Audio Format Wars: 10 Digital and Analog Media Materials

The theme of the new digest " World Hi-Fi " - audio formats. Article collections will tell about codecs for audio compression and various analog media. So, reading time at the weekend.


Photo Dylan_Payne / CC BY

• Why CDs can sound better than vinyl records . Some music lovers insist on the superiority of vinyl records over CDs, but the situation is not as simple as it seems. Music journalist Chris Cornelis argues that it is impossible to determine the winner unequivocally. Moreover, in his opinion, vinyl gained popularity not because of the sound quality, but because of the collection value and nostalgic factor.

• Vinyl and CD: the taste and color . Another attempt to prove that no format was created without flaws. First, we will talk about the limitations of vinyl - problems in reproducing hissing sounds and frequencies at the edges of the spectrum. Next, the author talks about the features of perception of CDs and refutes the myth that digital recording is inferior to vinyl by default. You will also learn from the material how the characteristic sound of the plates is formed and why some listeners prefer it anyway.

• Compact cassettes: past, present and future . Vinyl has already returned to the store shelves - has the cassettes turn? Yes and no. The author will tell about the history of the format, its technical features, and the current state of the cassette industry. For those who want to start or replenish their collection of compact tapes, the article will be tips on buying.

• Battle for format: reel vs cassette vs vinyl vs CD vs HiRes . Blind comparison of the most significant formats in the history of sound recording. The analog master was copied onto five carriers — from classic magnetic tape to flash drives with high-resolution audio — and played on high-end equipment for a group of skeptical audiophiles. Students tried to blindly distinguish between formats. According to the author, it was possible to do this, and the test showed marked differences in the sound of different carriers. In the material you will find the listeners' impressions of the experiment, as well as photographs and a description of the reference equipment used.

Photo by Marco Becerra / CC BY
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• DSD conversion: fake or good? This article focuses on DSD, a low-resolution, high-sampling audio format. His followers claim that the quality of such a record is so superior to any other analogues that any master should convert to DSD as an intermediate step. In the material you will find an experiment in which an attempt was made to find out what effect DSD conversion actually has.

• Can lossless sound differently? How much does the program through which the audio file plays affect its sound? Do premium class players have the right to exist, and if so, why? The author of the article tried to find out whether the content of the audio stream changes as it “passes” through three different players - Jriver ($ 60), Audiorvana ($ 74) and Foobar2000 ($ 0).

• Choose a format for compressing audio data: MP3, AAC or WavPack? The same music recording was compressed with three different codecs, and then converted back to WAV and compared with the original. For clarity, the same operations were performed on a simple audio file with a square signal with a frequency of 100 Hz. In the article you will find a more detailed description of the experiment and find out which of the formats coped with the task best. At the end of the material, the author provides links to download test phonograms, which you can independently compare by ear.

• We measure the number of hidden errors in the CD . The material explains why errors may occur when reading a CD and how to find them. The first part of the article describes the process of reading information by a laser and related problems. Further, the material describes errors encountered on the disks themselves and their impact on the reading of the media. As it turned out, high-quality license discs are far from insured against such problems, and their home copies may sound better than the original.

• Network Music Formats Article-educational program on popular digital audio formats, which focuses on ways to compress music without loss of quality. Among them are both the open FLAC and APE, and the “proprietary” formats: WMA Lossless from Microsoft and ALAC from Apple. The “star” of the material is a modern WavPack format that supports 256-channel audio files. For comparison: only eight tracks can be stored in FLAC files. More information about the format - by reference.

• Digital audio format 24/192, and why it does not make sense . A series of articles from Chris Montgomery, the creator of the Ogg format and the Vorbis codec. In his texts, Chris criticizes the practice of listening to 24-bit audio with a sampling frequency of 192 kHz, which is popular among music lovers. Montgomery tells why these impressive indicators at best do not affect the perception of a phonogram, and in some situations even harm it. To this end, he cites research data and examines in detail the technical aspects of digital audio recordings.

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What we write about in the Telegram-channel:

Johnny Trunk has released a book on flexi disks
Bjork has released nine studio albums on cassettes.
Vinyl is back and it's different

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