Apple Quashes Rumors of Potential Tidal Acquisition

[flat five]

"Lossless" is simply lost on human ears,

maybe.. but i have to play lossless since my little guy prefers it..



* not a double entendre ; )

 

[Abazigal]

Barring exclusives, I don't see anything Tidal can offer Apple.

 

[petsounds]

I just need to respond to this, since it's absolutely inaccurate and just perpetuates mythology.

There is no objective, double-blind test that I have seen, which shows that anyone can reliably differentiate between lossless and a well mastered 320k audio. Even 256k is up there for most people.

As to vinyl, it's absolute nonsense. Vinyl introduces distortion, just like most tube amps. While it may sound warm and nice to you, it is because of the distortion and it does not represent the sound as it was recorded. You can achieve the same effect with digital processing.

Of course you need to respond to it; the Nyquist Gang just can't help themselves.

I make and record music and I can absolutely hear the difference between compressed audio and 24/96 lossless. The main differentiator for me is the 24 part: 24-bits per sample (144db dynamic range). There's just more information there per chunk of audio than 16 bits (96db dynamic range), which is what CD audio deals in (as well as mp3...aac is a different beast). The difference in sample frequencies between 48 and 96kHz is much less noticeable and really depends on the source material and the audio chain used to record that material. But generally it's the transients that you lose there.

For the record, I never said the vinyl record is better at representing the source material (though you got in my face for it anyway). But it sounds really really good, distortion or no. That's an absolutely subjective statement and it's the opinion of many.

 

[macUser2007]

... I make and record music and I can absolutely hear the difference between compressed audio and 24/96 lossless....

"Absolutely?" In a double blind test?

I've seen several controlled environment ABX tests where participants were unable to reliable hear the difference, including between 16-bit and 24-bit. I don't have the time to dig back right now, but here is one crowd-sourced test of about 140 participants and the results speak for themselves:

"Subgroup analysis of "musicians" and those who work with the technical aspects of recording, editing and mixing ("engineers") did not demonstrate evidence of special abilities at discerning the 24-bit audio. The "engineers" group did perform slightly better overall. The small group of individuals who identified themselves as writing hardware reviews did not show an increase in accuracy.

About 50% of respondents admitted that they had low confidence in their ability to discern differences. Conversely, 25-30% (depending on which musical sample) of respondents reported a strong sense of "certainty" that they were correct in identifying the 24-bit sample. Nonetheless, analysis was not able to demonstrate improved accuracy despite claims of increased subjective confidence by the respondents.

Furthermore, analysis of those utilizing more expensive audio systems ($6,000+) did not show any evidence of the respondents being able to identify the 24-bit audio. Those using headphones likewise did not show any stronger preference for the higher bit-depth sample. No difference was noted in the "older" (51+ years) age group data (not surprising if there is no discernible difference even with potential age-related hearing acuity changes)."

http://archimago.blogspot.it/2014/06/24-bit-vs-16-bit-audio-test-part-ii.html