Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems MP3: Lossy vs. Lossless

My iPod used on a plane, train or in the office does not require lossless. The background noise and distraction would make it meaningless for me. I converted all my FLAC's to 128k MP3 and carry 17,000 tracks on 80GB. It's good when I get struck with a mood for a particular thing to listen to wherever I am as chances are it's on there. So access over quality wins here.

I do have some MP3 tracks on my iRiver, but I find that a lot of tracks end up sounding flat and uninteresting (as if the compression process sucks all the 'life' out of the track). I therefore often find myself skipping track after track because I don't connect with the music in the same way that I do with the original recording. After all - what's the point of having thousands of tracks available if none of them are worth listening to!

iPods cannot natively play FLAC files (similarly neither can iTunes), although it is possible to install Rockbox on older iPod models to allow FLAC playback. The UI is not as polished as Apple's, but I run Rockbox on my iRiver and after a little getting used to, it is perfectly usable (even on a monochrome screen). Then again, I'm an engineer myself so I can put up with UIs designed by engineers!

I had not realized that taking a simple tally could be confusing as there seems to be a category of "living with lossy due to player storage capacity"

So here is my updated attempt:

Lossy: 5
Ian, crion, Steve, 1337, Nick

Stuck with lossy due to player storage limitation: 2
Mr_Sukebe, VK,

Lossless: 3
Ronnie, t42, Mr. Meridian

I still find my conclusion that 50% of hikers are content with lossy on their portables surprising and does not bode well to provide an incentive for manufacturers to build the gear that I would like.

Nick,
I have found Ronnie's advice spot on. With my Shure E530 Earphones on a 6 hour plane trip I cut out most of the ambiant noise and I can enjoy lots of semi critical listening.

Dolf,

I suppose you should add me to the Lossy camp for portable audio files.

My digital audio workflow is similar to that of others:

CD -> EAC -> FLAC -> lame -> MP3

I keep a lossless master/archive copy of all of my music I rip to my server and it is these FLAC files that I stream in-house to my Logitech/Slimdevices boxes (SliMP3, Squeezebox 3 and Duet).

I then create a high quality, lossy MP3 copy of all files for use on my and my wife's portable audio devices (two iPod nano's and my Blackberry Storm).

When I first ventured into ripping CD's and MP3 encoding, I used my 596 to compare the original CD to the MP3 (encoded with lame, VBR, target bitrate of ~256kbs) and found that I was extremely hard pressed to hear a difference. At the time, my playback chain was 596->568.1->558->B&W Matrix 804 speakers.

This experimentation convinced me to not overly worry about using lossy MP3 encoding.

My home NAS is now significantly larger and my playback chain is entirely digital, so I made the decision to rerip my entire library and store it in FLAC for home use.

However, for portable audio, I see no benefit to going beyond my high quality MP3's. Between the limitations of the D->A stages of portable devices, use of earbud type headphones and ambient noise levels, I just don't believe there would be any audible improvement in carrying around FLAC vs. MP3 on my devices.

Heck, even at home in my office, listening on a nice headphone setup with Sennheiser HD600's and a HeadRoom Total Bithead amp/DAC, I cannot discern any significant difference between FLAC and MP3.

Dan

I am in the Apple Lossless on a server and MP3 on the portable camp.

But lately I find myself using Last.fm on the iPhone when portable. I am so impressed with this service. I play MP3s in the dead zones when Last.fm isn't available.

Or in my case "Stuck with lossy because he bought a Sony player that uses ATRAC" which MB for MB offers superior sound (IMHO of course) over most other lossy formats.

And of course, apart from a few other Sony devices, nothing plays the bloody things..... Like with Betamax, the market doesn't always migrate towards the best. Sigh.

Dolf, I don't agree with your conclusion. I could afford a $500 pair of 'phones, but mobile music is just not important to me at the moment. Also, I'm not sure I'd want to cart an expensive set of relatively fragile 'phones with me to the gym. On another note, at home, I do not listen to most of my music on my best system... I use my F80 and (new) Squeezebox Boom for most of my listening. Unless money is not an object, it is simply not possibly for optimal listening everywhere.

Despite what others have said, for the types of music I listen to on the move (pop/rock) you will be hard pressed to differentiate between lossless and 320kBit CBR. In fact, 320kBit might actually be considered overkill for the environments that I listen in.

Venture outside of this forum and you will see statements / claims about


Personally, I take that statement with about 15 grains of salt as I'm sure do many here when it comes to playing music on their main Meridian system, i.e. that they can hear differences between Lossy and Lossless on their main system. Otherwise why all the effort and discussion about Lossless and bit-perfect ripping

Likewise, it only takes a little effort to optimise mobile listening to be able to hear differences between Lossy and Lossless. Differences are easily discernible, once you know what to listen for (as per Bob's comments on double blind testing)

If we are prepared to OPT for Lossy over Lossless, then we can hardly bemoan the Music Industry when they continue to refuse the release of High Res (24/96) and even Lossless 16/44 material

If you were a Businessman involved in the Music industry and saw that even the small percentage of people who MIGHT be interested in Lossless downloads (e.g. Meridian users) were OPTING to use Lossy material, then a logical conclusion would be "Well if that picky lot are not prepared to make the effort, then what chance that the other 99% of people will make that effort. There is obviously no business case to be made here, so let's focus on something else"

I agree with what you are saying Ronnie, but when I'm listening casually on the move (and I do this very little), I am not listening critically. It's background ear-candy for me.

The horrible thought is that my use of 320kBit is *way* above what most people use. It is easy to discriminate 128kBit vs. lossless without really trying, but it *is* a lot harder with 320kBit, particularly if listening conditions are not ideal (most of the time on the move) or you are not trying to discriminate (non-critical listening).

I tried some etymotics, panasonics, shure, bose, but the sony mdr ex700, quite expensive really, was the best, most comfortable and great bass!
But when I received not so long ago my DSP3100 speakers with VK 561, plus one 596P, the sound from the sony is no longer that great...
Spoiled by M quality that is.
But the sony are comfy for communiting while on noisy train...
Now if Mothership would consider making a portable in ear system...

The tally now stands at:

Lossy: 7
Ian, crion, Steve, 1337, Nick, Dan, Arcade

Stuck with lossy due to player storage limitation or other issues: 3
Mr_Sukebe, VK, Seeker_UK

Lossless: 4
Ronnie, t42, Mr. Meridian, Dolf

I had forgotten to add myself which is now corrected so the present tally stays at 50% who use lossless by choice.

Hello Dan, You said lossless but your text describes lossy, so I hope I am correctly adding you to the loosy camp.

Hello VK, I find it fascinating how we agree to disagee.

Ronnie, IMHO very well said.

Add another to lossless. Apple lossless in fact for Imac to 861 and also on my iPod. I can't be bothered to keep moving tracks all the time on my 160GB iPod classic.

howie