format itself, so its functions are described separately. There are a large number of audio formats. Typically, the format type matches the file extension. Certain types of files are assigned a specific codec. In simple terms, the format can be compared to a container in which a video or sound signal can be stored using a given codec. If you don’t know which program to use to open format or other audio, we recommend that you use our audio converter. It is compatible with almost all existing formats.

For comparison, I will give information about the Wav format, which supports high-quality sound. With a sample rate of 44100 Hz, its bit rate is 1411 kb / s and 1 minute of a file recorded in this format occupies approximately 10 m of hard disk space.

So what are the most common audio formats today?

This group of formats records and compresses audio in a way that preserves its exact original quality when decoded. In lossy compression, the sound undergoes some modification. For example, compression cuts audio frequencies that are not audible to the human ear. When decoded, the file will differ from the original in terms of the information stored in it, but it sounds almost the same.

Output sound quality

Output sound quality

Sound Quality

When a digital device (PC, portable media player, etc.) plays a digital audio file (ogg, mp3, flac, etc.), the audio output is always the same regardless of the type / brand of the device, right? In this case, the sound quality should not differ. For example, I have an iPod that plays an mp3 file. If I play the same file on a different brand of media player, the audio quality should be the same as the same signal (no equalizer or audio changes).

Sound Quality

Unfortunately, the real world gets in the way – there are a number of things between you and the “perfect” signal coming from the MP3 decoder:

As you can see, user-controlled filtering (eg graphic equalizer) can be disabled.
Sound “enhancements” made in the digital domain (eg compression to make it “louder” and bass boost); this can also be disabled
Internal processing is often done at a bit depth greater than the output DAC capacity, for example 32-bit processing, but only a 16-bit DAC. So there must be a process to reduce the bit depth. This may or may not include blurriness. The results of this will sound different depending on the implementation.
D / A converters can be of different qualities, which will affect (among other things) the linearity and noise floor of the analog output.
Synchronizing the DAC’s power will also affect performance – higher fluctuation will be louder.
The headphone controller will also have different analog characteristics, for example. minimum noise level, tinting frequency, etc.

For the quality of the output signal to be the same, not only must the final digital signal be the same, but the path from the digital data to your ear must also be the same (D / A converter including any digital pre-processing , amplification, induced noise in analog wiring). transducers / speakers, spatial paths to the ear, etc.) should not add any audible difference. This may or may not be true. Not all DACs are equally linear. Not all amplifier power supplies have the same shielding (especially the really cheap ones). Etc.

WAV or FLAC are lossless, so digital data must be identical when sent to a DAC. However, lossy formats like MP3 and OGG do not store the signal. It must be reconstructed from rarer data and the decoder may interpret the data differently. However, for MP3:

Decoding, on the other hand, is carefully defined in the standard. Most decoders are “bitstream compliant”, which means that the uncompressed output, which they produce from a given MP3 file, will be the same, within a certain degree of rounding tolerance, as the mathematically specified output in the ISO / IEC high standard document (ISO / IEC 11172-3). Therefore, the decoder comparison is generally based on their computational efficiency (that is, how much memory or CPU time they use in the decoding process).

So assuming the EQ and other enhancements are off, as you said, there shouldn’t be any difference between the file and the DAC. The only differences will be after the DAC in the quality of the analog circuits, amplifiers, and speakers (which are usually the main reason for the differences anyway).

The best music formats for sound quality

The best music formats for sound quality

Sound quality

There are three main types of audio digits: format – uncompressed; format (lossy) – lossy compression; format (lossless): lossless compression. Lossy compression:

Sound Quality Formats

technology in which there is a significant reduction of the encoded file compared to the original, due to the elimination of information that is not perceived by the human ear. The downside of this technology is the fact that the compressed file will never be identical to the original. List of the most common lossy formats: AAC (.m4a, .mp4, .m4p, .aac):

advanced audio encoding (often in MPEG-4 container) AC3 DTS MP2 (MPEG Layer 2) MP3 (MPEG Layer 3) MPC (known as Musepack, formerly called MPEGplus or MP +) Ogg Vorbis WMA (Windows Media Audio)

QUANTIFICATION FORMAT, SAMPLING FREQUENCY BIT, KHZ THE SIZE OF THE DISK DATA FLOW, KBIT / S COMPRESSION / PACKAGING RATIO DTS 20-24 48; 96 up to 1536 ~ 3: 1 with floating MP3 loss up to 48 up to 320 11: 1 with floating CAA loss up to 96 up to 529 with Ogg Vorbis loss up to 32 up to 192 up to 1000 with WMA loss up to 24 up to 96 up to 768 2: 1, there are a lossless version Lossless:

Lossless compressed audio formats including: FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) APE (Mono Audio) WV (WavPack) These formats are capable of converting CD to digital format while maintaining quality. As an example, you can take a CD, convert it to WAV, then WAV to FLAC, then go back from FLAC to WAV, and then burn it to a blank CD and you have an absolutely identical copy of your source.

What format does the music sound with the best quality? The most popular is the lossless FLAC format, and one of the most widely used CD to FLAC conversion programs is EAC (Exact Audio Copy).

Of all the parameters of digital audio, it is necessary to pay attention mainly to the following indicators: sample rate (precision of digitizing an analog signal in time), bit rate (amount of information contained in the file in terms of one second) .

The sample rate is the frequency at which digital audio is processed. The most common sample rate for quality audio formats is 44.1 kHz. It is generally accepted that a high bit rate guarantees the best quality; this is true, but only if the source file is of good quality.

A high-quality MP3 should have a bit rate of 320 kbps, but a high-quality FLAC format usually has a bit rate of 900 kbps or more. What is the best quality music format? In addition to the audio formats themselves, for high-quality musical sound, you also need high-quality reproduction equipment: speakers, amplifiers, headphones.

In other words, if you use cheap desktop speakers and headphones, you won’t be able to fully enjoy high-quality sound and unleash the full potential of lossless formats. Without going into technical details, the following formats can be advised: For listening at home, I recommend the best FLAC format in my opinion.

For an audio player, the MP3 format with a bit rate of at least 320 kbps would be a good solution. Personally, I only use the FLAC format on all devices, since the volume of the microSD cards allows you to store a sufficient amount of data on the player.

As for equipment for high-quality music playback, I advise you to pay attention to the following brands: I recommend choosing headphones from Sennheiser and AKG, the products of these manufacturers have proven themselves in terms of value for money.

For a PC, I recommend choosing acoustics from the following companies: Microlab and Sven with a nuance, the speaker system must have a subwoofer for good low frequency reproduction. If inexpensive acoustics do not suit you and you are a fan of high-quality sound equipment (Hi-Fi or Hi-End), then everything is in your hands and you are limited only by your budget, I will not give recommendations.