Do normal people notice compressed audio (MP3 etc) sounds bad?

I got a free iPod nano for opening a bank account. Put on some mp3's, used the little earpods that came with it. Was shocked at how enjoyable it was.

 

At work I took an old Denon amp and Castle speakers and plugged my iPod into it. I used 320 KB, and the sound was pretty good and listenable all day.

Others bought their mp3 players in, and certainly people could tell the difference with 64 and 128 compared to the 320, and over several hours, you were not drawn into the music. Probably not a bad thing at work! Without a side by side comparison, I doubt that most would have noticed, or certainly not cared.

Even though the majority could hear the difference, significantly less cared about it, using their phone for mp3 playback, most wanted quantity over quality. As memory size has increased, I don't know if they have upped the sample rate.

In my car, the difference between 128 and 320 was obvious, and apart from better bass tunes and cymbal definition, music was less tiring on long journeys; unlike my wife!

 

Where did this quantity over quality mindset come from? Money?

 

Whenever this discussion comes up, the one thing being less talked about and not taken into consideration by audiophiles is how many people with hearing damages enjoy low bitrate music because they cannot tell the difference.

Some time ago, a friend of mine played me some music from mp3. Coincidentally, it was played through my home stereo, not the one I listed in the profile but the cheaper one in the other place. Some of the songs had that characteristic "digital sizzling" sound that comes from ripping at a bitrate way too low for its own good. I asked her about it and informed her it came from ripping at a low bitrate. On the surface, the song was at 128kbps but it sounded like it had gone through stages and had been upsampled to that bitrate. We both knew it came from an illegitimate source. Hence it having been upsampled seemed plausible. I knew the song from the radio and the "sizzling" was usually not there, so I asked her to please listen for this sound when the song plays back.

She didn't hear it. We tried another song which had the same sizzling sound. She didn't hear it either. I know she often visits soccer matches in huge stadiums here in Germany which are filled by the roar of thousands of fans for several hours at a time. Having been there once myself, afterwards my ears felt like after a rock concert without earplugs.
So my guess is she cannot hear it because of her hearing. And not surprisingly, she did not feel the need to use a higher bitrate in the future.

So please, folks, protect your hearing in loud places.

 

I don't know, early mp3 players with small memory? Apple selling 128kbps downloads as their best originally? Availability from pirate sites? So yes, money, Apple making a fortune for offering very little. They must have been gutted at the additional download time of 256! More seriously, in the early days of downloading, the lack of fast broadband. Uncompressed in dual up, anyone?

I refused to give Apple money for a 128kbps download, but would pay to download a deleted album as an AIFF - even if I couldn't tell the difference to an ALAC file. If you're paying full price, you deserve full resolution, and before someone says it, audible, or not!

 

My system's out of action at the moment with my preamp in for repair. So last night with friends around we had music from my ipod and docking station. At the moment I've got a mix of new and old albums on it. It was interesting to have the music on shuffle some tracks I'd yet to hear were pure joy to discover, whilst those song I know well brought thoughts of "it should sound much better". Certainly makes you think could you have been happy without what you now know.

Most of my friends listen to music via a docking station and I'm sure they enjoy music as I do. Having said that my systems won't be for sale on Ebay.

 

I think that the price should depend on the quality, with the high-quality lossy download version costing less than the physical CD and the lossless download. It would be similar to the days of vinyl and cassettes where the cassette usually cost less than the vinyl but the trade off was lower sound quality. Then the consumer can decide.

 

I mostly agree, and certainly don't think you should pay the same as the CD for equivalent or lesser quality. My favourite band, The Enid, actually sell 24/96 downloads, which are more dynamic than the CDs, for less than the price of the CD. For a band without the backing of a record company, and in control of their own material, this also makes sense. £9 for a HD download, is a good deal.

On older material, where a CD can be purchased cheaply, for the few minutes it takes to rip a CD, losslessy, to pay more for the "convenience" a download offers, at reduced quality, is obviously what Apple etc. think the public deserve, or are prepared to pay. Ripped off?

 

They don't care

 

In most cases, very true.

 

Nope, just the one's here in the "looney bin".

Joking aside, some can hear it if you play back to back examples. I also think many people have damaged hearing and can only hear so much to begin with. Younger people that care are getting back into vinyl. As far as mobile music, a compressed mp3 isn't the worst thing in the world but I still prefer dynamics if possible.

 

And that is perfectly OK!

Nothing wrong with today's MP3's and today's players, even if they are a smartphone, the sound continues to improve and most "average" consumers update their smartphones every couple of years or so.

Same goes for Pandora, though I do advise their paid product, which costs a mere $5-Mo., I have been a paid member a few years now and they charge me $4-Mo. Their paid product is priced so that practically anyone can afford it and provides a higher bit rate and is commercial free. I refuse to listen to anything that contains commercials, although I am perfectly fine with paying for commerccial free services. I realize that the company has to support itself and pay royalties to the record labels one way or another, so I elect to pay, and would pay them more than the income that they would derive from commercial advertisments. Obnoxious commercials and the increased amout of them drove me away from radio and TV years ago.

I was aware of Pandora years before I began using it. It was promoted as Internet radio and since I had ditched regular radio, I didn't see a need to deliver it over the Internet. When my Hi-Fi salesman was showing me a song using paid Pandora a few years ago, I began to think differently about it. I happend to be in a BBS (Big Box Store) and they were closing out a Sony streaming box that had Pandora for $49.95, I thought to myself, wheat the heck, I will give it a try. I signed up for a Pandora account, learned that an upgrade was available to commercial free for only $36-year, I upgraded immediately before even listening to my first song.

The reason that I am explaining this is that I think that overall, MP3 (and other compressed files) have a bad rap (that is mostly carried over from the older days when it was certainly NOT HiFi (I had a strong dislike with digital music back then). Today, I have many amplifiers, DAC's, preamps and amps from leading designers, different speaker systems and guess what I listen the most to, paid Pandora.

I think that Pandora sounds good through decent in-ear-monitors as well as speakers. If you are content with what you hear, no need for anyone to tell you differently. But, Having better equipment, can make MP3's and streaming services sound much better than people (and that includes "audiophiles"), think that it can sound.

 

Gonna have to disagree on people not being set up to play CDs. Most people either have DVD or Blu-ray players and many seem to have home theater setups that give dedicated audio rigs a run for their money. They're MORE than equipped to play CDs and more.

Now, the "hassle" of physical media... Yeah, sadly, that seems to be a thing. However, in that case, those people are wrong.

But seriously, there's something that just rubs me up the wrong way about charging the same amount as the physical product for something ephemeral and worse from a fidelity standpoint than the physical product.

If it's good enough for you, there's no shame in your game. I'd gladly wear the bad of "excessive" when it comes to how I take my music. I'll certainly try to sell my m.o. to anyone who'll listen, but it doesn't harm my enjoyment a jot if nobody's buying. It's just nice to know other people are enjoying their music as much as I'm enjoying mine.

 

A well encoded 320k MP3 will be indistinguishable from lossless FLAC in terms of sound quality. That said I still prefer the latter for archiving purposes.

 

I do most of my MP3 listening at 192k - and also listen to a fair amount of Spotify on Monoprice headphones, or even - gah! - the built-in speakers on the iPhone 6S.

The difference is that I know I'm getting a lower quality playback than my stereo at home, and I'm fine with it. This is, after all, background listening for work or in the car. I don't expect much fidelity, nor do I really want it in these situations. I'm usually so busy that the music is just background noise. My serious listening time is for a more relaxed - home! - atmosphere.

I imagine your average listener doesn't care, provided the music can be heard.

 

I have quite a few albums in my server at 192k (must be a preferred bitrate for free accompanying downloads), and they don't sound bad. I suppose I'm less critical of these as I already have the vinyl.

 

One Person would be the man that invented Marshall amplifiers.

Let's not forget that many genre's of music don't even pretend to sound good and it doesn't seem to bother their fans one little bit.

Totally agree, nobody would come out and say it but... There are quite successful companies like Bose, Beats and let's not forget Crosley so someone (other than me) is apparently buying them.

The funny thing is, that the above mentioned companies do have products out that might be better than the average stuff found in many homes today.

If something sounds bad to me, I will not listren to it. Although I also agree on the main purpose of these Forums (which is the reason that I am here), But I do find that there are different demographics in the music section and the hardware section and that they do not necessarly overlap. This is what I believe Sid is referring to and as Gaslight is commenting on.

What you have here is a wonderful diversity among forum members. I do take notee that many (and maybe the majority) who post in the music section, do genuinely feel that the hardware section is chock full of members that are OCD. And from their POV, they are mostly correct in that assumption. They feel that they will not be able to enjoy the music if all you are doing is agonizing over minute details in this and that section of hardware. They put music on and listen to it, if it sounds fine to them, then they are OK with it and don't give the hardware a second thought.

Curiously, I find that people I meet who feel they have a need to have their iPod's earbuds stuck in their heads almost 24/7, because they need their music, are the least discerning about SQ. These are people who simply will sit and just listen to music and do nothing else.

I bet there are many members in the Video section that care about HT sound but do not listen to stereo music.

Lots of members posting to threads in the General section who may not even visit the hardware section. I like the posts in the beer thread. But then, I am a beliver that everything goes better with a good brew. I find that I experience distinct sonic improvements by consuming a liberal amount of Sweeetwater 420 before and during my "serious" listening sessions. Interconnects be damned, $1K goes along way toward stocking up on a good brew!

I also wonder if we are now reaching the limits of the resolving power of the human ears with the modern digital technology and here, I am referrring to the 0's and 1's that comprise the digital source. After all, if we want to look into space and see things that we cannot see with the naked eye, we use a telescope, having been invented by that Galileo guy back before the invention of electricity.

I believe that compressed MP3 files with today's bit rate can sound transparent. In my experience, some Pandora music sounds excellent and some does sound compressed and a bit on the lifeless side.

After all, when the smoke clears away, it is all about the Mastering (I read that in the forum somewhere).

 

I'm not normal so some, may think my opinion has little gravity in this concern yet, me thinks more people do actually notice compression and react with confusion and disinterest. Whether they intellectually understand what is at play has little baring on the matter perhaps. Just as those, by contrast, who have the opportunity to hear an extremely high resolution reproduction and respond in the opposite manor with NO sense of confusion or disinterest, but rather may well be moved emotionally and have a desire to repeatedly have this quality of experience with all the music they love. It makes all the difference.

High fidelity can change lives and is worthy of a long term investment!