Mac OS 9 Lossless audio playback/m4a

[Naiw]

Actually Naiw, that's mostly false, though your understanding of it is pretty accurate.  Mp3, AAC, Ogg and every other comp algorithm do what is generally called perceptual coding.
The audio waveform is analyzed both instantaneously and predictively. Variable (often large) amounts of data are removed if it is decided that what remains will "cover up" what's missing. It's actually pretty damn ingenious, but it's anything but perfect and it's anything BUT high-fidelity.

The first thing to go is detail…NOT just frequency response. The fine phase relationships between channels that contribute to ambience, presence and imaging are gone… period. That great convolution reverb plugin that cost you an arm and a leg might as well not be there. The timbres of some instruments are degraded as the upper harmonics are reduced and shifted. That's just for openers! This is a subject that can be and is often discussed at reaaalllly long length-far more that we will here. For now, let us simply apply some l-o-g-i-c .

If Mp3 was so indistinguishable from the original there wouldn't BE Ogg, AAC, DTS, TTA, OFR and on and on as they keep trying to improve on what evidently needs improvement. ALL of these damn codecs were created to make up for the fact that HDD's were smaller then, downloads took forever and it was calculated that "the masses" could barely tell the difference and wouldn't really care as long as it meant more songs on their iPods.

The thing about saying "mp3 for example was created to trim the filesize down by cutting out a range of frequency's that no human can hear anyway. i dont call that a loss since i cant hear it." smacks of someone who grew up starting with Napster and is so acclimated to the mediocre crap that streams over Shitify and such that they simply don't know what they're missing because they never learned to "hear" it to begin with.

Thought for the day:
Isn't it odd that 99% of people have NO trouble at all seeing and understanding what JPEG compression does to images but somehow can't make the leap to hearing and understanding how MPEG does the exact same thing with sound.

Finally, the point waay back in the beginning (before all of this BS) was simply that those of us in the industry would appreciate it if Apple could be bothered just once in a while to NOT continually make things more difficult for us and force us to work around an endless series of aggravations just to maintain our loyalty to their damn platform.

Wrong about what?
The fact that a low bitrate MP3 sounds different from a high bitrate MP3 has absolutely nothing to do with perceptual coding, a low bit rate Vorbis OGG or AAC will always some worse than a high bitrate version.

Also all lossy compressions of course use "perceptual encoding".

I know very well how MP3 works- I even written a MP3 decoder (SliMPEG which coincidencially was the first publically available MP3 playback solution to run on OS X outside of Quicktime).

[DieHard]

My 2 cents, separate, but related to this discussion

As always, all the different algorithms that can be applied to an audio file, become a nightmare in the real world.  I do 4 to 6 backups a day for clients that are migrating data to another computer or simply getting a restore on the same computer.  Some use iTunes, some don't... some are macs, some are PCs. Many people have a mixture of m4a, mp3, wma for their "commercial" music libraries, that are usually found via the usual suspects... limewire,bearshare, torrent, youtube convert, etc.  some are purchased and protected, many are not. 

There are very clear audio artifacts that can be heard on the playback of many of these files.  Many have been converted from a lower bitrate to a higher one when protection was removed or many had a "poor original source" like a youtube video.  Also,  many may have been converted more that once, due to public stupidity and lack of education when organizing large libraries.  The point is, my old-school ears "hear" the difference right away; I have heard both phasing and flanging issues in VBR files, High-end frequency decay issues on percussion instruments in files that have lower than a 256KB Bitrate; low end frequency "smearing" (bass notes get less defined and bleed into each-other) in WMA files.

So, it's funny when these clients download free music libraries of 10,000+ songs and wonder why they sound like shit.  Guess you get what you pay for.

Now for my musician clients, and myself, I like the old and trusty MP3 (320KBps).  These babies play on it all and have excellent fidelity.  You can move them to external USB players, many Daws can convert them for manipulation if you are doing background tracks or DJ stuff.  Also, many chip-based playback devices accept them, like Tascam SSR1 or units like Cortex HDC-500.  Also, Android phones, iphones, ipads, ipods, old Macs, new Macs, old PCs and New all love 320KBps (non-VBR) files and fidelity is extremely close to original and is well-produced over a large PA.

[GaryN]

Wrong about what?

Sorry Naiw, I should have been clearer. I wasn't referring to you - that's why I added the part about your understanding being accurate. We were both referring to the previous idiotic statement  "mp3 for example was created to trim the filesize down by cutting out a range of frequency's that no human can hear anyway. i dont call that a loss since i cant hear it. "

Your evaluation = partially true / partially false
My evaluation = mostly false

Just a matter of degrees…

[Astroman]

It's all about individual perceiption, which varies even with the same individual.
'Producing musicians' have a much higher degree of attention to details than regular listeners.
For a critical judgement of a mix I usually rely on the very first impression, as I noticed that I adapt in relatively short time to whatever comes along.
Everyone has his particular audio environment and since listen to music is a kind of joy, the brain tries to make it as 'enjoyable' as possible.

In my own experience it needs some constant variation to be able to tell things apart.
If Soundcloud streams are all you ever have, it will sound good after a couple of days.
Until you throw an old vinyl on the turntable... (or whatever digital representation).
Numeric specs aren't a big deal for me - often misinterpreted anyway and a marketing tool in the majority of cases. That's why I put the 'old' in front of vinyl. A contemporarily mixed version on disk may represent some kind of value, but hardly an audible advantage.

I don't mind lossless compression for archive - not worth the effort regarding storage costs.

[Naiw]

Well anyway, I think we can all agree that most of us will be able to tell a significant difference between a 128kbps MP3 and the uncompressed source,
While a 320Kbps MP3 will essentially sound identical to the uncompressed version.

Just want to point out once again that all lossy compression algoritms are modelled around "perceptual analysis", that's kind of how they get away with removing information from the stream.
JPEG for example exploits the fact that the human eye has way way worse color reception than contrast/light (which is coincidentially why we don't are able to detect colors to any great extent when it's dim/dark outside)

MP3 etc takes adventage of that the human ear don't have a linear freqency response, that the human ear is very bad at stereo perception in various areas of the spectrum etc.

So as I said for the people who absolutely can't hear a difference between a compressed song and an uncompressed song- good for them, for those who can't stand anything but lossless- too bad.

We're all individual but certainly the great mass won't be able to tell the difference in most circumstances, and the fact that the majority has pretty poor speakers unable to reproduce most frequencies accurately anyway of course contributes to this.

[Protools5LEGuy]

An experiment I did years ago.

You take a good WAV/AIFF ripped in CD quality from your favorite band. Call it A file

Convert it to MP3 @320 with any codec. Call it B

Expand it again to WAV  and call it C

Take A and C to your favorite multitrack DAW.

Flip the Phase on C. If they were identical you should hear nothing, but they aren't.

You will hear what MP3 encoding+decoding audio is stealing you.

On the Master put your favorite analizer (Waves PAZ analizer) and SEE it for yourself.

Those frequencies you need good monitors and a quiet room to notice, but there they are.

[DieHard]

An experiment I did years ago.

You take a good WAV/AIFF ripped in CD quality from your favorite band. Call it A file

Convert it to MP3 @320 with any codec. Call it B

Expand it again to WAV  and call it C

Take A and C to your favorite multitrack DAW.

Flip the Phase on C. If they were identical you should hear nothing, but they aren't.

You will hear what MP3 encoding+decoding audio is stealing you.

On the Master put your favorite analizer (Waves PAZ analizer) and SEE it for yourself.

Those frequencies you need good monitors and a quiet room to notice, but there they are.

PT, I believe you, although I never did that test

From Diehard...

Now for my musician clients, and myself, I like the old and trusty MP3 (320KBps).  These babies play on it all and have excellent fidelity.

"Excellent" does NOT mean equal... just Very very very Good

[Protools5LEGuy]

Now for my musician clients, and myself, I like the old and trusty MP3 (320KBps).  These babies play on it all and have excellent fidelity.  You can move them to external USB players, many Daws can convert them for manipulation if you are doing background tracks or DJ stuff.  Also, many chip-based playback devices accept them, like Tascam SSR1 or units like Cortex HDC-500.  Also, Android phones, iphones, ipads, ipods, old Macs, new Macs, old PCs and New all love 320KBps (non-VBR) files and fidelity is extremely close to original and is well-produced over a large PA.

Cant remember if I tried VBR vs non-VBR.

We have to recognize that is hard to handle to have a CD/LP of every album we love. But for my favorites I try to get FLAC or 320Kbs Mp3s at least. In this Terabyte hard drive space age, we should try to preserve our ears to the maximum we can afford. It is hard to learn audio engineering listening crappy 96Kbs MP3. 

I push hard the listening experience by taking all the machines out of my room and having D.A.S. Monitor 8 https://www.mixonline.com/recording/das-monitor-8-375044 with a Pioneer amp on direct. I've relearn musical passages since I have worked on silents Studio-grade rooms. I have also two Audiotechnica ATM 40fs that are still working as the first day 18 years later after been abused by lots of deaf-folks. I try hard to keep the HI-FI experience, but on mobile devices I just use samsung cheap In-Ear buds and I figure out millions others do.

It is hard to learn and easy to forget the "HI-FI" with crappy sounding devices if you do not keep training your earing skills.

I hope in the future the audio depth (up to 24 bit&more) will grow as we should embrace 88&96 kHz and up. It is the only way of finishing the loudness war we have after the last 25 years.

[GaryN]

Some random thoughts…

When I said "anybody can see and understand what JPEG compression does" I meant that anyone can open a picture on any monitor then hit the "+" key repeatedly until the jaggies become visible. Positioned next to the uncompressed original, they then instantly see and understand that a bunch of detail has been removed and how it's okay only as long as you don't look too closely.

That's not as easy to demonstrate with audio since you can't have the two versions sitting side-by-side. Comparing waveforms doesn't work because it's not so obvious to the untrained eye what's changed/missing. If you can do a careful A/B comparison on quality equipment though, a surprising number of previously "deaf" folks can actually tell the difference…once they begin to understand what to listen for.

A well-encoded 320kbps Mp3 can often sound surprisingly good. It's kinda like dbx NR though…awesome (and inaudible) on some material, not so much on something else.

You can't even know when you're missing something if you don't know what it is. Worse, if all you listen to is lo-fi and distortion, that becomes your standard and quality hi-fi can be perceived as "wrong". Fact: There are kids (Millennials mostly) who seriously prefer their clipped, harsh 128kbps Mp3s to the same material on CD.

The more electronic / synthesized / processed / artificial a music genre is, the less obvious it becomes that anything even IS missing. Play me a recording of say, Diana Krall with just her piano trio and i can definitely give you an intelligent opinion of the recording quality, because I know what a piano trio sounds like. Play some Justin Timberlake where everything is processed and massaged for days and it's just guesswork because there's no reference to compare to.

   PLEASE… I'm NOT a Justin hater - just the first thing that sprang to mind…
   I actually like Justin Timberlake - really I do.

[Astroman]

Lower colour sensitivity of the eye reminds me on some realworld experience with image compression. When working in publishing we had to decide about archive size and did a big shootout with various compression rates.
Everyone agreed the pics really looked identical - but they didn't print equal.
Of course the degree was of few concern for the average reader, but those interested in image quality could tell the difference.

But that was back in time - now with sophisticated filter algorithms you see the same 'harshness' that you hear in a lot of contemporary music productions - everything's way over the top. The degree of pronounced detail completely simply kills the visual composition...

Filtering is a significant part part of mp3 like algorithms - imho the (infamous) Soundcloud encoder does a fairly good job as a 'vintage smoother' for some overbrittle and slightly harsh stuff... for free. 

[Greystash]

Thanks for all your replies, I ended up deciding to re-import all my CDs as AIFF. Newer iTunes versions import the AIFF file into an AIFF-C container and this can hold metadata/artwork etc. Although i doubt iTunes on OS9 will be able to read that metadata, Better than nothing..

[DieHard]

I ended up deciding to re-import all my CDs as AIFF

Can't go wrong with that !   Hard Drives are very cheap these days