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Re:The Leave by hugh3 on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @04:20AM (#2115201)
Except for people who are interested in actual hi fi, as in high fidelity -- people who wouldn't be caught dead listening to anything as lossily compressed as an mp3.

I'm no audio geek, but I can easily tell the difference between CD and mp3 for some of the music I listen to. I even have a CD of Beethoven's Ninth which I've never actually listened to because the audio equipment I have can't do it justice.

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Re:The Leave by gjm11 on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @05:02AM (#2115296)
> I even have a CD of Beethoven's Ninth which I've never actually listened to because the audio equipment I have can't do it justice.

Because not listening to it at all gives you more pleasure than listening to it with the best equipment you've got?

I think you should consider the possibility that you may be an audio geek after all.

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Re:The Leave by silvestrov on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @05:06AM (#2115302)
For hi fi, there is Apple Lossless (the reason my music is not on my portable/iPod but on a MacMini with an external harddrive).

Still no CD player: you let iTunes rip the CD using Apple Lossless.

Besides, you assume mp3's are 128 Kbits. When you get to 320 Kbit mp3s, most hi fi geeks can't make out the difference in blind tests. (they can always if the test isn't blind and they know which source is which – just like wine taste experiments).

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Re:The Leave by ugh on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @05:37AM (#2115340)
Did you do a blind test? I cannot for the life of me tell the difference between 256 Kbit/s AAC and a CD in a blind test. (The best equipment I have are 150€ headphones, I tested with them. I did this test to decide whether I should start buying my music online instead of on CDs.)

Tests in which I knew what is what were completely worthless. I nearly always thought that I could tell the difference and that ability magically disappeared in blind tests.

I can tell the difference between 128 KBit/s MP3 and a CD, though.

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Re:The Leave by AlexandrB on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @10:49AM (#2116143)
I'm a bit of an audio geek. What sets me off though is not digital compression (although I'm sure you lose some fidelity, I rarely/never notice any loss with 256kbps mp4s). What is really awful is excessive dynamic compression in modern CDs themselves - and it's far worse than digital compression. Music simply loses its punch. It can be hard to do an apples to apples comparison here, but if you compare an older album (Beatles albums come to mind) and a "remastered" version, one of the differences will typically be greater dynamic compression in the remaster.

Some resources on the topic: http://www.turnmeup.org/ Some examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/2008/09/metallica-death-...

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Re:The Leave by cynicalkane on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @10:42AM (#2116112)
I even have a CD of Beethoven's Ninth which I've never actually listened to because the audio equipment I have can't do it justice.

My advice: Spend $50-100 on a good pair of headphones, and you'll find more justice there than in hi-fi setups costing thousands of dollars.

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