Jokes aside, my ears are not that terrible, but modern compression is pretty damn okay.
I don’t have an anechoic, soundproof listening room, no soundcard I’ve measured myself had more than 80-90 dB SNR in real world scenarios anyway, and I am not going to turn off all electronic appliances in my apartment when I want to listen to music. Plus, most headphones that don’t cost a kidney or two will likely be a weak part anyway, as they are analog, mechanical, imperfect devices with manufacturing spread, wearout, and just general real-world mess.
I had pretty good ears as a kid, and I remember taking an mp3 blind test at a museum back then. Sure, the lower quality levels are easy, but past 128-192 or so kb/s? Maybe if you know what to listen for, and switch back and forth, but out of the blue I personally wouldn’t notice compression in anything higher.
Therefore, I believe that anything past CD quality is voodoo and won’t hold up to a blind test for 99,999% of people, especially if you randomize loudness a bit. The ~100dB dynamic range are more than enough for normal music, and the frequency range is plenty for everyone older than 3. Enough space for decent filters to practically eliminate aliasing as well. The only reason I see for higher resolutions and bit depths is mixing/mastering, if you want to modify things several times and not have audible quality issues.
No offence, but 700 MB a song from an old tape master sounds borderline snake-oily as well. I wouldn’t call tape motor rumble, dust specks or random background EM “soul”, and I kind of doubt you can squeeze that much resolution out of old tapes, but I may be wrong here, tapes were largely before my time.
Jokes aside, my ears are not that terrible, but modern compression is pretty damn okay.
I don’t have an anechoic, soundproof listening room, no soundcard I’ve measured myself had more than 80-90 dB SNR in real world scenarios anyway, and I am not going to turn off all electronic appliances in my apartment when I want to listen to music. Plus, most headphones that don’t cost a kidney or two will likely be a weak part anyway, as they are analog, mechanical, imperfect devices with manufacturing spread, wearout, and just general real-world mess.
I had pretty good ears as a kid, and I remember taking an mp3 blind test at a museum back then. Sure, the lower quality levels are easy, but past 128-192 or so kb/s? Maybe if you know what to listen for, and switch back and forth, but out of the blue I personally wouldn’t notice compression in anything higher.
Therefore, I believe that anything past CD quality is voodoo and won’t hold up to a blind test for 99,999% of people, especially if you randomize loudness a bit. The ~100dB dynamic range are more than enough for normal music, and the frequency range is plenty for everyone older than 3. Enough space for decent filters to practically eliminate aliasing as well. The only reason I see for higher resolutions and bit depths is mixing/mastering, if you want to modify things several times and not have audible quality issues.
No offence, but 700 MB a song from an old tape master sounds borderline snake-oily as well. I wouldn’t call tape motor rumble, dust specks or random background EM “soul”, and I kind of doubt you can squeeze that much resolution out of old tapes, but I may be wrong here, tapes were largely before my time.