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Comment by jansan | Hacker News Reader

I do not have very sensitive ears, but maybe an audio enthusiast can explain this to me:

In the 80s and 90s some people were going crazy over HiFi, only the absolute high end products were just good enough. I remmeber seeing stereo systems for 50,000$ and more. CDs were already seen as inferior to records quality-wise, and speakers had to be huge if possible.

Today Wifi speakers are all the rage. The music is downloaded (precompressed) and then sent over Wifi or Bluetooth with (sometimes very) limited bandwidth to a single speaker which has the size of a laptop.

How does the audio quality compare? Is it like day and night? Or do the new multi room systems play in the same league as the old system that were used by enthusiasts? I often have the feeling that overall sound quality does not matter anymore as long as the bass is strong enough, but as I said at the beginning, my ears are not very sensitive.

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So to start, you should pretty much disregard anyone who thinks CD quality is worse than vinyl. CD quality is 16 bit, 44k samples per second, and despite some audiophile gear now that is 24 bit, 96k samples per second, ABX testing routinely fails to find a difference between them. As such, in terms of music quality and software quality, anything capable of delivering 16 bit, 44k samples should be considered "perfect" (i.e. FLAC/CDs). There is some evidence that in studio conditions, people can hear a difference between high bitrate lossy compression and CD quality, but realistically, even Vorbis at 128kbps or other formats at 256kbps or higher will provide a very good listening experience.

> even Vorbis at 128kbps or other formats at 256kbps or higher will provide a very good listening experience.

Until it is resampled in the noisy OS mixer and/or lossy compressed again to be sent over Bluetooth. Very few ABX studies consider the effect of such modern "digital signal chains", especially transcoding. It's much better to start with FLAC.

Are there any studies demonstrating an observable difference in such a scenario?

My point is that there are no studies demonstrating the absence of such issues. Anecdotally, my Bluetooth headphones certainly seem to sound better with a FLAC source.

CDs offer unquestionably better fidelity.

But saying this without mentioning the loudness wars misses the main force behind vinyl's staying power.

This is like making an argument for transistor guitar amps. They're better on paper, but tubes produce a type of distortion that is pleasing to many listeners.

Most of the arguments in vinyl sounding better center on original masters being pressed directly to vinyl “biscuits” without an intermediate step while CDs go through a compression step before they are digitized. These days, that’s rarely true. If original masters are used for too many high volume pressings, they wear out (physically), so the masters are often digitized before they go to vinyl. This sparked some controversy recently regarding a Michael Jackson repress with an ironic twist that nobody could tell the difference or noticed until the mastering engineer slipped up and let the cat out of the bag.

https://www.audioholics.com/audio-technologies/mobile-fideli...

> If original masters are used for too many high volume pressings, they wear out (physically)

E.g. when Dylan's famous 60's electric trilogy first came out on CD, at least two of those albums had to be remixed not for whatever possible artistical and/or money-making reasons [1] that commonly cause remixes to be done these days, but simply because the original master tapes (including the safety copies) had worn out through continuous re-pressings of the original vinyl albums.

[1] Though of course the switch to CD in itself was, while also undeniably a definitive technological upgrade, in some ways also a nice way of making people buy the albums again even if they already owned them in some other storage format.

The first CD's were not that great, being effectively around 14-bit. Better D/A converters and noise-shaping during mastering greatly improved the sound quality. After that, the loudness wars destroyed it again.

I don’t think that’s giving people enough credit. Sure, if you master for CD to exploit as much dynamic range as possible (as is often done with high end classical music) then CD quality is truly amazing and vinyl can’t even come close.

But, a lot of popular music out there isn’t mastered for that use case (high end ABX testing). On the contrary, there are tons of CDs that are extremely compressed (in the dynamic range sense) so as to sound as loud as possible on the radio [1]. If you compare one of these CDs with an earlier (or even contemporary) vinyl release which has been mastered correctly then of course the vinyl will sound better!

Unfortunately, because we’re dealing with a Wild West of media, new and old, floating around in the marketplace we don’t have the luxury of a perfect ABX comparison, and so people will continue to buy and prefer old formats. It is for that reason that we can’t dismiss them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Do mixers still optimize songs to sound loud on the radio? I imagine these days most new music discovery happens via YouTube or Spotify.

"radio" in this case refers more to 'cheap equipment played in a noisy environment'. Back in the 70s ~ 80s that meant car speakers playing over road noise. Now it's cheap ear bud or tinny bluetooth xyz playing over road noise / transit / coffee house ambient noise. It's not how the music gets to you, it's the environment you (most people, that is) hear it in. And on top of that, for most of the audience, it's background noise. So to catch your attention, it gets mastered as 'loud' as possible. Because the next / previous tracks in the playlist are. And so it goes.

I feel it's important to explain why <44 kSamp/s sample rates are used. No matter what the digital audio signal should have no information above 20 kHz, but running ADCs far above Nyquist lessens the importance of the analog antialiasing filter. You don't need to worry about expensive caps and how they age if you sample at 192 kHz but filter to 20 kHz. This drives down the noise floor and increases linearity for essentially free.

Please repeat this when people say "there's no reason to use sample rates above 44 kHz". While it's true for source material, it should be properly caveated.

Some minor corrections now that I've slept (for posterity).

"greater than 44 kSamp/s", not "<44 kSamp/s"

"ADCs" should be "DACs". While it's still correct, it isn't on-topic.

Let's add that there is much snake oil in the audiophile obsession. Audiophile formats, equipment, and marketing come and go, but the single most important differentiating factor in audio quality is the equipment and engineering talent at the time of recording.

For example, much of the great early Bluenote jazz was recorded by RVG in the living room of his parents' home in New Jersey. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Van_Gelder

> CDs were already seen as inferior to records quality-wise, and speakers had to be huge if possible

Doesn't sound very scientific to me.

> How does the audio quality compare?

Why compare with an old system from the 80s? I got to hear a friend's friend's modern audiophile setup. A dedicated room with Wilson Audio speakers (totally overpriced but amazing), high-end DAC, high-end amp... It was bliss. One of these $50K+ setup but bliss. This is nothing like a laptop, a soundbar or a Sonos.

> Or do the new multi room systems play in the same league as the old system that were used by enthusiasts?

I wouldn't be suprised they'd actually be better than these old systems. But they don't play in the same league as actual modern audiophile setups.

What would be a modern audiophile setup?

> What would be a modern audiophile setup?

What do you mean? What's the difference between an audiophile setup from the 80s GP was mentioning and one from today? Today you'd have a DAC, for a start. Maybe some DRC (Digital Room Correction software). Then amps have progressed tremendously. And so did speakers (newer materials).

As for the setup I listened to: I'm no pro, I don't remember the details. I know the speakers were Wilson Audio but I don't remember the DAC nor the amp(s) brands: all I know is it was high-end stuff costing money I'm personally not willing to put in an audio setup. But it did sound very good.

>Doesn't sound very scientific to me.

From my experience with them, you kind of just summed up the HiFi/audiophile core. I've spent waaay too much time with audio engineers, recording engineers, etc from edit bays to sound stages. Yes, there are now things that I can hear because they pointed it out to me, but until then, I was perfectly content with my head in the sand of not-knowing. However, while I agree there are certain things that can make a difference, the tendency for the absurd always seems to take hold.

> Why compare with an old system from the 80s? I got to hear a friend's friend's modern audiophile setup. A dedicated room with Wilson Audio speakers (totally overpriced but amazing), high-end DAC, high-end amp... It was bliss. One of these $50K+ setup but bliss. This is nothing like a laptop, a soundbar or a Sonos.

To be fair you can have a similarly great experience on significantly more affordable setups around 10k.

DAC and amplification above a certain price range is basically good enough to become indistinguishable from one another. The largest part of your budget should go into speakers. And don't underestimate the effects of proper room treatment and correction. Solutions like Dirac Live have made this much more approachable.

Anything above that will provide very marginal gains. There's a lot of costly prestige above that threshold which doesn't always translate into real audible benefits.

The cost for high quality plummeted, especially in audio storage, playback, and amplification. That was 1980-2010. The technical advances were not particularly big in microphones, but very big in analog-digital conversion, digital storage, digital editing, and digital-to-analog conversion. Amplification was rejuvenated by switching power supplies and class D amplifiers starting in 1996. The availability of high quality measurement techniques vastly improved the state of the art in speakers since 2000 or so.

Meanwhile, mass-market audio has gotten better but not consistently. The speakers are usually the limiting factor for quality: you can have at most any two of small speakers, deep bass, or volume for a given power budget. Lots of consumer systems go for small speakers and don't have either deep bass or high volume.

Does sound quality matter? That's an individual choice. It's available to you at a much lower cost than ever before in history.

The main appeal of lossless, as I see it, is freedom - to reencode, transmit, store, transform audio (music) as you please, without any worry of loss. I'm not stuck with FLAC - I can use any fancy, new or old format and get the same music. I can create lossy MP3s, OGGs or anything else at a variety of bitrates appropriate for the case.

Once you do lossless -> lossy, you're "stuck", unless you accept reencoding artifacts and those do add up to eventually be bad.

I'm an audio enthusiast, have quality (but not excessive, triple digit prices) DACs, amps and everything else. I can't ABX 256kbps+ MP3s from lossless, but the above stands.

I have to say, just as a casual observation, that for the same money I can get a lot better sound now in 2022 than I could in 2002. Most low to midrange headphones (€50-€100) sound very acceptable and even the lower range Bluetooth speakers (€50) sound decidedly not terrible. In 2002 this money would buy headphones with no bass, shrill highs and muddy mids.

Just compare the original earbuds included with the iPod to the wired EarPods that Apple sells now.

Or compare the AirPods Pro ($249) to what the same amount (inflation adjusted) could get you 20 years ago.

Of course there’s still plenty of space on the high end, and still the higher you go the more you need to spend to achieve 1% better sound.

> I remmeber seeing stereo systems for 50,000$ and more.

These absolutely still exist. What's changed, to an extent, is that they're a bit less fashionable; whereas in the 80s any self-respecting rich person needed a hifi that cost as much as a small house, today, this is largely the preserve of (rich) enthusiasts.

The vast majority of people would have had relatively low cost stereo systems which were, by and large, far worse than their modern contemporaries, tho.

I admit I’m basically in this category. But I recently saw Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and was totally blown away, mostly by the writing, musicianship, creativity and courage, but also because of the best audio quality I’ve ever experienced, and it has me questioning my assumptions.

Those HiFi people are still there. And the products evolved with time.

My guess: >90% of music consumers don't care about quality as long as it's good enough. What they care is ease of use. Why should they have a complicated setup and try getting their records in lossless FLAC when they can just go onto Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube and press play.

I've seen lot's of people that don't even care that their audio has the intro parts when playing from youtube. So why should they care for HiFi.

In some ways, audiophiles are the mirror image of this on the other end of the spectrum. Detectable improvements in sound do not matter and ABX testing is never mentioned in polite company. Why should they have a straightforward setup when they can purchase ever more arcane products and services to distance themselves from plebeians?

> try getting their records in lossless FLAC when they can just go onto Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube

Apple Music has lossless now.

In a choice between convenience and quality, convenience wins almost every time.

Personally I use FLAC for archiving purposes, to preserve a copy of my physical CDs. They're available in my home Plex server, but they'll get converted to a lossy format if synced to save some storage space on that device.

> Personally I use FLAC for archiving purposes, to preserve a copy of my physical CDs.

Same, but at home I also play directly the FLAC files (laptop / DAC / amp / floorstanding loudspeakers). They're not that much bigger than 320 kbps mp3 files.

I convert to lossy for my car, which takes mp3 files but not FLAC.

I used to collect mp3s back in the Napster days. My HDD was maybe 40 GB back then (?), maybe not even that. Nowadays FLAC files size aren't a concern. I think a screenshot of my screen takes more room than a song FLAC encoded.

Now I'm curious about how you manage to get such large screenshots. I just tried and with a total resolution of 5120x1200 (over 3 monitors) I get a 35x difference between a random song in FLAC (28Mb vs 729Kb)

jpeg/heic or png?

You can take a blind test and see for yourself if you can detect lossless audio from compressed:

http://abx.digitalfeed.net

This test is, of course, limited to the equipment with which you perform it. The most important equipment by far is your own ears. I was 16 when the audience was blindly played the same song (by Michael Jackson) from vinyl, CD and DVD on a 1.5 million dollar system. At that time I could immediately tell which medium was being played. Half the people in the room were wrong and it was clearly due to the age of the audience. Meanwhile, I would probably also no longer be able to tell the difference. But If your audio system sucks, you will also have a hard time to Tell the difference in this Test.

I’m no spring chicken either and I don’t have a million dollar setup, but with a pair of $100 Shure SE215, I can just barely make out which are lossy (usually). But it’s not a big enough difference to concern me. I’m still plenty happy with a 320kps mp3.

I can't answer all of your questions, but I today we have AirPlay, which streams uncompressed audio to the receiver. Before that, the only option was Bluetooth or proprietary network codecs.

Isn't Airplay just another proprietary network codec though?

Well, that's right, but at least it's widely used instead of being restricted to just one manufacturer.

Does it matter in a discussion about convenience?

Audio quality has gotten a lot better over time as speaker and player technology improved, so now cheap mainstream stuff could be equal to high end back then.

Not quite, the weakest link are the speakers (and room acoustics), and cheap speakers — which the large majority of “mainstream” speakers are — still suck today as they did in the 90s.

A lot of mainstream speakers are pretty bad, but I tend to think that once you get above a couple watts the quality-for-money tatto ratio goes up quite a bit.

> and room acoustics

Interestingly, a study suggests that room acoustics don't negatively affect the sound of good speakers, and what that means is that for listening, acoustics don't matter as much as they do for recording.

That is likely true for the transmission of the audio signal. Regarding the music itself I have heard complaints to the contrary. Loudness war/race and reduced dynamics are keywords I recall here. To blame was the way the audio was mixed before release. I'm not an audiophile though

The signal is digital until it gets to the speaker so there is no loss of quality after the initial encoding, which might itself be lossless. Some systems (eg Sonos) can stream lossless audio or even 24 bit 192 khz, which is certainly overkill.

With some wireless systems (Bluetooth comes to mind), there's a lossy reencoding between playback device and speaker too!

Lossy, but at >300kbps.... this is not going to be the part that introduces most artifacts.

> The signal is digital until it gets to the speaker so there is no loss of quality after the initial encoding, which might itself be lossless.

This ain’t true - for example Bluetooth is lossy compression.

‘Digital’ doesn’t mean lossless from the source.

You are conflating compression and verbatim copying which are two different things and obviously not what they're talking about.

What they said:

> The signal is digital until it gets to the speaker so there is no loss of quality after the initial encoding

isn't true - the original encoding is decoded... and re-encoded, losslessly, by the Bluetooth protocol.

Who said they were talking about Bluetooth. It sounds like they were talking about a proprietary system like Sonos Wifi.