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Comment by white_devil | Hacker News Reader

> I'm pretty sure a 192kbps MP3 is indistinguishable from a CD for 99.999% of the people.

That's because people are completely oblivious to the existence of proper loudspeakers (ie. "studio monitors").

As much as Im' a fan of studio monitors - they're built for the sound engineer to do his work, not blow his hearing, and hear the details he needs to hear. He's not producing music to be listened on those speakers, though - he's producing music to be listened to on a wide variety of playback situations, none of which match what he's working with, and he knows it. If he made stuff only to sound perfect on his gear, it would suck everywhere else. Instead, he makes things to sound good on whatever it needs to (whatever that is in a given situation, I don't know).

That said - I'm the first to stand up and prefer a pair of nice towers and a decent amp, even if it's 20 years old -vs- some tiny "sound good" speakers. Those are fine for the family-room surround setup, with the big subwoofer that rumbles the house, but the secret bat-cave has only a nice little amp, a couple of nice towers (and a few good headphones for various types of music when it's quiet-time). mp3's, or any compressed music, are just fine if they've been recorded well, I think arguments based on those formats are ill-conceived; like anything, if you don't use the format properly it's not going to work well. I've found that a 192kbps mp3 can occasionally sound different than the source CD, but in a blind test I could only tell you that they were different - not which one was the CD - both sound good... and that difference could probably be engineered out in the majority of cases. Which isn't to say I don't have some humungous high-bitrate stuff hanging around - but I like to enjoy my music, not obsess over it or blow rediculous money on audiophile gear. (okay - one pair of really good headphones - so sue me)

Yes, I'm aware that they need to take shit loudspeakers into account when mixing music. But that doesn't mean they can't make it sound good with proper speakers too.

The pursuit of 'state of the art' in audio has changed a little I would say. That 99.999% of listeners can't hear the difference between audio sources has been true in the past as well, even in the pre compressed era. Most people listened to car radios and other lo-fi equipment.

Consumer formats aggravate the audiophile alchemists regularly. Looking through chat from a few decades ago about CD's versus vinyl, adjectives like 'hard' and 'brittle' crop up a lot. The solution technically, was of course to add more distortion, in the form of dithering, to provide an early form of psycho acoustic modelling.

Being a musician as well, I've taken a couple of online 'dare you to tell the difference' tests as well, while researching DAC's for mixing, but not under uncontrolled conditions. I put the top end through custom ribbons comprised of 4Kg of magnet focused on 0.001g of ribbon ( a crude description, but good enough ), and it's an observable difference.

Sitting outside listening to noisy wildlife of all types in the woods, I'm sure 100% of listeners could tell the difference between that aural landscape and any recording, including an MP3.

> That 99.999% of listeners can't hear the difference between audio sources has been true in the past as well, even in the pre compressed era. Most people listened to car radios and other lo-fi equipment.

That's what I meant. Most people have shit loudspeakers, but might be able to hear the difference with proper ones.

Near-field monitors are expensive and entirely inappropriate for most applications.

> Near-field monitors are expensive

Something like this would serve you well: http://www.thomann.de/gb/adam_a7x.htm?sid=65707ea4b4bf3f43af...

I paid 900 euros (second-hand) for my pair of studio monitors - back in 2004..

They're the best investment of my life, by far, as they've provided me with countless hours of music listening joy, and I'm using the same speakers even now.

1000 euros is nothing weighed against the value you get.

> entirely inappropriate for most applications

The "application" here would be: "maximizing your enjoyment of music, and listening to it the way it's meant to be heard". That's something you want to do.

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