Lossy v Lossless

[Stu123]

I read with lossy tracks they take out what cant be heard by the human ear.So they obviously put that back with lossless but if it cant be heard whats the point

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by stubiedoo

I read with lossy tracks they take out what cant be heard by the human ear.So they obviously put that back with lossless but if it cant be heard whats the point

that is not true, lossy loses a lot of sounds that can be heard, it does not discriminate between can and can't be heard, it has a max bit bucket and everything must fit.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

that is not true, lossy loses a lot of sounds that can be heard, it does not discriminate between can and can't be heard, it has a max bit bucket and everything must fit.

Actually, there are plenty of people who would never know they were missing anything if they weren't told so. There are even people who can't even tell the difference between lossy and lossless.

Then there are those who think they can hear the difference, but it's really placebo more than them actually sensing the difference. Their hearing just isn't as sharp as they'd like to think it is, but because of the placebo effect they still "can hear" how much "better" it sounds to have high resolution lossless audio.

I would think people who legitimately could tell the difference unaided and with complete accuracy is a very small group of the total population. That's not to say that lossless audio isn't something we should all want to have, it's just that for many persons can't REALLY tell the difference on their own (especially average people, not the audiophiles or technically minded people here).

Notice also that hearing is a sense for which people aren't rewarded in normal life for having extra acuity. For vision, sharper eyesight can be extremely useful and very helpful in everyday life, but being able to hear so finely that higher resolution audio becomes apparent isn't a talent that will help a person in real life (nor is it something which can be "fixed" with something like glasses or corrective surgery).

But hey, the whole point of higher quality digital media is to push the boundary to the point where a human can no longer tell that it's digital media. I'm glad audio is to that point.

ps of the compression which does differentiate between "can be heard" and "cannot be heard", even that's not perfect. For a person with decent hearing, try playing a lower bitrate MP3 on a higher volume and you'll notice a lot of the places where sounds are missing due to compression.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

Actually, there are plenty of people who would never know they were missing anything if they weren't told so.

true, but the issue is if you can't compare the two you can't know what is missing. Let me ask you this, before you saw your first BD you watched movies on DVD right? where you saying "man there is all this detail and richness I am missing in the PQ because of the way over compressed SD image". You where probably enjoying what you had oblivious to how much better it could look. Same here. Ignorance should not be the measure of anything. There have been tests with people conducted, not only is there a measurable difference between lossy and lossless but there have been people that can identify the difference between the two tracks.

Anything else is just garbage from people with agendas (i.e. less BW is good enough because you can fit more songs on a CD/HDD, very lossy music is good enough because then the DL will need less BW. her said lossy tracks just get rid of what can't be heard, now if the person is deaf then that is true but for the rest it is wrong. Studios don’t go around recording dog whistles and that is not the difference between lossy and lossless encodes.

[dhitoshi]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

Actually, there are plenty of people who would never know they were missing anything if they weren't told so. There are even people who can't even tell the difference between lossy and lossless.

Then there are those who think they can hear the difference, but it's really placebo more than them actually sensing the difference. Their hearing just isn't as sharp as they'd like to think it is, but because of the placebo effect they still "can hear" how much "better" it sounds to have high resolution lossless audio.

I would think people who legitimately could tell the difference unaided and with complete accuracy is a very small group of the total population. That's not to say that lossless audio isn't something we should all want to have, it's just that for many persons can't REALLY tell the difference on their own (especially average people, not the audiophiles or technically minded people here).

Notice also that hearing is a sense for which people aren't rewarded in normal life for having extra acuity. For vision, sharper eyesight can be extremely useful and very helpful in everyday life, but being able to hear so finely that higher resolution audio becomes apparent isn't a talent that will help a person in real life (nor is it something which can be "fixed" with something like glasses or corrective surgery).

But hey, the whole point of higher quality digital media is to push the boundary to the point where a human can no longer tell that it's digital media. I'm glad audio is to that point.

ps of the compression which does differentiate between "can be heard" and "cannot be heard", even that's not perfect. For a person with decent hearing, try playing a lower bitrate MP3 on a higher volume and you'll notice a lot of the places where sounds are missing due to compression.

Unless someone is going DEAF they should be able to hear a difference. The easiest demo to use is the "Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds live at Radio City" blu-ray since many titles only have a lossless track that is down-mixed by a blu-ray player if an AVR does not have decoders. That title has a 640 kbps Dolby Digital track & a Dolby TrueHD track. Switch between the two soundtracks and there is a night and day difference. ANYONE I have had listen to that demo is convinced that lossless audio is better sounding. The easiest comparison is digital photography, where a RAW file has all the digital data and JPEG is lossy compression. Once that data is gone it is not coming back. A Dolby TrueHD or dts HD Master track is comparable to a ZIP file where the compressed data is not lost when the file is opened.
This debate also remind me of the "EXPERTS" who have no background in audio/video at a professional level, but call everything "snake oil" that cost more than $9.99. Makes me think of the ignorant people that believe the Measles vaccine is "snake oil". I will agree that Monster Cable is a rip-off , but you take that cheap 12AWG Monoprice speaker wire (which is stranded just like Monster) and A & B it against the 16AWG Audioquest Type 2 which is their entry level solid-core speaker wire. The solid-core wire will have more detail and I have proven this at the store I work at with an easy demo on a stereo receiver with two pairs of the same model speaker and switch between the A & B speaker outputs. The ONLY variable is the speaker wire.
I will give credit to Monster Cable in that before them speakers were hooked up with lamp cord, so they did start the better built/sounding interconnect industry.

[Audiophile_At_Birth]

As my recording engineer professor always says, "I can't teach you how to hear."

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by dhitoshi

Unless someone is going DEAF they should be able to hear a difference.

There's a wide range between hearing excellently, hearing well, hearing average, hearing poorly, and being deaf.

The easiest demo to use is the "Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds live at Radio City" blu-ray since many titles only have a lossless track that is down-mixed by a blu-ray player if an AVR does not have decoders. That title has a 640 kbps Dolby Digital track & a Dolby TrueHD track. Switch between the two soundtracks and there is a night and day difference.

I can't trust your statements on this, nor can I trust my own judgments on the matter of self testing. I'm as open to bias as anyone else and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the majority of the difference I hear is thanks to placebo.

ANYONE I have had listen to that demo is convinced that lossless audio is better sounding.

Your friends likely all have great hearing, were being affected by placebo (especially by your guidance), or possibly were just humoring you.

The easiest comparison is digital photography, where a RAW file has all the digital data and JPEG is lossy compression. Once that data is gone it is not coming back.

Like I said, vision is something correctable and it is a skill which comes handy in spades in everyday life. With hearing as long as one can hear adequately, additional acuity doesn't help in everyday life. Thus, the people who are apt to have the sharpness of hearing are going to be the audiophiles or people with a natural propensity towards aural stimulation. And with vision, if a person suffers from below average eyesight, they can easily get it corrected with external lenses or surgery. The same cannot be said of hearing, except in extreme cases. A person with slightly below average hearing can't go to an ear doctor and get a device they can wear over their ear which will increase their aural acuity.

A Dolby TrueHD or dts HD Master track is comparable to a ZIP file where the compressed data is not lost when the file is opened.

I'm completely aware of how lossless compression works, but the point I'm trying to make is that often times lossy compression can be performed without being perceptible to some people. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who don't even notice the losses that come about from MP3 encoding. In this case, I am suggesting that an average person would likely not be able to tell the difference with a high level of accuracy in a double blind comparison. You may be able to, others here probably could as well, but an average person? I wouldn't bet on it.

And finally, no, I'm not saying it's snake oil. It's an absolutely good thing to preserve master level quality, it's just that the difference observed is often influenced by placebo heavily (or in the case of someone without particularly good hearing, entirely).

[Rob J in WNY]

Lossless audio is amazingly better - detail, clarity, open, natural sound - but that's just my opinion.

I think it all lies in whether a person actually cares about the differences. After all, there are still scores of people who feel standard-definition DVD video is just fine.

[Yeha-Noha]

One doesn't need perfect hearing to enjoy the benefits of lossless audio. One doesn't need to hear clear out to 20 K - 22 k Hz at all. Even if one has deficient hearing, and is totally deaf to sounds above 8 K Hz or 10 K Hz (common in older people) he/she can certainly hear the difference between lossy and lossless audio. If one has a traumatic hearing loss, say in the 2000 Hz - 4000 Hz range, due to being exposed to extremely loud noises, perhaps in one's occupation, and thus has a hard time following normal conversation, can just as well tell the difference between lossy and lossless audio. One would have to be really deaf, I mean totally, before lossless audio wouldn't be a matter of importance to someone.

Whatever range of sounds one can hear, lossless audio will sound more natural to her or him, more detailed, distinct, clearer, and more spacious. Rob is correct about that.

People can hear what they hear better than you might think, but of course, not always. Some people are not as focussed as others or are lazy listeners with wandering minds. Undoubtedly there are those with perfect hearing who may not hear the difference that lossless audio offers at all while those whose isn't so perfect can. How well one hears details in sound depends on one's state of mind. However, to label those who do hear a difference as being due to the placebo effect, is nonsense.

Audiophiles detect the difference more readily because they listen intently and and are thus more discriminant. I will say this, anyone having a favorite movie or piece of music that they love and know well will likely hear the difference that Rob described upon hearing a lossless audio recording.

[RiseDarthVader]

Well I work at a cinema and we were running digital projection for a while and when we switched over back to 35mm I can tell you hearing Quantum of Solace in PCM and Dolby Digital I did NOT hear a noticable difference. So I'm just saying if you did a blind test more people wouldn't be able to hear the difference then you think. Even recently when we had Ice Age 3 running on 35mm and Digital 3D I didn't notice much of a difference other then the centre channel having more muffled dialogue on the 35mm print.

[Hammie]

I did a blind test to my wife and kids at different times and they both picked the lossless soundtrack over the lossy.

There was no placebo because all I asked was what sounded better. They were not looking, and even if they were, they would have no clue as to what should be better. My wife just pacifies my HT habit by letting me buy things and my kids are 6 and 8 and could care less as to what HD audio is versus non-HD audio.

[trans22]

I personally think that the DTS track on the dvd of X-MEN 2 just sounds the same as the DTS-HD MA track off the blu-ray, i really cannot hear a difference although it doesn't really matter because it sounds fantastic anyway, also i recently bought FREDDY VS JASON in the UK which has a DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1 track & DOLBY TRUEHD 5.1 and i have to say that the DOLBY DIGITAL track sounds better, how the hell is that?

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by louhamilton

I did a blind test to my wife and kids at different times and they both picked the lossless soundtrack over the lossy.

There was no placebo because all I asked was what sounded better. They were not looking, and even if they were, they would have no clue as to what should be better. My wife just pacifies my HT habit by letting me buy things and my kids are 6 and 8 and could care less as to what HD audio is versus non-HD audio.

Not really scientific due to lack of a control (which would be playing the SAME thing back-to-back and asking which one sounds better when they're really the same), but clearly the people you tested just have adequate enough hearing or have learned (perhaps subconsciously) what to listen for. This probably has correlation with living with an enthusiast such as yourself, whether due to a biological predisposition toward it or simply by being more accustomed to experiencing that sort of thing often.

And anyway, they had a 50/50 shot at getting it right anyway. Not statistically conclusive for that reason alone even if not for the lack of control testing.

However, to label those who do hear a difference as being due to the placebo effect, is nonsense.

I assume this is directed at me.

I didn't say it was ONLY placebo. I said it was often heavily influenced by placebo. Obviously there is a real difference, it's just a question of if the difference is objectively as greatly perceivable as many claim it to subjectively be.

That said, I also would like to say that I agree with your assessment about the person's mind being perhaps more important than the physical attributes of their ears. A person with not-as-good hearing could probably pick it up if they were of the proper mindset (and properly prepared for it) more easily than someone with better natural hearing that isn't paying adequate attention. Good or bad, it's all in one's head ultimately, so the question is if what one is interpreting is as accurate to objective reality as they believe it to be.

ps trans22, there was talk that the earlier DD track for certain movies were specially designed for home video. I'm not sure HOW this is as I would expect high resolution master quality to be objectively better, but that's it. Whatever they did to optimize the track for home video, they didn't do for the lossless track.

[prerich]

Originally Posted by stubiedoo

I read with lossy tracks they take out what cant be heard by the human ear.So they obviously put that back with lossless but if it cant be heard whats the point

Not true. You lose a lot of detail in lossy. Imagine looking at a painting by Surat - Very beautiful and pleasing ... now go closer and look at it with a magnifying glass - he painted with dots - now you have an even greater apprecitation for what he was able to do because you can see the detail. With lossy - you may aprreciate a movie - but when you hear lossless (on a decent system) you will be in awe.

[prerich]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

Notice also that hearing is a sense for which people aren't rewarded in normal life for having extra acuity. For vision, sharper eyesight can be extremely useful and very helpful in everyday life, but being able to hear so finely that higher resolution audio becomes apparent isn't a talent that will help a person in real life (nor is it something which can be "fixed" with something like glasses or corrective surgery).

.

There are professions that reward you for better than average hearing - not just that many (I've been in several - one in the military). I have always said - if I had to lose one - I would prefer to lose my sight, the ability to hear is just so great!!! That's just my personal opinion. P.S. there are hearing aids (kinda like glasses for the ears wouldn't you say )

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by prerich

there are hearing aids (kinda like glasses for the ears wouldn't you say )

Hearing aides and surgeries are for extreme examples. An average person can wear glasses to correct their slightly below average vision, an average person cannot and should not wear a hearing aide to "correct" their slightly below average hearing.

The difference here is that the additional lens over a person's eye redirects the light to properly hit the healthy cornea. With hearing and ears, the sensory organ themselves isn't functioning at full capacity, so an electronic device digitally amplifies and boosts volume to a point of being more registrable in the person's ear (worth noticing that it probably reduces fidelity of the sound, sacrificing quality so that the person can simply hear at all). It's not that the sound "misses" the ear in the way light "misses" the cornea in poor vision. Totally different things.

[Yeha-Noha]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

Hearing aides and surgeries are for extreme examples. An average person can wear glasses to correct their slightly below average vision, an average person cannot and should not wear a hearing aide to "correct" their slightly below average hearing.

The difference here is that the additional lens over a person's eye redirects the light to properly hit the healthy cornea. With hearing and ears, the sensory organ themselves isn't functioning at full capacity, so an electronic device digitally amplifies and boosts volume to a point of being more registrable in the person's ear (worth noticing that it probably reduces fidelity of the sound, sacrificing quality so that the person can simply hear at all). It's not that the sound "misses" the ear in the way light "misses" the cornea in poor vision. Totally different things.

Well, my mom has hearing aides. When I took her to the audiologist/hearing aides specialist, I couldn't believe the technological advances that have been made. Hearing aides aren't devices that just merely boosts or amplifies the sound. In fact the audiologist called them hearing instruments, correcting me for referring to them as hearing aides! They are very complex instruments with tiny computers and integrated circuits making it possible to hear in full high fidelity sound with full dynamic range for those having normal age related hearing losses which is what my mother has. They are expensive like $3000 to $4000/pair. Of course in a noisy restaurant or other noisy environments the hi fi setting isn't as effective. For that she sets them on noise reduction which effectively filters out the background noise and allows her to hear conversation just like anyone else. She has another setting which is like the A weighting on an SPL meter which would be for normal general purpose hearing. With those three settings she hears everything that I hear and just as well. And yes, when she's watching a movie with us, she definitely is able to tell a reference sound track from a poor one. I didn't A/B lossy/lossless audio with her, but I have no doubt that she would be able to tell the difference because she listens to music with discriminating ears. She loves opera, and she is spoiled by the Opus Arte Blu-ray operas that I have in my collection which put her collection of opera on CD to shame. I just want to make it clear that just because she wears hearing aides, doesn't mean she can't enjoy the full dynamic range AQ available on Blu-ray.

[Afrobean]

I'm no expert on hearing aide technology, which is why I prefaced my comment about their effect on fidelity with a "probably". But even if they can deliver top notch audio into the person's ear, they are still not something for the average person to use, and that was the point I was trying to make.

[Yeha-Noha]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

I'm no expert on hearing aide technology, which is why I prefaced my comment about their effect on fidelity with a "probably". But even if they can deliver top notch audio into the person's ear, they are still not something for the average person to use, and that was the point I was trying to make.

I concur with that. However, from what I understand, high tech hearing aids will automatically compress loud levels that can damage one's hearing and bring it down to a safe level. Someone with a moderate hearing loss will want to consider having them to keep from accelerating their hearing loss especially if one has a tendency to play movies and music too loud. I'm no expert either. That's what I learned from my mom's audiologist/hearing aide specialist. They can help preserve your hearing.

[Driver_King]

Objectively, there is certainly a difference. Subjectively, the difference can be shocking.