The Lounge - CodeProject

Some of the Apple bashing below got me thinking. I have a lot of Apple devices, as well as Microsoft devices (which I also happen to make my living on). I don't have any Google based devices, but I run their apps on all of my crap (except the Xbox), so I think it's safe to say I'm pretty platform agnostic.

The main reason I bought my iPhone was because they really did make the best music players (I went from a Nano to a Touch years ago) and I wanted to keep that experience on my phone when it was finally time to get a smartphone; plus at the time the "best" Android phone had to have it's battery pulled to reboot it every couple of days, and the carriers didn't have the choices they do now. Obviously things have gotten MUCH better since then on the Android front.

But the main thing I do with my phone, more than web browsing, messaging or actually using it as a phone, is listen to music. iTunes is not a great app. I don't use it to play music on my Macs or PCs, though the app in general is much better on a Mac (their port to Windows was just lazy - intentionally I think). But iTunes is a great iPhone manager from a music standpoint. I LIVE off of smart playlists (recently played, least recently played, most played, best of artists, best of least played, etc.) so stats like last played and play count are important to me, it reminds me of music I haven't listened to in a while. While I'm sure apps like this exist for Android, I rarely see music advertised as a top priority for them, whereas it's in the DNA of the iPhone, due to their dominant iPod past. Googling it just turns up generic options - many of which only work on Windows (which isn't a 100% deal breaker, but I would like something that works with OS X).

So - and sorry for reaching TLDR status here, I can't help it - I'd like to hear some perspective from anyone who has moved from the iPod/iPhone/iTunes music world (especially if they used the more powerful features) and what the best way to achieve that on an Android would be, or if any of the "good" Android phones have it integrated to the point where it's painless. I may upgrade my own or my wife's phone soon, and Android is very much in play - for price and storage reasons - but the music playing aspect makes me nervous. (I'm not worried about DRM, btw, as all of mine has long since been removed and music is no longer sold that way.)

I'm not looking for a flamewar, I just happen to like several of Apple's products and have not had much experience with Android phones or tablets.

Look at me still talking when there's science to do
When I look out there it makes me glad I'm not you

I use Google music to store all my music I ripped from my CDs. Now I can access it from where ever I am and on whatever device I have - which I have an Android phone, iPad, many computers, etc.

The other nice thing is that google music allows import from your iTunes library, including the DRMed stuff. When you purchase stuff from Google, it immediately appears in your Google music library for you to access. No download time....

I'm not going back - I can tell you that.

I've honestly never even looked at Google music... it sounds like something I can check out to see if it's a good fit before I even try an Android device. Does it do smart playlists? I would expect them to, and it probably sounds like I'm too hung up on that, but it really is a key feature for me.

Of course I'm on a limited data plan (damn you American wireless carriers!), I assume it caches stuff locally...

Look at me still talking when there's science to do
When I look out there it makes me glad I'm not you

Not owning either an IOS or Android device, I can't respond to the issues of comparing how useful the music-management software is, but I do wonder if the audio quality of what is played would vary with the quality of the D=>A converters they use, general signal pollution produced by the total electronic activity of the device-as-a-whole.

Not to mention: quality of the hardware that finally renders the music signal: headphones, amplifier to speakers, in-ear-buds, etc.

And, of course, there's the question of the quality of the source audio file (ripped digitally, I assume): whether the source is compressed losslessly (for example into .flac fles): or, down-sampled into an .mp3 with loss of dynamic range and other qualities).

I bet there are audiophile forums, or sites, somewhere that discuss and analyze these topics ... endlessly.

yrs, Bill

“Thus on many occasions man divides himself into two persons, one who tries to fool the other, while a third, who in fact is the same as the other two, is filled with wonder at this confusion. Thinking becomes dramatic, and acts out the most complicated plots within itself, and, spectator, again, and again, becomes: actor.” From a book by the Danish writer, Paul Moller, which was a favorite of Niels Bohr.

BillWoodruff wrote:
And, of course, there's the question of the quality of the source audio file (ripped digitally, I assume): whether the source is compressed losslessly (for example into .flac fles): or, down-sampled into an .mp3 with loss of dynamic range and other qualities).

Ugh, the whole lossless vs. lossy compression is an endless and painful debate that I happen to have strong opinions about. There are astonishingly few double blind tests out there, and I've even concocted some for myself (which I guess would be just plain "blind" tests) - encode lossless, MP3 and AAC of different bitrates versions for each of a bunch of songs across genres - randomize the list but don't look at it (put duplicates in, make the list long enough that they may or may not be played, make it all the same song if you want, etc.), and just listen, and write down where you think you can hear a difference. Be honest about it and the results may surprise you (it did me) - and it varies GREATLY by genre, and by person and their own hearing, I'm sure.

I consider myself an audiophile, but not one of the insane ones (but then, doesn't everyone?) - I play guitar and like all guitarists drive everyone in the band crazy tweaking my knobs to death. From my experience, and I will admit my high frequency hearing (which is where a lot of compression artifacts show up) is not that of a teenager, and is probably subpar for my age due to being in bands and to too many concerts, but for my ears, the sweet spot is to do a 160 kbps MP3 with variable bit rate set to "highest" quality. It really works for me, that's the point at which I cannot tell the difference between lossless and compressed with any reliability. Anything lower, and I can tell with near 100% accuracy. At this rate (again, with VBR, and high quality VBR, which is key) and higher it is completely random, 50/50 chance that I pick the lossless vs. MP3. Some types of songs - interestingly, folk and singer/songwriter stuff - end up higher than 256kbps (160kbps is just the floor), which is of course the high quality VBR at work, and I guess is needed to capture the more complicated and dynamic sound of acoustic guitars. Other genres - like heavy metal - frequently ends up around 170-180kbps (which makes sense for certain songs, given the non-dynamic nature of guitars with heavy distortion playing power chords, it's like zipping a text file full of e's vs. compressing something already compressed). Orchestral stuff tends to end up around 200kbps - I thought it would be higher. It spikes where the encoder decides you need more info in order to hear all the audible information, and makes perfect sense given how human hearing works, assuming the encoder is smart, which I think they are these days.

Signal to noise, etc. is pretty moot at this point (for phones, iPods, etc.). With few exceptions (and there are exceptions) the S/N ratio is well beyond what human ears can detect (and the iPhone, when measured with lab equipment, scores pretty well there, but like I said with very little real world effect vs. most other devices). Output quality becomes important really in the power department. Some high end over the ear headphones just may not be able to get enough "oomph" from certain devices. These high end headphone results I read about online, I generally use earbuds with my phone when at work or walking - and I've gone through many pairs, and that pretty much comes down to preference and how much you want to spend. I think a lot of what people think are encoding artifacts are actually due to the awful scourge facing our planet today: the loudness wars, the artifacts of which are easy to identify, completely unnecessary, and is impossible to unhear once you hear it (and is also present on the "lossless" CD - which sounds like they just clip the 24-bit master to 16 bits instead of scaling it, but they can't really be that stupid, right? 24-bit mastering makes lots of sense, but 16 bits for the end product is PLENTY for the dynamic range capabilities of human beings).

Not to randomly claim credentials, but DSP is my day job, though it's not audio, I use many very similar concepts, so I like to think I know what I'm talking about. Very few of the audiophile flamewars are based on any sort of scientific testing (or logic) whatsoever, so I avoid them like the plague these days Smile | :)

Ok, you got me going. Sorry 'bout that. This is probably on the 18th page by now so no one will read it anyway.

Look at me still talking when there's science to do
When I look out there it makes me glad I'm not you

Hi David,

My sincere thanks for your long and eloquent reply, and the quality of its technical content, so "well-tempered" by awareness of your own experiences, and the possible impact of those experiences on how: you can, now: "listen" !

At age 69, with tinnitus, my hearing range (frequency), and ability to discriminate dynamic range, is definitely limited, and I have an accompanying hyperacusis (over-reaction to loud sounds so they are experienced by me as, literally, "painful").

Subjectively, it seems to me that I can hear a difference in quality of converted music files from CD's between .flac files, and high-kbps high-VBR .mp3's; but, there's no science in that remark.

For compression I usually use .ogg rather than .mp3, but, again, just a personal choice not based on any "evidence."

You would think that a scientific comparison could be done, from a superbly recorded 24-bit digital master (perhaps examples from different genres of music: classical, rock, blues, folk, jazz ?), all converted to .flac, .ogg, .mp3 at various settings. And, then, the resulting digitally converted files could be analyzed by laboratory-grade audio equipment, and computer, to rigorously indicate reduction in whatever (dynamic range ? loss of sound at certain frequencies ?).

And, of course, that would still leave you with the questions "hanging" of how capable anyone person's actual ears are of discrimination, and how any one "rendering device," that finally produces the sound, is going to have output of some measurable quality.

I have read about, as you mention, the iPhone scoring high for "rendering quality" in testing done with some scientific basis. I assume, but do not know, that testing was done by taking the direct analog output from the iPhone straight into lab-quality testing devices.

I'm so physically uncomfortable with in-ear buds, I only use circumaural headphones; but the quality of the phones I wear (and can afford) would be sneered at by any audiophile ... mere LogiTech G930's ... Smile | :)

I am curious to ask you what software, on what hardware, you use now to convert, for example, a CD's music files to a 160kbs VBR .mp3. I'm assuming you are using Macintosh hardware, based on your remarks.

yrs, Bill

“Thus on many occasions man divides himself into two persons, one who tries to fool the other, while a third, who in fact is the same as the other two, is filled with wonder at this confusion. Thinking becomes dramatic, and acts out the most complicated plots within itself, and, spectator, again, and again, becomes: actor.” From a book by the Danish writer, Paul Moller, which was a favorite of Niels Bohr.

I'm not sure we're even allowed (by Internet Law) to have a reasonable discussion about audio encoding bitrates, but we'll give it a go Smile | :)

Yes, these days I use Mac hardware for most of my (home) tasks. I've ended up using the built in iTunes encoders - starting several years ago, it really ramped up its quality (that's according to what I read) and the extra steps of using Lame just wasn't worth it (since I use iTunes to organize my music now). I started encoding my CDs into MP3s in the mid 90's, and those encoders have long been eclipsed in quality. Some may sneer at the use of the iTunes encoder, but since I used it to compare the enocodes to lossless versions (which it can also do), I guess all of my previous statements should be qualified with "the iTunes encoder results" vs. lossless, which was what was easiest for my uses (since I could just click "Create MP3 Version" in iTunes and as long as I had my settings setup right, it would create what I wanted). My gut feel is that these days you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between encoders, but I haven't tested that.

All audio, when encoded using lossy compression, will be very noticeably different when measured on lab equipment - an oscilloscope would be enough to show it, a frequency domain analyzer (which several scopes of course have) makes the differences even more obvious. Though you get into issues of synchronization and whatnot that makes it a pain to ensure you do it right. But there will be differences. I've done all of this, because I have the equipment available and it looked like I was doing work.

Human hearing, however, isn't as sensitive as a scope (I don't think I'm saying anything you don't know). The real breakthrough when MP3's caught on, and what I hadn't realized was even possible before then, was its use of the characteristics of human hearing, and knowing what info it could discard without being noticed by anyone but dolphins (and possibly bats). At 128k, AAC (and other encoding methods) are noticeably better than MP3 but as you increase bitrate the differences lessen. I settled on VBR 160k MP3 because MP3's are just more universally playable than AAC (even though I have apple devices, I don't want to be tied to AAC). I did my big self test mostly because I used to have fairly high bitrates, including many lossless out of paranoia, but limited space on my phone, and I simply wanted more music with me all the time, and I found VBR 160k as the sweet spot that - overall - saved tons of space (except for some albums where it increased the size, which actually made me "trust" HQ VBR even more). I think I've been able to do that without sacrificing quality (to my ears - tinnitus as well here, at 39). After all, the best music is that which you have with you so you can listen to it Smile | :)

As for earbuds, I used to hate them comfort wise, but I've settled on a couple I like. I found some Skullcandy buds that I like (I can't find the model on them, but you have to be careful with them, they make some truly horrible cheap-o crap too) and I also use - Apple fanboy alert - the Apple "Ear Pods" (terrible name). For $30, you cannot do better soundwise (IMHO), and they are the first earbuds I've EVER used that stay in my ears without constant adjustments while running (and sweating). The biggest problem is that they're white and thus scream "Hey look I'm using Apple stuff!" Your mileage (and ear shape) may vary, of course.

Look at me still talking when there's science to do
When I look out there it makes me glad I'm not you

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