Hacker News Reader

Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

> ... it's still a goddamned 128kbit or less stream. Arguably, this is worse quality than ye olde FM on average.

I don't claim to be a "golden ears" or anything, but I find 64 kbps HE-AAC to offer better-than-FM quality. (HE-AACv2 benefits really only make sense at 48 kbps or lower.)

Hydrogenaudio tests showed that a good HE-AAC encoder does just slightly (imperceptibly) worse than Opus at 64 kbps[1].

[1] http://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm

View on HN

The problem with those listening tests is the playback medium is not controlled: ie, what were they using (what headphones, what headphone amp, what DAC, etc; or what speakers, what speaker amp, what DAC, was the room properly treated, etc); and what is their level of hearing damage (ie, their age)?

If everyone is taking their test on their phone with low grade earbuds plugged in, or exceptionally bad car audio systems, everything sounds bad, ergo, the same.

I own a pair of Stax, among other higher end headphones, with the proper gear to drive them. I can tell the difference between modern-LAME-encoded 320kbps MP3 and lossless, albeit just barely, in an ABX test. Everything 64kbps sounds bad unless it's something like Opus doing conventional speech.

I know I'm setting the bar high, but I don't think I even have "golden ears", I think anyone can reasonably hear the difference, they just need to quit bothering with low end gear.

I mean, people just on HN buy Tesla Model Ses for $100k+ without even thinking twice, I find it hard to believe they won't also drop $1k on headphones and headphone gear at the very minimum if they care about audio.

I have never spent over $100 on headphones. $50 is usually enough. I have plenty of things to geek out on in life, audio quality is not one of them. Seems like many many many tech people are like me.

Audiophile products are always a scam. People who talk about owning them are not to be trusted.

Well, I wouldn't say always. But there is no need to spend a thousand dollars on headphone 'gear'. There is also no need for a dedicated DAC unless your source is audibly noisy. MacBook pros for instance have perfectly good audio circuitry capable of driving normal impedance headphones to ear damaging volume w/o distortion. If you want to buy a DAC and amp for your 32ohm headphones that's cool, but you're just buying an exceptionally expensive volume control.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com