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Originally Posted by Cajundaddy
^^^^ This!
I have hundreds of albums and 78s that are long out of production and unavailable on CD/MP3. I am preparing to do A/D for preservation and want to do it right. I have gotten excellent A/D results in the past with high quality A/D converters to 320 bit MP3s. I plan to do these archives in WAV. I have worked in the professional music production side and while I don't consider myself a "golden ears audiophile" I do have minimum standards. $100 turntable simply won't do.
For reference, a full digital audio file is 1411.2 bit. MP3 compression ratio looks like this 128=11/1(9%), 256=5.5/1 (18%), 320=4.4/1(23%)
Can you hear the difference between sample rates? Take the test: Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test! |
LOL. I played both twice. I couldn't really hear much difference- but felt one was "fuller" than the other (and actually sounded like it had more analog noise).
That was the 320kbs. I've already demonstrated to my own satisfaction I really can't tell the difference between 256kbs and 320kbs. The quality of the encoder has FAR more effect on the end result.
FLAC should be completely reversible - so even for archival, it should be acceptable. Although with the cost of storage (and unique recordings), I can quite see the temptation not even to go there..
"lossy" and "lossless" are frequently misunderstood terms; even bad encoders shouldn't ever throw any information - although forcing bitrate restrictions means that something has to go, obviously.
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:- Lossy compression
Note: Actually this is not a compression (i.e. redundancy reduction = reversible), but an irrelevance coding (i.e. an irrelevance reduction).
As opposed to lossless compression, where information redundancy is reduced, most lossy compression reduces perceptual redundancy; sounds which are considered perceptually irrelevant are coded with decreased accuracy or not coded at all.
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