Best in ear headphones?

These may not be in ear headphones but when i went to the store to listen to them, I nearly needed to change my pants out because of the sound quality.

Amazon.com: Able Planet NC500SC

Seoul: have you performed double-blind tests (ABX) with your audio files to determine whether you can actually hear any difference? I find that a lot of "audiophiles" who believe there is a major discernible difference between lossless and high-quality lossy codecs really can't tell the difference in a double-blind test. Some audiophile zealot-lunatics will even refuse to undergo the test lest it spoil their faith.

To state that you're missing "significant" amounts of audio from high-quality mp3 encoding when you're talking standard CD-sourced audio is simply not true. If it were, there would be widespread agreement that the sound is noticeably affected, and there is not--certainly not in the thread you've linked. Maybe it could be true of some hi-fi material that encodes all that phase information for surround sound and all that, but that isn't the CD audio that is what mp3s are generally for.

I'm not sure why you're even citing that thread either. It's not backing up your case. Did you even read it?

Personally, I have very noticeable differences in audio quality from car stereo. Playing a 6mb mp3 file vs. a CD will certainly bring out differences in depth of the fidelity and the quality of the very low freqs and high freqs.

CDs are normally at what 320kbps? You can rip CDs to your PC from i-Tunes and ask the software to encode the mp3 into a higher bit rate say 192kbps, and maintain CD quality sound vs. having a standard 128kbps track to play.

This is just what I've noticed on my own. I don't know why it is the way it is.

That was my finding as well. Tried basto- again and again in 320kps mp3 and flac and the only difference i hear are lower basses wich are more present. They are also present on the mp3 but sound muffled/put away.

I would never download lower quality. At simpler songs i sometimes have a hard time to tell difference between 256 and 320kps but 192...id never download that.

Meatball said:

Personally, I have very noticeable differences in audio quality from car stereo. Playing a 6mb mp3 file vs. a CD will certainly bring out differences in depth of the fidelity and the quality of the very low freqs and high freqs.

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I've heard that from people before too, but a car stereo is a poor means of comparison. Quite often the stereo's chip-decoders themselves are poor quality because the data needs to be processed quickly, rather than just copying the input to the output.

To perform a valid comparison, the mp3 should be decoded with a quality decoder to CD (like LAME's), the volumes of both leveled, then the resulting audio put through an ABX test so you're not psychologically prejudiced against one or the other. If you hear a difference, then it's the compression you're hearing; if there's no difference, your car stereo decoder probably sucks.

CDs are normally at what 320kbps? You can rip CDs to your PC from i-Tunes and ask the software to encode the mp3 into a higher bit rate say 192kbps, and maintain CD quality sound vs. having a standard 128kbps track to play.

This is just what I've noticed on my own. I don't know why it is the way it is.

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CDs are "lossless" as far as the data is concerned, so they're really around "1500kbs". The CD players just copy the data to the output as stereo 16-bit PCM data without any processing.

I don't consider 192kbps or 128kbps that great. I usually stick with straight 320kbps or use -V0 mode on LAME. I've never trusted iTunes. It had a pretty bad decoder for a while, maybe still does. Encoding has improved, but I'd rather have LAME-encoded mp3s (good thing Amazon uses that for their music service).

Meatball said:

Personally, I have very noticeable differences in audio quality from car stereo. Playing a 6mb mp3 file vs. a CD will certainly bring out differences in depth of the fidelity and the quality of the very low freqs and high freqs.

CDs are normally at what 320kbps? You can rip CDs to your PC from i-Tunes and ask the software to encode the mp3 into a higher bit rate say 192kbps, and maintain CD quality sound vs. having a standard 128kbps track to play.

This is just what I've noticed on my own. I don't know why it is the way it is.

Click to expand...

Ripping a CD to .mp3 destroys the quality majorly. It isn't even close to being CD quality when it has been lossily compressed. true CD's are encoded at 1411Kb/sec generally at 44.1Khz. There are some super audio CDs out there in 96Khz and 192Khz but are exceedingly rare! They use DVD-A format instead of a standard (700MB) disk format.
Yes, I have experimented by doing several versions of the same song in various bit rates in .mp3 and then comparing them with m4a, ALAC, FLAC and APE.... and majority of the time I can hear the difference between lossless and lossy. .m4a developed by Apple (Apple lossless is actually surprisingly pretty decent for the low file footprint it has.

My thoughts... Personal experience. (maybe it's just me)
There is something always missing or sounding "muddy" in the background or in the high and lows when it comes to using file compressions. The whole argument over music sharing (.mp3) is nonsense as it is a poor quality copy of a much larger file. In my view .mp3's should be freely available as they sample files.
I dare you to use a copy of Miles Davis (Agarta 1976) in .mp3 on a Tube amp with a proper HIFI setup. It sounds, positively dreadful. The tubes already add distortion to the music , essentially "warming it up" this when combined with the compression noise ( yes you can hear it on high end equipment) sounds like the volume on many of the instruments has been turned way down and the mids are left as "normal"..

Seriously YUCK!! Trying the same file in .FLAC, the first thing I notice is that the FULL range of audio is 2x louder and clearer from highs to lows. The same goes for .m4a and the other lossless codecs.


Now to explain what these pictures are all about:
Pic 1 : This is my HIFI setup. The speakers are Cambridge Audio S-30 rated for 100W ea. They are loud even on this tiny tube amp.
Tube Amp is a FATMAN style amp. Got it for $200 at London drugs in Victoria in 2009. The doc it came with was a hunk of crap. I turfed it.
Pic 2: This is my CARAT RUBY DAC made by STYLE AUDIO. Capable of 192Khz at 32bit audio decoding directly out of my Macbook pro's optical line out. This is how optical TOSLINK and USB-A get converted to be used on the AMP. I also have a second input on my amp used for my now iPOD turned iMOD.

Now, this topic has become really heated in my class, so i thought I'd see what the an anime community would say about this topic.

Ok, basically

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a compression format that is aimed specifically at music. FLAC brags about its compression at 100% lossless. So every bit of sound (even the tiniest of sounds) will still be there when you rip a music from a CD.

MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) is, if you didn't know, lossy. Yes, the quality when you compress music to mp3 format goes down considerably. What mp3 does is that it removes all the "supposedly" unnecessary and "imperceivable by the human hear" pieces.

So

Being lossy as it is, why is mp3 actually popular? Well, a 6 min track (this is only a general estimation) at 128kbps would be about 6mb. At 192kbps its 9mb and at 320kbps its 14-15mb.

FLAC is about (once again, estimation) about 2x as as big as a 320kbps mp3 (so around 27-30mb for a 6 min track).

That said...

Can YOU actually tell the difference in the quality between a 320kbps mp3, which is the highest quality of mp3 (supposedly near lossless on judgment by the human ear) between FLAC, which is lossless?

Are you sure you sure that it wasn't only your imagination (or forced yourself) that heard this so called "i never heard this tiny sound on this song when i listened to it on a mp3 @ 320kbps" when listening to FLAC?

Is it really worth it to have so much space taken (30mb for a 6 min song? WHOA) with "just music" (*cough* gets stabbed by audiophiles *cough*) when you can get mp3 (which saves so much space).

Thoughts?

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Seoul_lasers said:

Ripping a CD to .mp3 destroys the quality majorly. It isn't even close to being CD quality when it has been lossily compressed. true CD's are encoded at 1411Kb/sec generally at 44.1Khz. There are some super audio CDs out there in 96Khz and 192Khz but are exceedingly rare! They use DVD-A format instead of a standard (700MB) disk format.

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Properly encoded mp3s are very much transparent--i.e. the human ear cannot detect a difference between it and the reference, lossless audio. What should matter to you is whether your audio format sounds transparent, and to do that you need to perform ABX tests and listen to see if you can really tell any difference.

Bitrate is also a poor metric if you're not comparing the same formats.

Yes, I have experimented by doing several versions of the same song in various bit rates in .mp3 and then comparing them with m4a, ALAC, FLAC and APE.... and majority of the time I can hear the difference between lossless and lossy. .m4a developed by Apple (Apple lossless is actually surprisingly pretty decent for the low file footprint it has.

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Experimented how? With ABX tests? If not, these anecdotal "tests" carry zero weight. You really need to perform tests using objective, not subjective, methods.

My thoughts... Personal experience. (maybe it's just me)
There is something always missing or sounding "muddy" in the background or in the high and lows when it comes to using file compressions. The whole argument over music sharing (.mp3) is nonsense as it is a poor quality copy of a much larger file. In my view .mp3's should be freely available as they sample files.

Click to expand...

Poorly encoded mp3s do sound muddy, but those are usually ripped in something like iTunes at 160kbps. Do some ABX comparisons using a competent mp3 encoder such as LAME at a high bitrate.

Seriously YUCK!! Trying the same file in .FLAC, the first thing I notice is that the FULL range of audio is 2x louder and clearer from highs to lows. The same goes for .m4a and the other lossless codecs.

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If it's noticeably louder, you probably don't have the two files leveled in terms of volume. Many people misinterpret louder volume as sonic clarity, which is not correct.

Really, do some ABX tests with some proper encodings (try LAME -V0 or -cbr 320 switches). Don't rely on anecdotal evidence. If your ears are truly "golden" you'll be able to tell the difference. Most people will not, and I'm not really convinced you're in the former group.

It's all bullshit, if the music sounds good to you, who fckin cares? This whole gold plated monkey piss bullshit is a huge marketing scam, I feel sorry for people who fall for it.

In ear headphones are always going to have limitations - there's a reason why subwoofer cones are physically large, it's physics, you aren't going to squeeze the same freqs through a speaker possibly hundreds of times smaller. After about 30-40Hz or so it starts becoming inaudible anyway.

The whole Beats things are just ridiculous, slap an "artist" name and ramp up the price by a couple hundred, what a rip.

Like BB has stated, _very_ few people are going to notice differences in sound quality - your ear has to be trained for it, it's not something you get from listening to a few FLACs.

It's hugely dependent on your soundcard too. Buying $600 headphones (If they are actually decent) then using them with something like an iPod or even most laptops is pointless. If you want real sound quality you're going to have to splash out big for a good sound card, otherwise you're just talking shit trying to make comparisons between headphones and audio formats.

Bionic-Badger said:

Properly encoded mp3s are very much transparent--i.e. the human ear cannot detect a difference between it and the reference, lossless audio. What should matter to you is whether your audio format sounds transparent, and to do that you need to perform ABX tests and listen to see if you can really tell any difference.

Bitrate is also a poor metric if you're not comparing the same formats.



Experimented how? With ABX tests? If not, these anecdotal "tests" carry zero weight. You really need to perform tests using objective, not subjective, methods.



Poorly encoded mp3s do sound muddy, but those are usually ripped in something like iTunes at 160kbps. Do some ABX comparisons using a competent mp3 encoder such as LAME at a high bitrate.



If it's noticeably louder, you probably don't have the two files leveled in terms of volume. Many people misinterpret louder volume as sonic clarity, which is not correct.

Really, do some ABX tests with some proper encodings (try LAME -V0 or -cbr 320 switches). Don't rely on anecdotal evidence. If your ears are truly "golden" you'll be able to tell the difference. Most people will not, and I'm not really convinced you're in the former group.

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Well, I agree with most of what you posted but, I have to say that FLAC is cleaner and when using it as apposed to MP3 there is a noticeable difference on so called "high end" audio systems. Due inpart by their components and or the way they handle S/PDIF input.

There is digital noise that is present in compression. That is a given. IF the track is done properly, it is difficult to hear the difference (most of the time). I can agree with you on that point...but...
The video that I posted below, does explain some of what I was trying to get at.
I too have a hard time believing some of the "gold plated monkey piss" BS touted by some of the members over at head-fi.org. It's not scientific, it's look at me dropping 6 grand on speaker wires. I'm cool.
I have used ABXTester from the App store.

An aside --- > 320Kb/sec VBR is totally do-able in Itunes. I have one album that I have on my Library done in this and it's ~pretty transparent on a pair of inner ears.

I just want to give an update here..

I lost my 400euro headphones on Christmas.

Hey! You're back! :wave:

zeebit said:

hey! You're back! :wave:

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Anyone heard of Head-fi?

Since the title says "best-ear-headphones" I got some ~$40 Vsonic GR02 BE and they are ear-gasms! The bass is phenomenal; while everything else stays balanced. Of course you go with $2500 customs with six drivers if your want "best ever"

-IMO Beats are freaking scam (large and small), larger Bose QC15 are incredible.

Do your research at head-fi and if bass is your thing and your budget is limited - check out velodyne vpulse. Will feel like you have a suborder in your head - without sacrificing the mids and highs.

for me these have been the best great crisp highs and deep lows and strong mids...

Amazon.com: J.Fi Acoustic Natural Ebony Wood and Metal Fusion Earphones (Ebony / Titanium): Electronics


J.Fi Acoustic Natural Ebony Wood and Metal Fusion Earphones (Ebony / Titanium)

The SHE3850/3950 for Philips has great feedback from audiophiles. I got myself a pair of these. I'm no audiophile but I can say that these are excellent for its price compared to other IEMs I've tried. For a mere $10 you get a pair that sounds almost like an audiophile level IEM.