[peel] Re: techy. May I borrow your ears?

[Roger Carruthers]

I beg to differ: there is logic to my argument. The object of the exercise
is to get the best quality sound , for the minimum file size.

 Before I was a sound engineer I studied as a welding inspector, where we
were taught that quality is defined as 'fit for purpose'; don¹t buy a Roller
just to run the kids to school.
 Ogg, like .mp3 uses perceptual encoding. Nobody is pretending that the
signal remains unchanged, but if you use a decent quality encoder at the
right settings, then there is no loss of quality  that you can hear.
 As a sound engineer I was taught to trust my ears. If it sounds right, then
it is right.
 If you can store twice as many files, and you cannot hear the difference,
then you are achieving quality - your recordings are fit for purpose.

This will always be a subjective issue ­ if you can hear the difference,
then go with your ears. But the original poster said:
³I have personally found that by using the dbpoweramp prog with OGG at
350kbs giving the 1:4 that there doesn't appear to be any difference from
the original.² 

As for the Betamax analogy, it just doesn¹t work like that in the digital
world; even if it doesn¹t become a major player, Ogg support will never
disappear entirely. It¹s true that no-one makes Betamax machines any more,
but the code for playing Ogg Vorbis files will always be out there.

The purpose of this lboard is for the discussion and appreciation of Peel¹s
craft, and lately it has become a place where people share recordings of his
shows. If we keep the files to a sensible size, whilst keeping an eye on
quality, we can share them so much the more equably.

 It just grieves me to hear, as someone did here recently, that you should
use 24/96 conversion for recording of cassettes, which will do nothing to
improve the quality (think about it ­ the bandwidth & dynamic range are not
there to record!), but the results will take many times longer to download,
and thus reach less people.

 If you have unlimited drive space/attic space and you only intend the files
for your own use, go for it ­ use lossless compression. But if space is an
issue, and you also want to share the wealth, then high bitrate .oggs are
going to hurt no-one, and probably help a few.

 

Cheers
Roger


On 23/03/2008 21:49, "Alasdair Macdonald" <wewalkforonereason@...>
wrote:

> On 23/03/2008, Roger Carruthers <roger.carruthers@...> wrote:
>> 
>>    To be honest, I think that .ogg at 1:4 is preferable to lossless
>> compression at 1:2, because the object of the exercise is to get the best
>> quality sound into the smallest file size, and if you can't hear the
>> difference (and not many people of our age can ­ myself included, and I have
>> 'trained' ears) then the smaller file size wins.
>>   As I've said before, the vast majority of the material we're talking about
>> here was recorded to cassette, and you can't improve upon the quality of the
>> first generation; as you're starting from a fairly limited bandwidth and
>> dynamic range, you're pissing in the wind with lossless compression. In
>> short, go .ogg!
> 
> There is no logic whatsoever in your argument. You seem to be saying
> the source is substandard, so making the closest possible digital
> version of that source is pointless.
> 
> And your alternative is a knowingly degraded version.
> 
> Digital compression slits into two camps - lossless, and lossy. The
> purposes of each type are in general rather different.
> 
> Typically, an archivist will preserve a lossless version using a
> compression format that fits their needs - ie portability, speed of
> compression / decompression, and compression ratio.
> 
> Those who prefer to make lossy copies - usually for personal use, not
> for public archiving - have one additional consideration - a trade-off
> - that of file size vs quality. And that's a very personal choice,
> which probably depends upon the abilities of the person's ears.
> 
> It's my understanding that ogg [vorbis] *is* better a better quality
> encoder than mp3 - ie it produces a higher fidelity output for the
> same filesize, but that it suffers the same problem as Betamax - it's
> inferior relative is far more visible to the marketeers.
> 
> It's worth bearing in mind the continuing fall in the price of
> storage. Hard drives of over 500GB can be bought for £60ish these
> days, and by the time you need to purchase the next drive the price
> will have dropped again.
> 
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