Shining Wing Shyguy Level: 18      Posts: 62/84 EXP: 25865 For next: 4032 Since: 04-01-19 Pronouns: she/her From: Nova Scotia, Canada Since last post: 65 days Last activity: 37 days 
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Shining Wing, level 15, 15690 EXP, 62 posts Personally I think you can't fairly compare audio compression unless you do some proper blind testing, the ABX Comparator for foobar2000 is really good for this, just make sure you start with a lossless format like WAV or FLAC and then convert it to the formats you plan on using (in this case, 128kbps and 320kbps MP3s) so that you don't get additional generational loss that may skew the results
Sighted listening (as in, where you know exactly what you're listening to) is a notoriously bad way of testing differences in audio, our brains are subconsciously affected by what we "expect" to hear, even if we try to avoid it, so ABX testing is the best way to make sure that we eliminate as much subconscious bias as possible NwAvGuy's "Subjective vs Objective Debate" blog post, while somewhat aggressive in its writing (it's directed towards stubborn audiophiles lol), is very good at explaining both the concepts as well as how companies take advantage of sighted listening bias, as well the importance of independent testing in audio I haven't tested 128kbps MP3s in probably years so I don't really remember, but I'm pretty bad at spotting audio compression differences in a blind test... I think I remember being able to tell 128k MP3s apart (because MP3 is a pretty bad format these days honestly) but I couldn't really hear any difference when it comes to 128k AACs, though it might also be partly because of my equipment, I'm happy with it though so that's what matters heh, no point chasing diminishing returns when I'm happy where I am Personally I like to build up my music library using lossless files even though I can't hear a difference (I'd use FLAC, but I use iTunes which only supports Apple Lossless so I use that), the real benefit of it is that I can convert it into any other format I want without any generational loss (plus I can burn it to CD in full quality), usually I'll convert it to 144k Opus since Opus is a very efficient format that's transparent even at very low bitrates, I think 144kbps might be the accepted transparent bitrate but 128kbps is also probably pretty good My library on my PC isn't huge and I don't listen to new music too often, so it isn't much of a pain for me to manage, and I'd much rather do this than use streaming for songs I already like hehe, I only use streaming for listening to new music before I grab it for my library ____________________ |
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