Neil Young's PonoMusic player (1 Viewer)

[hydromancer]

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[Cornu Ammonis]

I don't have any portable music device.


They are fine at 320 kbps and acceptable at 256 anything lower sounds terrible.

I encode at 192 Kbps and it's hard to notice a difference on most recordings. Especially in an "on the street" situation. It starts just being a waste of hard drive space at some point.

When do we start the Thumped Double Blind Encoding Test Club?

 

[ann post]

When do we start the Thumped Double Blind Encoding Test Club?

there was a thing on the philips website for a while called the golden ears challenge that tested your ability to tell between bit rates, db and load of other stuff. I work with digital sound every day and I got 'gold' (identify everything) level though it took me two goes.

It depends on the gear for sure though. hold on ill do a picture.

same intro
in wav (flac essentially..)
mp3 @192
mp3 @320

As you can see the mp3 encoder lops eveything over 16000hz into nothing. theres a tiny drop in the bass spread too.

The mp3 320 retains just a little more above 16000hz (top right of the picture)

Most people over 30 can't tell much of whats going on in that range.

Teens / kids / mid twenties can hear up to 20,000, even a little over i think.

HOWEVER

Waves are things moving in air, and they interact with each other, so while you might not hear above the 16000 per say, what you wont hear is how the things happening in that region are effecting and harmonising with everything below.

In general though, there's not a lot of difference between 192 and 320. That song i used is pretty minimal - mostly voice and beats. Should probably have used an orchestral sample.

 

[Kermit McDermott]

What I hate about low bit rate mp3s is that swishy thing it does to the top end. You hear it in the cymbals, acoustic guitars ect...
Horrible.

 

[hydromancer]

Some mp3s are certainly shite in my opinion.

 

[Theseus Mock]

Remember cooked mp3s? Thoughts on Cooked MP3's - Winamp & SHOUTcast Forums

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

What I hate about low bit rate mp3s is that swishy thing it does to the top end. You hear it in the cymbals, acoustic guitars ect...
Horrible.

That is certainly a thing but not something I've heard in years. It was really evident in earlier mp3s when 192 Kbps was considered the future. Plus the actual encoding software is a lot better now so you get less of this artefacts.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

Most people over 30 can't tell much of whats going on in that range.

Welcome to Thumped!

Waves are things moving in air, and they interact with each other, so while you might not hear above the 16000 per say, what you wont hear is how the things happening in that region are effecting and harmonising with everything below.

Does that work from high frequencies down to low? I thought frequencies only produced their harmonics at whole multiples of their frequencies (so only higher frequencies). If you do a power spectrum of an electrical signal, you get your 50 Hz spike and then smaller spikes at 100, 150, 200 Hz etc. but not at 25 Hz or 5 Hz. Or am I misunderstanding your post?

 

[ann post]

Welcome to Thumped!


Does that work from high frequencies down to low? I thought frequencies only produced their harmonics at whole multiples of their frequencies (so only higher frequencies). If you do a power spectrum of an electrical signal, you get your 50 Hz spike and then smaller spikes at 100, 150, 200 Hz etc. but not at 25 Hz or 5 Hz. Or am I misunderstanding your post?

You aren't misunderstanding, I'm just shit at describing.
Say for example some is playing a low C, around 35hz.
Then another source plays something like a high D and its got stuff going at around 4700hz, then as you say double that, 9400, 4 times that, around 18800hz.

So that C is going to be noding around 540 times a second with the high elements of that D. And in a load of other places but that's just picking one.

OR HARMONIZING AS WE LIKE TO SAY IN ENGLISH.

but, if it doesn't exist because mp3 has actually fully removed the 18800.

Its not a huge amount of sound or anything, but you could equate it to words like 'richness' and 'subtlety' maybe.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

You aren't misunderstanding, I'm just shit at describing.
Say for example some is playing a low C, around 35hz.
Then another source plays something like a high D and its got stuff going at around 4700hz, then as you say double that, 9400, 4 times that, around 18800hz.

So that C is going to be noding around 540 times a second with the high elements of that D. And in a load of other places but that's just picking one.

OR HARMONIZING AS WE LIKE TO SAY IN ENGLISH.

but, if it doesn't exist because mp3 has actually fully removed the 18800.

Its not a huge amount of sound or anything, but you could equate it to words like 'richness' and 'subtlety' maybe.

I get you now, thanks for that. Pono should hire you to make a case for them because that all seems far more reasonable than "NEIL YOUNG SAYS SO AND HE PLAYED IT FOR ME IN HIS ELECTRIC CAR!"

 

[ann post]

I get you now, thanks for that. Pono should hire you to make a case for them because that all seems far more reasonable than "NEIL YOUNG SAYS SO AND HE PLAYED IT FOR ME IN HIS ELECTRIC CAR!"

while convincing i've never actually bench tested this theory. I might do it at work next week and make pictures.

 

[Theseus Mock]

Spotify is preparing to launch a Hi-Fi music tier

 

[dunderhead]

I don't have the power to exhume old threads so this is the freshest NY one I can go to.

I picked up a really nice copy of Trans on holidays there 2 weeks ago. While I love Neil Young, I predominantly only know and love his late 60s/70s stuff and a few choice cuts from 90s onwards. I had never heard this record before but knew about it and had a good idea what to expect. vocoder vocals etc. Just listened to it for the first time this morning. Wow, this is fucking amazing! Gonna listen to this all day

 

[chris d]

it's fukin' class alright. I have only ever listened on youtube, must get a proper copy.

 

[travispickle]

I don't have the power to exhume old threads so this is the freshest NY one I can go to.

I picked up a really nice copy of Trans on holidays there 2 weeks ago. While I love Neil Young, I predominantly only know and love his late 60s/70s stuff and a few choice cuts from 90s onwards. I had never heard this record before but knew about it and had a good idea what to expect. vocoder vocals etc. Just listened to it for the first time this morning. Wow, this is fucking amazing! Gonna listen to this all day

I only picked up a copy relatively recently, but it's an album I really like; its certainly not as bad as it's reputation might suggest.
His version of Transformer Man on MTV unplugged is fookin awesome.

 

[travispickle]

I don't have the power to exhume old threads so this is the freshest NY one I can go to.

I picked up a really nice copy of Trans on holidays there 2 weeks ago. While I love Neil Young, I predominantly only know and love his late 60s/70s stuff and a few choice cuts from 90s onwards. I had never heard this record before but knew about it and had a good idea what to expect. vocoder vocals etc. Just listened to it for the first time this morning. Wow, this is fucking amazing! Gonna listen to this all day

I only picked up a copy relatively recently, but it's an album I really like; its certainly not as bad as it's reputation might suggest.
His version of Transformer Man on MTV unplugged is fookin awesome.

 

[dunderhead]

I only picked up a copy relatively recently, but it's an album I really like; its certainly not as bad as it's reputation might suggest.
His version of Transformer Man on MTV unplugged is fookin awesome.

absolutely. must try and find reviews from 82 of it. remember bits from the book Shakey vaguely where he talked of how they were universally terrible pretty much. album made in response to his son's pretty severe needs yeah?

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

Someone on one of the Neil Young forums/mailing lists I'm on pointed out that the reviews at the time were generally favourable but that a story about how crap it was built up over the years. I think it's a great one, not one of his best but there are some terrific songs on it even if the album is patchy. The songs that don't work that well are the ones that are closer to traditional NY songs, the electronic stuff is great. I also really love "Like an Inca" but later live versions really bring out the best in the song. He did it a few times last year with Promise of the Real and it sounded fantastic - stretched out to a monster 26 minute jam here:

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[Denny Oubidoux]

It's not as synthy as legend had me expect. Like An Inca is great!

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

I don't know if any of you have seen the announcement for his Archives project but it sounds like another "Getting down with the new technology" mis-step like Pono. Instead of releasing physical product, it looks like the Archives will be instead a streaming service. Sounds like it's going to be a major pain in the hole - for a guy who's apparently all about the sound quality, he's pushing something that most people are only going to hear on computer or phone speakers.