MP3 VS FLAC VS CD VS Cassette VS Vinyl (video idea)

[3 Lions]

Who thinks this is a good topic for LMG to cover? 

 

My idea is that they could get an artist (someone from Monstercat,Deadmu5 or even a Canadian singer like Bryan Adams) to record a song on each format. A video could be uploaded with each format to listen to, then the community could vote on a poll in the video discussion on the forum for the format that they think had the better sound quality. The people that voted for the format that had the highest votes could get receive a free digital download of the song if was a digital format that won or a physical copy of the song that wasn't a digital format. 

[Nup]

@Volbet has made some seriously good guides on that. 

 

Also, is there no tech quickie on those subjects? 

[3 Lions]

1 minute ago, Nup said:

@Volbet has made some seriously good guides on that. 

 

Also, is there no tech quickie on those subjects? 

What I mean is that LMG could get someone to record a song on all of the common formats and then let the community vote to see which one actually had the best sound quality. I appreciate your post though  

[Ithanul]

I see an issue with that:  wide variety of sound equipment by the listeners.  The song would sound different across different sound equipment.

[3 Lions]

1 minute ago, Ithanul said:

I see an issue with that:  wide variety of sound equipment by the listeners.  The song would sound different across different sound equipment.

Yeah I understand that,viewers would have to wear headphones to get the best experience.  

[themctipers]

i don't.

 

cassette (type 1) -> type 2 -> type 4 / mp3 -> CD -> flac -> vinyl

 

[Nup]

5 minutes ago, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

What I mean is that LMG could get someone to record a song on all of the common formats and then let the community vote to see which one actually had the best sound quality. I appreciate your post though  

Couldn't resist to share those guides  

But yeah its not a bad idea, lots of community interaction. And hasn't he already done a collaboration with deadmau5? Probably more feasible then we'd imagine. 

[Ithanul]

2 minutes ago, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

Yeah I understand that,viewers would have to wear headphones to get the best experience.  

Would have to be same type of headphones too.  Headphones vary in sound signature.

[Volbet]

4 hours ago, Nup said:

Also, is there no tech quickie on those subjects? 

Partially

 

4 hours ago, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

What I mean is that LMG could get someone to record a song on all of the common formats and then let the community vote to see which one actually had the best sound quality. I appreciate your post though  

There would be way too many variables in that. 

Eveything from the equiptment used for recording (or just making) the music, over the mixing and mastering of the music to the end-user's equitpment. 

And in the end all it would have to go through YouTube's compression, pretty much rendering the exercise pointless. 

 

4 hours ago, themctipers said:

cassette (type 1) -> type 2 -> type 4 / mp3 -> CD -> flac -> vinyl

It's not really that easy. You can certainly get CDs that sound much better than a vinyl record and you can get vinyl records that sounds absolutly terrible. 

If you ever wanna listen to something terrible, then buy an American pressed vinyl record made in the late '90s. 

Or even worse, a Dynaflex record. 

 

Same with cassette tapes. 

You can get type I tapes that will sound better than a type II. 

 

4 hours ago, Nup said:

Couldn't resist to share those guides   

And I thank you for it. 

Shows I didn't write them all in vein. 

[themctipers]

Just now, Volbet said:

 

interesting.. the only type 1 tapes ive listened to (late 80s to early 90s made, not the best but near the bottom of the bin) were terrible to the type 2s ive listened to (same time period, cheapest you could find probably) 

 

im trying to find some type 4s in my parents collection of music, so far no luck 

[Volbet]

5 minutes ago, themctipers said:

interesting.. the only type 1 tapes ive listened to (late 80s to early 90s made, not the best but near the bottom of the bin) were terrible to the type 2s ive listened to (same time period, cheapest you could find probably) 

 

im trying to find some type 4s in my parents collection of music, so far no luck 

There wasn't really any prerecorded music released on type IV tape. 

Metal tape was really expensive, so the consumers weren't really willing to pay for that. 

Type IV tape was almost exclusively sold for home recording. 

 

As for the tape types, there was never truely any clear standard. While you can usually expect the different tape types to contain their respective materials (ferro, chrome and metal), tape manufactures would usually mix other things in to either improve cost or quality. 

For example, Ferro-cobalt tapes were usually sold under the type I moniker, but it has quite a lot less tape hiss than a plain ferro tape. 

[themctipers]

Just now, Volbet said:

There wasn't really any prerecorded music released on type IV tape. 

Metal tape was really expensive, so the consumers weren't really willing to pay for that. 

Type IV tape was almost exclusively sold for home recording. 

 

As for the tape types, there was never truely any clear standard. While you can usually expect the different tape types to contain their respective materials (ferro, chrome and metal), tape manufactures would usually mix other things in to either improve cost or quality. 

For example, Ferro-cobalt tapes were usually sold under the type I moniker, but it has quite a lot less tape hiss than a plain ferro tape. 

it's not prerecorded, everything we have is pirated (probably taken off of laserdisc or cd)

almost all of the cassettes were TDK, probably can google if they added something

[Ithanul]

13 minutes ago, Volbet said:

It's not really that easy. You can certainly get CDs that sound much better than a vinyl record and you can get vinyl records that sounds absolutly terrible. 

If you ever wanna listen to something terrible, then buy an American pressed vinyl record made in the late '90s. 

Or even worse, a Dynaflex record. 

 

Same with cassette tapes. 

You can get type I tapes that will sound better than a type II. 

 

And I thank you for it. 

Show I didn't write them all in vein. 

Agree.  I have CDs and Vinyl.  There are bad and good in each.  Though, I never understood the hype over vinyl considering the medium's limitations.  I grew up on vinyl to cassette to CD.  I rather take CD and digital lossless over those older formats any day.  Plus, who the hell wants to mess with cassette....the pain of rewinding tape sucks major or finding a track.

[themctipers]

4 minutes ago, Ithanul said:

Agree.  I have CDs and Vinyl.  There are bad and good in each.  Though, I never understood the hype over vinyl considering the medium's limitations.  I grew up on vinyl to cassette to CD.  I rather take CD and digital lossless over those older formats any day.  Plus, who the hell wants to mess with cassette....the pain of rewinding tape sucks major or finding a track.

nostalgia, or people starting to use it because its new and interesting

 

for me, its because its new and interesting (as stupid as that sounds), never used a decent cassette player/deck or a turntable until this year 

[Nup]

1 hour ago, Volbet said:

Partially

 

And I thank you for it. 

Show I didn't write them all in vein. 

The fast food version ;P

 

Needs to be done! All of the forums best content seems to get lost in dusty corners. Have to give it a nudge from time to time, great resources to have. 

A guide section would be nice, in addition to having things in their respective sections. 

[Ithanul]

35 minutes ago, themctipers said:

nostalgia, or people starting to use it because its new and interesting

 

for me, its because its new and interesting (as stupid as that sounds), never used a decent cassette player/deck or a turntable until this year 

I would not call those formats new at all.  Vinyl came from the darn 40s or earlier that over 60+ year old tech.

Over priced old formats.  I don't miss them at all nor the headaches with dealing with those formats.

[themctipers]

Just now, Ithanul said:

I would not call those formats new at all.  Vinyl came from the darn 40s or earlier that over 60+ year old tech.

Over priced old formats.  I don't miss them at all nor the headaches with dealing with those formats.

new = new to the user

am lucky i have a bunch of vinyl records and cassettes, and even a DAT (digital audio tape) player / tapes sitting around in the basement, 

along with stupidly expensive speakers and amp, using that now. seriously, why is this sitting in the basement unused, rotting away?

[PlayStation 2]

This would be hard to do with at least one comparable thing. If you wanted to do something from the late 1990s, good luck. Chances are all files involved will be a master made for CD then slapped onto vinyl/cassette/etc. 

If you wanted to do something from the mid 1980s, also good luck. Vinyl will likely sound better (depending on what) compared to the comparable CD, and you'd be stuck with comparing ferro tape to vinyl and CD.

[AshleyAshes]

FLAC vs CD is stupid.  A CD is uncompressed PCM, FLAC is lossless compressed PCM, decoded FLAC is bit for bit identical to the PCM data that originally went into it.  You can literally checksum their outputs against each other and they'd be identical.  If any tester reported that FLAC and CD sounded different, it'd be all in their heads.

[Ithanul]

38 minutes ago, themctipers said:

new = new to the user

am lucky i have a bunch of vinyl records and cassettes, and even a DAT (digital audio tape) player / tapes sitting around in the basement, 

along with stupidly expensive speakers and amp, using that now. seriously, why is this sitting in the basement unused, rotting away?

High chance the previous owners no longer use those formats and moved on to a new format.

There a reason myself and my family threw out our cassettes and VHS tapes.  Old tech eating up space.  Only reason the vinyl records are kept is because of their value.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 hours ago, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

My idea is that they could get an artist (someone from Monstercat,Deadmu5 or even a Canadian singer like Bryan Adams) to record a song on each format. 

You don't record songs on any such format. You record a master, which can be analogue or digital, and then you publish it in different physical (or not) formats after further processing. The final consumer format is not directly related to the recording technology of choice. You don't make cassettes by playing live to a cassette recorder, you don't make CDs by playing live to a CD recorder.

 

2 hours ago, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

 

A video could be uploaded with each format to listen to, then the community could vote on a poll in the video discussion on the forum for the format that they think had the better sound quality. 

If you upload a video, there is only one format: the format used in the video's audio. The master would be the same, the output would be the same, hence the sound would be identical. You could only do this by actually producing the cassette, CD, and digital formats involved and give people direct access to them - I guess you see the problem.

[mariushm]

flac is lossless , which means CD = flac . They're both digital streams, bit by bit exact playback, cd just doesn't compress.

mp3 is lossy compression , depending on bitrate it can be fairly transparent or it can be bad. no matter what it's lossy so worse than flac/cd

mp3 is outdated, there's plenty better lossy codecs out there .. for example the well known AAC or the newer and better and free Opus

cassettes and vinyls have to be converted from analogue to digital and then can be stored as flac or lossy formats.

cassettes ...there's problems like matching the tape chemistry with the playback head (some players detected automatically or allowed you

to select tape material) and then there's multiple dolby noise reduction standards used on tapes and some players don't support some...

and then even if player outputs the audio as the studio intended the tape as physical media can not reproduce correctly the whole range a cd would ( i think tapes top out at around 15kHz or something like that while cd's can do 22.050 kHz),

Techmoan youtube channel has loads of info on cassette decks (players) and tape types and all that ... worth watching

 

 

[Sauron]

3 hours ago, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

A video could be uploaded with each format to listen to

If you're re-encoding the audio to put it in the video, what's the point?

 

Besides we can tell you pretty objectively that CD and flac are equivalent at the top of the list, followed by cassettes and high quality mp3.

[AshleyAshes]

28 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Besides we can tell you pretty objectively that CD and flac are equivalent at the top of the list

Of course, there are audiophiles who will argue that they can TOTALLY hear the difference and then argue crazy rationalizations as to why there must be some kind of difference.  But it's really just a testament to the subjectivity of the human experience.  I could take two identical glasses, label one 'Coca-Cola Classic' label the other 'New And Improved Calorie Free Coke', then half a can of normal coke into one and the other half of that same can into the other, and many people would SWEAR to me that they could taste a difference.

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, AshleyAshes said:

Of course, there are audiophiles who will argue that they can TOTALLY hear the difference and then argue crazy rationalizations as to why there must be some kind of difference.  But it's really just a testament to the subjectivity of the human experience.  I could take two identical glasses, label one 'Coca-Cola Classic' label the other 'New And Improved Calorie Free Coke', then half a can of normal coke into one and the other half of that same can into the other, and many people would SWEAR to me that they could taste a difference.

People are stupidly biased.

 

Even comparing different headphones, etc, or high end DAC vs onboard, AMP vs no AMP, etc.

 

Audio is so subjective to the listener that even identical experiences can and will be "different" to some people.