Neil Young launches new music player

Re:Neil Young launches new music player by VikingCoder on Monday March 10, 2014 @05:02PM (#7375678)

"If Neil Young, age 68, who’s played feedback-drenched noise on stage for the past forty-odd years, can reliably tell a Pomo file from a FLAC prepared from said Pomo file in A/B/X testing, I will give you a lollipop. Two lollipops."

You're cheating. The real challenge is a Pono file, encoded to CD, then FLAC'ed, versus the Pono file. CDs are not that impressive, and there is more advanced technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Audio

I'm not endorsing the Pono, but I'll also bet you a lollipop that 95% or more of your music collection came from data that was on a CD.

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Re:Neil Young launches new music player by davidgerard on Monday March 10, 2014 @05:46PM (#7375892)

>encoded to CD, then FLAC'ed

You realise that's a no-op, right?

I also give you this marvellous study on "golden ears" and "high-resolution audio" versus science: "Audibility of a CD-Standard A/D/A Loop Inserted Into High-Resolution Audio Playback."

http://mixonline.com/recording/mixing/audio_emperors_new_sam...

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Re:Neil Young launches new music player by VikingCoder on Monday March 10, 2014 @09:39PM (#7376896)

> You realise that's a no-op, right?

No, it is certainly not. Encoded to CD is most definitely not a no-op.

It's like I said, "Shot in the head, and then tickled with a feather."

Don't tell me that together, it's like being tickled with a feather.

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Re:Neil Young launches new music player by SideburnsOfDoom on Monday March 10, 2014 @07:15PM (#7376331)

> > A PONO file, encoded to CD, then FLAC'ed

> You realise that's a no-op, right?

Given that the PONO file will have more bits per sample than the CD encoded version, from a digital point of view, no, it is absolutely not a no-op. It has different data in it, even when the reversible compression has been reversed.

If a person with good ears can tell the difference, that's a different question. And even if someone somewhere can tell the difference sometimes, do enough people who pay for music care?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Neil Young launches new music player by davidgerard on Monday March 10, 2014 @07:51PM (#7376494)

The CD to FLAC bit is a no-op. To say that suggests not paying attention when writing.

If a person with good ears can tell the difference, I'll give them three lollipops. The record of actual A/B/X testing of such is a pretty consistent "no better than chance".

[ Parent | on HN ]