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Comment by simonblack | Hacker News Reader

Well, there certainly lots of audiophile features back in the 70s: Direct-Cut disks*, Quadraphonic music, dbX compressor-expanders, high-quality speakers that didn't sacrifice quality and efficiency so that they could be hidden away on a bookshelf, electrostatic speakers and headphones, feather-light stylus and tone-arm combos, very high quality tape decks, and so on.

Most music today is digitally compressed when it really doesn't need to be, as most storage media can hold hours and hours (weeks even!) of high-quality music.

Why would people bother with crappy MP3s when they could have no-loss storage instead? SMH.

* A friend and I spent an evening listening to direct-cut disks and then put on a normal pressed LP. We thought there was something the matter with the stylus, the pressed disk sounded so muddy.

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I got large numbers of 1970s garage-sale speakers, hooked them up to a modern multichannel home theater receiver and add a pair of powered subwoofers. I matched the stereo pairs but figured the room correction can handle the difference between the backs and the fronts. My center is a ridiculous speaker you'd expect to see on the stage at a live music bar that I recovered from an abandoned building and replaced the crossover.

It kicks ass!

If you compare 128 kbps MP3 files to a CD the difference is night and day. 320 kbps MP3 is transparent, 192 kbps is not bad for most recordings. As I am writing this I am working on a python script that recompresses FLAC files from my music server to put on a USB stick for the car or for my Garmin watch. Right now the target is 192 kbps AAC for the car and the high end of the spectral band replication range (maybe 64-96 kbps) for the watch.

The 1970s is before the era when manufacturers really focused on trying to get big sound out of little speakers. In the 1970s, if you wanted big sound, you got big speakers! Modern speakers are often (not always) designed to be small and inefficient, because you can always just pump more power into them... modern amplifiers are so efficient that you can just throw energy away like that.

The old speakers I've heard are not remotely flat. But they do sound big, and fun, and maybe you can just EQ out the speakers with a modern receiver's room correction.

I have a pair of Boston Acoustics CR95s in my lounge room. I used Room EQ Wizard and a UMik-1 and a MiniDSP to measure/tune them. They came out so close to flat themselves that the only thing the MiniDSP map ended up doing was bringing in a little bit of subwoofer under about 45Hz to prop the very bottom end up.

The sound beautiful, at least to my old and abused ears, for both music and movies. (I use them as stern + a su=ingle sub for music, and as part of a 5.1 system with a centre speaker and rears for movies).

They aren't quite 70's old. But they were a long way from new when I got em off eBay a decade or more back.

I also still have the first speakers and amps I ever bought, back in 1988. Boston Acoustics A60MkIIs and a NAD 1100/2200 opre/power amp pair. This speakers have has 3 or 4 new drivers (all due to party abuse) and the caps in the crossovers replaced every decade or so, and the amps have had all the electrolytics replaced a couple for times. They still provide great sound in my dining room.

(And I've become a bit af a NAD/Boston Acoustics brand-tragic. I end up drunk eBaying both brands every now and then, I have a pair of A40 speakers on my desk here, The lounge room home theatre amp is a NAD 70W per channel amp. And I've got most of a setup of a pair of A40s, a NAD 3020, and an Apple Airport Express together as a birthday present for a friend in a few weeks...)

KEF Concertos. I literally cried when I blew them up for the last time, and I could no longer get replacement parts for them.

I met a guy who had a pair about 10 years later. I offered him double what he had paid for them new. He wouldn't let them go, either.

How did you set up the room correction?

I can't speak for them, but I use a calibrated microphone and programmable DSPs from here: https://www.minidsp.com

Combined with this software: https://www.roomeqwizard.com

> Why would people bother with crappy MP3s when they could have no-loss storage instead? SMH.

This one really boggles the mind indeed and I have a theory. But first basically: to me it's the same as saying, if you could have the real DaVinci's Gioconda painting at your home, "Look, I've got this 300 dpi color print of the Gioconda and I don't care, because from 10 meters away you cannot tell the difference". This, in itself, when you can save tens of thousands of songs in FLAC (CD quality) on a 1 TB is just seriously WTF.

But I think the reason people are still using mp3s when they could be using FLAC files is because there's an entire industry, operating at a loss, streaming non-CD quality. And they have to brainwash everybody into thinking lossy audio still makes sense in 2021.

Storage, however, is only going to get cheaper and cheaper. The mental gymnastics going to be needed in the upcoming years to keep arguing for mp3s over FLAC is going to be plain mindboggling.

I don't care if I can't consciously hear the difference. I still want the correct file/sound. I can put 60 000 songs at CD quality on a 1 TB stick / SSD. Soon we'll be able to put 600 000 songs at CD quality on memory sticks / SSDs. And you can bet you'll still have people nostalgic of Winamp and Napster explaining how mp3 makes perfect sense.

FLAC are also a bitperfect archival format btw, mp3 ain't.

I rip all my CDs (and I still collect CDs) to FLAC file.

The only time I convert to mp3 is because my car's media system reads mp3 but not FLAC: and when I need to convert I'm happy that I don't have a lossy format to start with.

I don't actively seek out mp3 format files, but I have a bunch dating back to when I was ripping cds, vinyl, and cassettes to 100MB Zip disks in the late 90s - where I'll probably never have access to the original sourced to re rip them. Forgotten local bands, mix tapes, desk tapes fro live gigs, stuff like that. I'd replace my Jump Back Jack, or Hungarian Rap Sadists 128k mp3 files in a heartbeat - if I could get my hands on the vinyl to re rip them.

These days I buy a lot of cds and vinyl from bands at merch desks or off bandcamp, but I can't remember the last time I ripped any of those, most of what I listen to is Apple Music streaming (a lot of which is lossless these days) or Spotify Premium. I have a few TB worth of media server space with a huge music collection on it, but I didn't even notice it was offline for a week or more recently, because it's way easier for me to stream off my phone, laptop, or AppleTV - and if I'm in the mood to listen to stuff that's not on streaming, I'm almost certainly in the mood to pull the vinyl out and give it a spin...

I once received a 96kbps copy of a very old studio album that became one of my favorite albums ever. I listened to the 96kbps version countless times. It sounded dark and otherwise colored in a way that I felt added to the vibe of the album.

I was travelling and didn't have the album on me, but I wanted to show it to a friend. I downloaded a 256 or 384kbps version, and much to my surprise, I didn't like the way it sounded at a higher bit rate at all! The added clarity made some instruments stand out a bit more than others, and I found it distracting and too lively.

The delta in quality between 384kbps and FLAC (to my concern-worn ears) is narrow enough that I can't really tell a major difference.

That probably had less to do with the higher bit rate than it did a remaster. A huge amount of music that was great on the LP/cassette/8-track release, and even on the early CD (if it happened after the very early brick-wall-filtered era), was absolutely ruined by remastering post-2000.

My Pioneer car stereo plays flacs, if that helps any.

>Why would people bother with crappy MP3s when they could have no-loss storage instead?

When MP3s were "hot", storage wasn't available in the sizes now, nor was bandwidth available to make uncompressed practical. FLAC style compression wasn't really a thing then either.

MP3 was able to hit critical mass, and people have been unwilling to let it go. We see that in so many other areas as well like FB, shopping at Amazon, etc. People are aware there are less bad things, but it's just too engrained.

Flac is older than most folks realize however it didn’t save enough space circa 2k.

According to wikipedia, the initial release was 20 July 2001. By 2001, we had been using mpeg type audio for some time, whatever audio Cinepak pushed, RealAudio, etc. Hell even AAC came out in late 90s, but didn't take off for much much longer. FLAC was a baby while other formats were wearing long beards and suspenders. Only audiophiles used it, and it really didn't take of until AFLAC and iTunes/iPods.

Apple's never supported it directly.

Sorry, ALAC, not AFLAC <quack>

Not just that. Those times thanks to Napster one could easily find some amazing hidden gems that were simply not available on market. Those were mostly mp3 only. Take it or leave.

I appreciate good audio quality but if music itself is good I would listen to it even at low quality MP3. The quality of some really old stuff is low anyways.

> Why would people bother with crappy MP3s when they could have no-loss storage instead? SMH.

Today, most users are listening to AAC or Ogg Vorbis, not MP3. At typical compression rates, the distinction between lossy compression and lossless is completely anaudible. There have been many many blind studies of this, including some you can take yourself online right now.

Fire up your nice headphone amp, plug in your electrostatic headphones and take a blind test yourself. You'll find that there's no audible benefit to lossless compression. It's just a waste of network bandwidth and disk space.

Interestingly I’ve recently found that master quality is more important than file/compression format at high quality. That is,

Rip a shitty 80s mastered CD, rip to wav, flac, etc.

Get a remastered version of the same album (watch out for loudness war, avoid 2000s), and rip 192+ mp3 or 128+ opus, high quality settings.

Compare. I’ve found the new master lossy sounds better than my old flacs, due to the better source.

Still, space is so cheap I’m mostly getting 16-44 or 48k flacs for new stuff these days, the cost of space is under ten dollars and can reencode forever.

> (watch out for loudness war, avoid 2000s)

I think the coincidence (in time, not necessarily causal direction) of master quality issues and growth in lossy codecs is probably one reason people get confused by this. People are hearing crappy recordings, listening to it on mp3s, and drawing conclusions.

I think measuring this stuff is tricky because there's so many variables involved, from the master, to the compression (or lack thereof), to the amps, speakers, quantifying perception, etc. I agree with you completely but suspect there's a bit more to it.

This is very true. Floyd Toole says in his book for a popular audience that with modern equipment, what you're hearing is roughly 1/3rd the speakers, 1/3rd the room, and 1/3rd the production quality of the recording.

Your insight on source quality is very true, and also applicable across all media, from biblical manuscripts to Japanese anime.

Yes, it isn't a new idea.

However I see geeks debating file formats ad nauseum, and I did too for many years as well when storage was expensive. But when aiming for best quality, master quality becomes the primary factor.

>You'll find that there's no audible benefit to lossless compression.*

* When the compression is done well. Shit compression makes itself known fast. If that shit compression possibly sounds okayish on 2000s style computer speakers, connecting the output to real speakers makes it even more obvious.

Not all compression is equal even if they do use the same codec.

You're conflating audio (dynamic range) compression with data compression. Dynamic range compression is an artifact of the mastering process. It very much can be done well or done poorly. Lossless data compression like FLAC isn't something that can be done "wrong". It's just encoding redundancies in the audio samples to save space. It's lossless so it will spit out the exact audio as was originally encoded.

I was writing a reply along the same lines, when I realized that we're both misreading the comment.

The original point: lossless compression is not worth it, lossy is OK.

The counter-claim: only when the lossy compression is done well.

This is not about audio compression.

Thank you, but it is about audio compression. You don't use this type of compression on text files. So, I'd agree with the other commenter in that I'm not talking about dynamic compression with hard/soft knees/attack and what not. Lossy compression done badly is horrible listening experience. It's all swishing and swooshing almost like being underwater. The top end is just all mushed together kind of like when you have a head cold and everything is all swimming sounding in your head.

There's some real confusion here.

There is:

   * dynamic range compression, referred to above as "audio compression" (confusingly)

   * psycho-acoustic aka "lossy" data compression

   * lossless data compression

The last two have nothing to do with the first.

>* dynamic range compression, referred to above as "audio compression" (confusingly)

Because when you're in a recording/editing session it is referred to as compression. As is in, "we need to use some some audio compression for that last bit". Anyone within earshot would not think someone is suggesting throwing that last bit throw an MP3 encoder.

Even so there's still the question of archival. FLAC is good for a master copy, but lossy formats mean you lose quality on every re-encode.

> Why would people bother with crappy MP3s when they could have no-loss storage instead? SMH.

My ears are almost fifty years old and were never that great to begin with.

> Why would people bother with crappy MP3s when they could have no-loss storage instead?

I can't hear the difference. While I love music, I've never had good hearing. Further worsened by live music and clubbing (without protection). Aging too, of course.

Just from a practical matter, I prefer lossless encoding. Some of the MP3 files I encoded have glitches. It simplifies deduping my library (just pick the best quality instance).

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