Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems iTunes Plus

Doody,

I totally agree even though I can't hear the difference I just can't accept the idea of buying a lossy track. Yet.

Jerry,

I don't think Trifield or not makes any difference in the audibility. It is reconstructed PCM that Trifield operates on.

To MrDoody's point, Apple is hiding your account info in the DRM free tracks.

Here .

For sure. For me, having physical media is part of the purchase. I have never bought, stole, borrowed any downloaded music (or video for that matter). When I buy something, I like to have something to show for it. I am willing to pay a bit extra for being able to hold the CD/DVD in my hand and do as I wish with it. But is not a quality thing unless I intend to use the music for critical listening, which is very rare.

I prefer the idea of downloading Lossless from a green point of view .... how long does it take for a CD and case to compost .... 100 years or 1000 years. We have no recycling programme for CDs and don't think we ever will as it is a laminate.

I am confused, why do some of us insist on the best hifi in the world but are not able to distinguish between higher quality lossy and lossless? How many are willing to admit to the wife that they are hypocrits?

Me first ...... (wins a brownie point with wife though).

Thanks for the interesting replies from all.

You are not meant to compost CD's. They are designed to be recycled by attaching them to pieces of string and using them as art and/or bird scarers.

As for buying the 'best hifi in the world' and not being able to hear the difference between lossy and lossless. Well I buy mine for form and function and because people on this forum 'made me upgrade'. I also like the sound and how it extracts emotion from the music.

If only that wasn't so true it'd be very very funny

I do think it's a very strange set of views surfacing on an audiophile board. I share some of them but find others to be quite inconsistent with much of the last few years of subjects covered.

For example, we've chased perfection via power cables, conditioners, interconnects, many other tweaks, not to mention DVD-A hi-res music which is orders of magnitude higher res that the lossy files described above.

That just doesn't stack up to me. I'm not at all suggesting that anyone claiming to not hear the difference is wrong. It's just that it should not be against a background of audiophilia and, as Doody suggests, throwing away bits is throwing away the music.

This is quite a dangerous time, should anyone's wife start reading this thread me thinks.....

Wow, I thought I was the only person left in the developed world who had never bought, stolen, borrowed any downloaded music or video.
Stuart

George,
When I have some time, I will have to do a test with a good recording to see if I can hear any difference. In the past when I had a junky sound card that resampled (so this is different) the audio stream and then outputted a 48hz signal to the 861 the resulting sound was good when listening with small speakers or headphones but when trying it into the 861 and digital speakers via Trifield the soundfield was totally different sounding- it was really a horrible mess- and that was with rock music.

What I will do is rip an earth wind and fire album with 256 aac and I will put this on a CD via itunes (it will reconstitute the PCM) and then I will simply use the original album and do an unscientific a-b test.

best regards,
Jerry

Here is a double blind test (256Kb/s vs. 128Kb/s) using 10 test subjects, with surprising results.

Yeah. apple marketing will get everybody in the end, don't worry. Those who still resist will be regarded as brainless dinosaurs. Not so long ago, people were discussing the limitations of CD and looking up to DVD-A Advanced resolution or (ahem) DSD.
The mass marked decidet that was no what it wanted and here comes the iPod. Not that anyone was ever forced into buying an iPod. But, uh, it's so cute, so [i]fashionable[i] - "I will have mine in pearl green please ... "
And then we start complainind that high end companies die or turn to offering more ... marketable products that they promote on the grounds that they soud great. "sound great" - excellent choice of words. How' bout a little FIDELITY ? Someone asked some time ago if Hi-Fi is dead. It might well be breathing quite hard these days, as long as people who can afford the price of 2GB instead of 1GB start even considering MP3 - just because it's available, smaller in size but certainly not better (sensilby equal at most).
My point would be : why on earth would it be important in 2007 for someone who spends loads of doe on high quality equipment, to save storage space and/or download bandwith potentially sacrificing quality at the source ? Lossless is as convenient and only takes some aditional space - not a very expensive proposition for someone who can afford high-end gear. And printed media such as the CD is a different class of product, even culturally if you consider reading sleeve notes and such. Don't ask, I still believe such a thing as reverence for the physical format (say CD) exists, although it's clearly dying. At least, I'd be happier to know that it's beend superceeded by a lossless higher resolution format even one with no physical support.

That's why I really don't care about double blind tests (paid for by apple & fraunhoffer or not - please note that I agree that all or some of these tests might be genuine). I see no point in sacrificing source quality just because it might be that I won't notice and it would save me some $50 storage space or download bandwith. In the end, I would no longer be able to justify to myself all those black boxes wich are - oh - so overspecs with regards to what MP3 really has to offer. The industry will have changed ireversibly (it's already happening) and since general demand has been known to be low on quality but high on other values such as portability, convenience and so on, I'm pretty sure my own priorities will be poorly represented. I know Meridian had to have an iPod dock, but that has not been very good news to me.
However, the good news is that I am not representative of the market in any way, no matter how hard I would try to be.

It's just a personal point of view, others might think differently. We can agree that we can disagree.

I have not yet read the test results but it wont matter unless they are using Trifield- my theory is the lossy compression not only damages traditional 2 channel sonics, but because Trifield relies on this to generate its sound field, the results will become more pronounced when using Trifield or similar system...

this message brought to you by the letter O

OK just read the test- interesting reading but I think you could fault things with the test. the easiest IMHO is the simple fact that there is a difference between accurate and pleasing. I think many of us here want accurate, while the average person simply goes for pleasing. Over time I have gone for what I would call pleasing plus-- meaning that I want something thats accurate but I would sacrifice some accuracy to get sound that sounds good to me.

best regards,
Jerry

It might be relevant, or it might be a little Off-Topic. If David Chesky's blog entry is considered not to be relevant here, please erase this post.

http://davidchesky.blogspot.com/2007/06/age-of-mediocrity.html