What sound system do you have on boat?

[IanD]

Just now, Loddon said:

Yes I did a test when moving into the cottage a few years ago.

I will add that it's not all music but more specific parts of tracks that I know well, such as solo guitar/piano pieces such as Wish You Were Here and the begining of Telegraph Road.

 

 

So we agree, the differences are very small and difficult to spot ?

 

I did get annoyed (not with you!) when someone said "I did the comparison and I could reliably tell the difference!" when it turns out that they listened to a short clip of jangling keys over and over again.

 

Yes of course it's possible to find something pathologically difficult for the MP3 encoder to deal with, and then you can tell the difference. But hopefully most people's music listening doesn't consist of hours of listening to jangling keys...

 

Proper test in forums like the AES (Audio Engineering Society) have repeatedly showed that there were few people who could tell the difference when listening to music, even ones who were convinced they could ?

 

 

[TheBiscuits]

6 minutes ago, IanD said:

hopefully most people's music listening doesn't consist of hours of listening to jangling keys...

 

Not a fan of Jazz piano then? 

 

[Jess--]

The other thing to look at with MP3's (just as important as the bitrate) is the sampling frequency.

with digital sounds (including CD) a large amount are sampled at 44.1 khz meaning anything above 22.05khz cannot be accurately recorded (losing above 22khz isn't too much of a problem as it's beyond hearing for a large amount of the population) but it can produce interesting alias sounds down to around 16khz.

using higher sampling rates such as 96khz doesn't remove the problem but does take any possible effect well beyond our hearing ranges (min reproducable frequency 48khz / aliases from around 30khz)

 

for 128k mp3's they tend to run into trouble with anything above 16khz and a lot of encoders deal with this by applying a low-pass filter to remove (or seriously lower) anything above around 15 khz for higher bitrates some encoders remove the low-pass filter (although quite a few have been found to leave the filter on regardless of bitrate or sampling freq).

 

For low bitrate sounds (where cramming as much as possible into the smallest storage is needed) I have found that AAC+ outperforms mp3 (i.e. 96k AAC+ sounds as good or better than 128k mp3)

 

[Hudds Lad]

51 minutes ago, Rambling Boater said:

I thought anything which is digitised has loss by definition. One of the benefits of  analogue (e.g tape and vinyl). The trouble is that most masters are recorded digitally these days, so most music is digital from the start. 

 

Recently I was quite surprised by the quality from some old cassette tapes I had from the 90s  

thats why i was careful to say identical to the cd it came from  i did love my tapes back in the day, and my rewind/fast forward pencil for when using a walkman and in battery saving mode  

 

55 minutes ago, IanD said:

True, but that's in theory and you listen with your ears; what matters is -- can you hear the difference or not?

 

I used high-quality studio gear (I've even got the studio masters for the band I used to play with) and in spite of trying hard on material that shows up any compression artefacts I couldn't reliably spot any difference between the original and 320kb/256kbVBR MP3s.

 

This is borne out by multiple properly-controlled tests that have been done over the years by reputable sources.

 

Just because "everyone knows..." or "this article said..." doesn't make it true; this is true in many fields, and especially hi-fi and audio where there's an awful lot of bullsh*t flying round the web... ?

 

NERD!!  i did say it depended what equipment you used, hardly makes a difference with my taste in music though  

[TheBiscuits]

2 minutes ago, Hudds Lad said:

hardly makes a difference with my taste in music though  

 

If you like Napalm Death, over-compressing it improves it! 

 

[dmr]

31 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

Another vote for Spotify. Not on a boat for us but at home, in the car and in the caravan.

 

The convenience set against the lack of need to tote physical media around is well worth it to me. I was very sceptical about music streaming until a few years ago when I tried the free versions firstly of Google Music (as was) and then Spotify. I now have paid for Spotify for about two years.

 

I still fire up my Sony Turntable at home from time to time for that 'authentic' vinyl sound but the ability to call up an artist and/or song by voice beats the whole 'authentic' experience hands down. I've also been able to delve into various different music genres that I would have been reluctant to try had I needed to buy it on 'physical' media.

 

Edit. The best speakers I have are a Harmon Kardon set that came with a previously bought Dell PC years ago. Two small speakers with a large sub woofer that sits on the floor. They have been used with several PC's since I bought them and I'll be gutted if they ever pack in. They have that ability to be crystal clear with enough bass even on low volumes.

 

 

 

For me the best feature of Spotify is that it finds new artists and music that I am going to like . Since exchanging the vans for a boat and getting the dog we don't go to festivals so don't get to see new bands, so letting Spotify find stuff is good, though it does also find some rubbish.

 

My plan was to get a sub woofer for the Ruarks, they have a suitable output, but the bass is pretty good so the sub woofer has rather dropped down the todo list.

 

..............Dave

[Hudds Lad]

1 minute ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

If you like Napalm Death, over-compressing it improves it! 

 

 first saw ‘em back in 1989, Bradford, St Georges Hall   a lot of the Scadinavian and Japanese bands at that time were a lot more raw and brutal though

[TheBiscuits]

3 minutes ago, Hudds Lad said:

 first saw ‘em back in 1989, Bradford, St Georges Hall   a lot of the Scadinavian and Japanese bands at that time were a lot more raw and brutal though

 

 

I first heard them via a third generation bootleg tape - the studio versions sounded quite different

 

 

That does of course take us to the classic cassette tape advert:

 

 

 

[MoominPapa]

A Kenwood Bluetooth enabled car stereo for Spotify running on a phone, and TV sound when we watch films and TV on the big laptop. It has DAB, so was originally used for radio too, but these days that's been largely replaced by a Google home smart speaker which came free with the Spotify account. Since my blood pressure can no longer stand listening to the news on Radio 4, it only gets used to listen to The Archers these days. Oh and a pair of over-the-ears bluetooth cans so that Moominmama doesn't have to listen to the soundtrack of my lockdown-induced YouTube addiction.

 

 

[Athy]

19 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

 

I first heard them via a third generation bootleg tape - the studio versions sounded quite different

 

 

That does of course take us to the classic cassette tape advert:

 

 

 

Brilliant advert, and takes me back to my student days when I actually missed lunch and spent the money I'd saved on a copy of 'Israelites' after hearing it on the radio that morning.

A friend of mine thought that Desmond's first line was "Get up in the morning, baked beans for breakfast".

[cuthound]

When I bought the boat it came with a Sony Car Radio & DVD player, feeding into a marine amp which delivers sound to 3 pairs of switchable speakers throughout the boat and a sub woofer in the main seating area.

 

For normal listening I connect my phone (which contains my entire music collection as 360 bit MP3's on an SD card) to it via a mini jack lead into the aux socket.

 

For serious listening on the boat I use my 15 year old iPod and Etymotic ER2 XR earphones with either 360 bit MP3's or Apple Lossless files. As IanD says, I can't really tell the difference between.

 

What I did find when I got the Etymotic ER2 s about a year ago, was that I heard things on music (some of which I have been listening to for over 50  years) that I had never heard before, despite undoubted high frequency hearing loss over that time.

[TheBiscuits]

1 minute ago, cuthound said:

high frequency hearing loss

 

I bet that Hertz ...

 

[cuthound]

1 minute ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

I bet that Hertz ...

 

 

Yes it nearly kilo'd me! ?

[GUMPY]

Thinking about the boat we have a six cd changer Sony cd/radio/cassette connected to 4x6" speakers, I can't remember the last time we used it. We do occasionally stream music via Bluetooth (yes I know it's lossy) to the TV soundbar. In reality we don't listen to a lot of music on the boat.

[TheBiscuits]

2 minutes ago, Loddon said:

We do occasionally stream music via Bluetooth (yes I know it's lossy) to the TV soundbar.

 

Someone's going to bring up the Monster Cables debate next ...

[IanD]

2 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Someone's going to bring up the Monster Cables debate next ...

Don't start...

[cuthound]

33 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Someone's going to bring up the Monster Cables debate next ...

 

I almost persuaded a hi-fi fanatic friend of mine that wiring his speakers in 630mm2 cable would not only sound better but also eliminate the need for speaksr stands... ? 

Edited March 10, 2021 by cuthound
Spillung

[IanD]

1 hour ago, Jess-- said:

The other thing to look at with MP3's (just as important as the bitrate) is the sampling frequency.

with digital sounds (including CD) a large amount are sampled at 44.1 khz meaning anything above 22.05khz cannot be accurately recorded (losing above 22khz isn't too much of a problem as it's beyond hearing for a large amount of the population) but it can produce interesting alias sounds down to around 16khz.

using higher sampling rates such as 96khz doesn't remove the problem but does take any possible effect well beyond our hearing ranges (min reproducable frequency 48khz / aliases from around 30khz)

 

for 128k mp3's they tend to run into trouble with anything above 16khz and a lot of encoders deal with this by applying a low-pass filter to remove (or seriously lower) anything above around 15 khz for higher bitrates some encoders remove the low-pass filter (although quite a few have been found to leave the filter on regardless of bitrate or sampling freq).

 

For low bitrate sounds (where cramming as much as possible into the smallest storage is needed) I have found that AAC+ outperforms mp3 (i.e. 96k AAC+ sounds as good or better than 128k mp3)

 

Not sure what you're trying to get at with aliasing -- all recordings are effectively anti-aliased by the (oversampled) ADCs, and all playback DACs nowadays use digital filtering and oversampling to remove the images. The shouldn't be any artefacts from this either on recording or playback, the most you'll get is a bandwidth limit at 20kHz (which *very* few people can hear beyond) with 44.1kHz sampling. Yes I've actually designed the chips that do all this...

 

With low-bitrate MP3s like 128k bandwidth limiting is the *least* of their problems, the compression artefacts are *far* worse -- and 128k 44.1kHz MP3s are perfectly capable of encoding up to 20kHz, if they don't blame the software. Any decent encoder should go up to the same bandwidth as CDs; if it doesn't that's a software problem, not an MP3 one.

 

For low bitrates there are better encoders than MP3, AAC+ is one of them and will give better quality at the same rate or lower rate at the same quality.

 

To be honest a lot of this is really a leftover from the days when storage and bandwidth were both expensive, hence the proliferation of 128k (or lower, uurgh...) MP3 audio which needed less a tenth the space and bandwidth of CD-quality audio (1410kbps). Now there's little justification for using anything lower than 320k/VBR256k, you can easily get a huge music library onto an affordable SD card/USB stick where uncompressed CD-audio would still be 4x bigger. And take 4x longer to transfer (if it would fit), which you might not think is a problem until you have to copy a 100GB music library onto one...

Edited March 10, 2021 by IanD

[GUMPY]

1 hour ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Someone's going to bring up the Monster Cables debate next ...

Not this boy

Even on live sound events it was rare to find any cables over 2.5sqmm, occasionally 4sqmm was used for sub bass. 

 

 

[IanD]

17 minutes ago, Loddon said:

Not this boy

Even on live sound events it was rare to find any cables over 2.5sqmm, occasionally 4sqmm was used for sub bass. 

 

 

But surely you're missing the point, it's not the size that matters, it's the quality? You should have been using solid silver Litz wire cables... ?

 

https://wywires.com/products/speaker-cables-silver

 

Oh dear, just spotted (buried in the "technical" details) they're not even made of silver ?

 

Never mind, if you still think they're a bit cheap you could try these...

 

https://wywires.com/collections/speaker-cables/products/speaker-cables-diamond

Edited March 10, 2021 by IanD

[TheBiscuits]

1 minute ago, IanD said:

But surely you're missing the point, it's not the size that matters, it's the quality?

 

Never mind the quality, feel the width!

 

I thought one side of the argument was that thickness and quality didn't matter as long as the price was high enough ...

[IanD]

1 minute ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Never mind the quality, feel the width!

 

I thought one side of the argument was that thickness and quality didn't matter as long as the price was high enough ...

Isn't ten grand *per cable* enough for you? Some people are *never* happy... ?

[TheBiscuits]

 

1 minute ago, IanD said:

Isn't ten grand *per cable* enough for you? Some people are *never* happy... ?

 

You'd not hear the music over my swearing if I had to pay $1000 a foot for audio cable!

[zenataomm]

Nothing, absolutely nothing.

I go to sleep drifting off to the melliferous tones of the neighbours generator.

I awake to the rhythmic tones of ducks using their jack hammers to destroy my hull.  

[IanD]

8 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

 

You'd not hear the music over my swearing if I had to pay $1000 a foot for audio cable!

https://www.masterbuiltaudio.com/ultra-line-audio-cables

 

$35000 per 8 foot long speaker cable ?

 

Oh yes, I forgot -- plus $17000 for a mains cable... ?

Edited March 10, 2021 by IanD