Can lossy digital audio be better than lossless?

Data compressed audio trashes 90% of the original recording so surely it's worse than lossless audio. But what if lossy, data-compressed, audio could be *better* than lossless?

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[radman]

Mastering is far more important to sound quality than lossy/lossless comparisons. I've never met anyone who can tell the difference between lossless and lossy at 320kbps (MP3) or 256kbps (AAC) when tested under scientific conditions, regardless of the quality of "the system". Encoders are now so good now that even the "difficult samples" are encoded to a quality that hardly anyone can distinguish.

Arguments on this are really just a defence of the people who bulk bought the snake oil. My take is that people should spend more time enjoying the music, and less time worrying about it.

[geoffs]

I have a highly resolving system with large full range electrostatic speakers. The recording quality is very obvious through these speakers. I have tried most streaming services but Spotify Premium at 320KB/s is indistinguishable from so called lossless. If you listen intently for a difference then you will hear it. This is how the brain works. The quality of the original recording is far more important than the distribution format. In a home system room acoustics and loudspeaker choice have a huge effect on the listening experience.

[darryldouglas]

I do know if I want my CDs to sound like vinyl I place a bowl of Rice Krispies between the speakers and my listening position. 😃

[northsurrey]

There’s another issue with lossy coding and that’s generational loss. Run audio through 3-4 generations of lossy codecs and the effects caused by that lost 90% (ok 89% to keep Betty happy) soon become apparent. This is an issue for broadcasters and studios as well as anyone who isn’t disciplined with their audio management. The main reason to use lossy audio is to save storage or bandwidth but these days these are cheap and plentiful so lossy codecs are becoming less important. I’m curious therefore why we need to represent audio in small files when linear lossless does it just fine. If space is at a premium then use FLAC or ALAC both of which are lossless and about 50% of the size of the equivalent linear file.

[JimhawthorneNet]

Brilliant idea my man, I couldn't agree with you more! Just give us the highest resolution possible the most important 10%, and dither it (with noise shaping of course). I'm ALL in.

[SteveWille]

I think the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem says that lossless 44kHz PCM is, in part, already what David proposes. The theorem states an analog, 22kHz band-limited signal (generally encompassing human hearing) can be PERFECTLY reconstructed from a 44kHz sampling.

[joelcarson]

Even though I'm rapidly approaching 70, my hearing is way better than it should be. I have good sensitivity ( I notice noises my wife who is 12 years younger can't) and I can still hear up to about 13 khz. My fine discrimination is not what it once was though. I can still tell almost any 128 kbit MP3 from a CD, but I'd be hard pressed to tell a 256 or 320 kbit MP3 from a CD. Low bitrates affect some genres of music to a greater or lesser degree depending.

[Antoon]

A crappy recording will still sound bad lossless. A great recordinbg will still sound great lossy. So there are more factors in play.

[shaymcquaid]

Thanks for the video. You forgot to mention that some people WOULD care about what they are missing IF they knew they were missing it. Your statement didn't divide me into a camp, but it did make me lol. Fire those assistants...

[duncan-rmi]

have you ever subtracted an MP3 from a wav to see what the difference is? quite the eye-opener. most of it was wisps of HF energy & tiny phase errors, from what I could see.

[paulphilippart]

The popularity of vinyl says it all. For me the main difference is vinyl is mastered much better most digital is bricked, and that's where a phenomenal medium is spoiled by moronic and corporate misuse.

[richardramorino]

I can definitely hear the difference between Spotify and Tidal and music purchased from HD Tracks. But the difference is not as big as many audiophiles would like to believe. Some people like darko have no use for high rez whatsoever. The quality of the recording is really the ballgame. Compression is the death star. So many modern recordings just have nothing to give no matter what.

[diatonicdelirium]

Actually, the 44.1kHz/16bit standard is perfectly adequate for the final artifact (not for mixing). Some loss is already there in the form of dynamic range (bits) and frequency representation, but when carefully mastered we should never be able to hear that.
Some modern digital formats as used via Bluetooth have very audible degradation, my noise-canceling set fortunately also connects using a USB cable, and the difference is immense.

[tomyan]

Also, I am not so sure if "trashes" is the right word to describe the decrease/difference in bitrate offered by lossy audio...

[rfplip]

The biggest improvement i made was cable lifters. It was night and day ! The more expensive ones obviously sounded the best.

[jeffgoodnough]

Just a couple hours ago, I listened to an old 96Kbps mp3 rip of a beloved album on some new Audio Technica earbuds... my FLAC and WAV files sound phenomenal on these, but this album sounded flat, with no separation between instruments, and the electric guitar and bass distorted when they were playes together. Those are somewhat extreme cases to contrast, but it's where my mind is. Thanks for the ever incisive videos!

[googleantispy]

Can you hear the throw-away? Depends on the type of music and a few simple acoustic parameters of your room and monitors. A 90% throw away does not impact a wide swath of rock/pop. Even audible differences become just another flavor of the production and who can say what's "right" unless you A-B compare. But take a properly recorded and mixed orchestral/choral work and the /complete/ loss of depth -- the front-to-back flattening in the lossy encoded sound -- can make you weep.

To hear that depth you need a room reasonably free of time-smearing early reflections hiding those subtle details that provide depth cues in the first place. (A lot of audiophiles do *not* have properly treated rooms. The overall clarity of their mega-buck system is diminished by room problems. In those settings listeners might indeed be "happy enough" with lossy encoding because they've never clearly heard the information that provides dimension.)

In studio mastering I use a tool that lets you hear what a lossy CODEC is throwing away (different bit rates of MP3 and AAC). We'd hope it'd just be noise that's tossed but especially at lower bit rates the amount of actual music getting removed is shocking. Even 320 KBpS falls short. And FLAC or SLAC? Nope, not lossless, contrary to marketing claims. Only a little better than 320 MP3s. This is all easy to hear on even a modestly better system but in a properly-designed room.

These days storage is cheap. Don't lossy encode. Don't be suckered by CODECs claiming lossless. Even better-produced rock/pop is worth the small incremental cost of storage and deserves the better sound quality. And see what can be done to improve your listening environment.

[tomstickland]

Most of that extra resolution is high frequencies that are either beyond the range of someone's hearing, very low amplitude, musically unimportant and/or unpleasant.

[scottwolf]

@4:02 "Any conversion to digital is going to be less than perfect", Does that include the digital conversion/processing inside of Our brains, post semicircular canals and vestibulocochlear nerve that caries the now digitized signal? I do agree with you that We don't require ALL the information that exists in the, " Analog", domain, outside the brain reality. An example, very small transducers in our laptops/phones cannot reproduce the frequencies of musical Fundamentals but do reproduce the Harmonics, so our brains can fill in the missing data of the Fundamental so that we can sense the Pitch, as the Harmonics yield Timbral information. Yet on systems that can reproduce the Fundamentals, that is where the Hi Fi in the experience comes into play making the experience quite thrilling.

[InvisibleIink]

What do reported "artefacts" of lossy codecs sound like? Can I train my ears to notice them?