Is there really a benefit in lossless audio formats?

Lossless codecs are all the rage amongst those who aspire to be audiophiles.  Whether it is ripping CDs in a format like FLAC or WMA Lossless or listening the TrueHD track on Bluray movies, there are those who swear by it.   Most audio formats like MP3, AAC, and WMA are lossy formats.  They compress the audio by throwing away parts that humans theoretically cannot hear.  This is called “perceptual coding.”  Lossless codecs don’t throw away any information but instead compress more like Zip.  Lossless formats require a lot more space to store and a lot more bandwidth to transmit.  Are they worth it?  Can people really hear the difference?

TrustedReviews says no.  They go so far as to suggest than anything over 192kpbs MP3 is virtually impossible to differentiate.  “[A] few people in the last six months or so - people who take their audio gear seriously and have spent thousands of pounds on Hi-Fi equipment - have admitted privately to us that 256kbps MP3 is easily good enough for serious listening, and that they struggle to hear much difference over 192kbps MP3 in many situations.”  They conducted some A/B listening tests to see if ordinary people could perceive a difference.  The results did not support the extra expense and size of lossless formats.  In fact, most people couldn’t even differentiate between the 192kbps MP3s and a FLAC encoded version of the same songs.  The test wasn’t scientific, but there’s a pretty good chance it matches what those reading this blog will experience. 

Considering that most people listen to their music in noisy environments, on suboptimal speakers, or on tiny headphones from an MP3 player like the Zune, the chances they will ever be able to perceive the differences in audio are quickly diminishing. 

The short of it:  don’t waste the space ripping everything to lossless unless you plan to do a lot of transcoding in the future.  Don’t go out of your way to get a TrueHD movie setup.  AC3 is going to be just fine.

Metallica's Death Magnetic Poorly Mastered

Metallica's new CD, Death Magnetic, is pretty good.  Certainly it is better than St. Anger although I suppose that's not setting the bar very high.  This CD is closer to And Justice For All than anything Metallica has done in the last decade.  Unfortunately, the CD is mastered very hot. Basically, the CD is authored so loud that there isn't much range between loud and quiet and the loud becomes distorted.  Ryan explains this phenomenon quite well and in a lot more detail. 

The fact that Kotaku is running an article about this means it has gotten the attention of people beyond the audiophile community.  Their claim is that the Guitar Hero versions of the same songs is much better.  I've heard Amazon MP3s are a lot less hot than CDs generally.  I wonder if they fix this particular case.

We can only hope that the negative reaction this CD is getting in some sectors shows a trend and that CD mastering will go back to where it once was.  Having to turn up the CD to make it loud isn't a bad thing.

Are Audiophiles Going Extinct?

This article says that they are.  More importantly, it says that people do not care as much about their music or the quality of their music-listening experience as much as they once did.  That's very interesting if true.  I wonder if this is a permanent trend or if it is temporary.  Beyond a certain point, the average person definitely does not care about the quality of their sound.  How else can we explain the explosive growth of low-bitrate MP3s?  They are moving to higher bitrates now, but when the Diamond Rio had 32 megs of RAM, people weren't listening to 192kbps tracks.  The list of high-quality audio formats built to replace the CD is long.  The list of failed products is equally long.  DVD-Audio?  SACD?  DCC?  DTS CDs?  None made more than a blip on the radar.

Of course, quality audio for music may be declining, but people are paying more attention to the audio in their home theaters now.

Audio Not Keeping Up With HD Video?

Here is an interesting read about how the audio in HD TV is not keeping up with the video.  People are buying 1080p TV sets.  The networks are paying more attention to the quality of their video, but they are not yet doing much with the audio.  Many movies recording in 5.1 are broadcast in 2 channels. 

The article posits that this will change in 2009 when everything goes digital.  I'm not sure I agree.  Most everything is practically digital today.  There are people watching SD with rabbit ears, but they're in the minority.  Most people get their TV via cable or satellite.  Even so, there's still a whole lot of SD content out there.  Will turning off the analog broadcast airwaves make the need for that SD content over cable go away?  Probably not.

This article also highlights the tension between audio engineers and those holding the purse strings.  How much do people actually care about better quality audio?  The failure of SACD and DVD-Audio along with the heavy adoption of MP3 even in its overcompressed form would seem to indicate not nearly as much as we audio types would hope.

http://production.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=329804

 

Vista Audio 1 Year Later - Interview with Cakewalk

One of my readers tipped me off to an interesting interview with Noel Borthwick, CTO of Cakewalk.  He talks about the improvements made in Vista for lower-latency audio via the WaveRT driver model it introduced.  To date, support for this mode among non-motherboard-audio has been slow to develop.  Most motherboard audio parts support it.  Those who are using it with the supporting parts are finding success.  He also talks about MMCSS which is the mechanism by which Windows gives priority to audio applications to avoid glitching, midi, and general Vista issues (UAC, graphics drivers, etc.).  Some thing are going well, others are still pain points.  An interesting read.

Project BBQ Reports Are Released

Project BBQ is the premier interactive music industry think tank.  Everything from PC-audio to game audio to audio creation is covered.  I attended this past October and the final reports are finally released.  This year's subjects included suggestions for improving the base level of PC audio, audio metadata, a game producer's guide for audio, new composition input devices, and many more.  You can find them all here. 

I was part of the "Fixing Broken PC Audio" group also known as Mr. Miagi's Little Trees (strangely, there is no story there--sorry).  We began with the premise that Vista and the new Windows Logo requirements along with it had improved the minimum quality bar for PC audio but that there were still many problems to solve.  We ranked the problems we observed and detailed the state of the industry and suggested solutions for each problem.  We covered everything from the challenges of working with HDMI and Bluetooth audio to latency with a lot in between.  Check out the report for details.

There is a forum thread over on the O'Reilly digital media site discussing the reports.

There are also pictures from the event.  You can see me in the middle here.  In these two we're working on our report.

Analog to Digital Conversion

If you want digital audio in a computer, you have to get it from somewhere.  Usually that means taking analog sound out of the air and turning it into the bits that a computer can understand.  Ars Technica gives us another installment of the AudioFile. This one covers the subject of Analog to Digital Conversion.

Vinyl Better Than CD?

An amazingly lucid discussion of the benefits of Vinyl over CD (or lack thereof) is going on over at Slashdot right now.  So far the trolls are straying away.  If you want some understanding of dynamic range compression, sampling, etc.  Check it out.

For the record, I'm in the CD is better camp.  It handles the frequencies that humans can hear (with perhaps a very small minority left out) and is much more stable.  Unless we are mastering CDs for our dogs to listen to, 44.1 is probably sufficient for a consumption medium.  Sure, there are mastering issues on many CDs right now but that's not the fault of CD but rather the process.  A CD without all those issues could easily be produced.

Another Project BBQ is in the can

It's October and that means it is once again time for Project Bar-B-Q.  This is the premiere computer music/audio think tank event.  It's a gathering of 50 people from all across the spectrum.  There are those who make audio hardware, operating systems, audio for games, midi controllers, etc.  Again this year I had the opportunity to attend.  It's been very enjoyable and quite productive.  I get the opportunity to meet many new people and learn new things.  It's a great chance to comingle with those who use our technology and see what they need us to change for them.  I also get to rub elbows with a lot of people I wouldn't otherwise meet and learn about new technologies and ideas.  I always come home recharged and ready to work hard to change the world.  This year is no exception.

Understanding MP3 Compression

Another great article from Ars Technica.  This time about MP3 compression.  If you'e ever wondered how MP3 works, this is a great article to start with.  No math is necessary.

Digital Audio Primer

Ars Technica has a new primer up describing digital audio.  A good read if you want to introduce yourself to the concepts.

What Is A Microphone Array?

One of our program managers, Richard Fricks, just had a piece posted on the Windows Vista blog talking about microphone arrays.  He describes what microphone arrays are, what they are good for, and how Windows Vista enables support for them.  If you use the built-in microphone, you should understand this feature.  It has the potential to provide a dramatic boost in the sound quality.  Expect to see more and more mic arrays appearing, especially in laptops.

An Explanation for the "Music Slows Down Networking" Issue

Last week there was a small storm on the internet when it was discovered that playing music on Windows Vista caused networking to slow down.  Mind you, the slowdown had little practical effect for most users.  It was most pronounced on gigabit ethernet connections under load.  Still, it was definitely and issue and the blogosphere was talking about it.  Yesterday Larry Osterman of the Windows Sound team and Mark Russinovich formerly of SysInternals and now at Microsoft posted about what happened. 

The basic explanation is this.  Media playback is isochronous.  That means it has to be fed data every few milliseconds or it will glitch.  Anyone playing sound on Windows XP has probably noticed the sound crackling when the system was doing something intensive.  The audio device isn't being fed for a period of time and runs out of audio to play.  Vista doesn't have that problem.  For Vista there is a component which gives priority to the multimedia threads every 10 milliseconds so they can wake up and provide more data to the audio (and video) devices.  Unfortunately, this scheduler is implemented in such a way that drivers can still pre-empt it.  Some networking drivers were doing too much work all at once which caused audio to glitch.  To avert this, the networking system was throttled.  This didn't cause much of an issue for ordinary (100 megabit) networking cards and no issue at all for internet usage (which is usually <= 5 mbps) but did cause a noticeable drop in performance for gigabit networking cards.  Mark says the throttling limited the network card to 15 MB/s whereas a 100 megabit connection can only handle 12 MB/s. 

Go read the posts from Larry and Mark if you want all the gory details.

Another DRM Domino Falls

First it was EMI announcing that they would sell non-DRM'd music on iTunes.  Later they announced they would sell through Amazon as well.  Now the next RIAA member appears to be taking the plunge.  Universal is going to be selling most of their catalog in a clear format through outlets like Amazon and WalMart.  Curiously, they won't be doing so via iTunes.  Universal is only doing this temporarily and may revert to their current behavior in January.  Still, it shows that they are not pleased with the sales of digital music and are looking for alternatives.  That's good news for us consumers.

The AMP Summit

Today I attended the Alliance Music Partnership's AMP Summit.  This was the 2nd annual gathering of audio people from Microsoft and the PC industry.  We met at the Experience Music Project (EMP) here in Seattle.  There were people from all parts of the industry in attendance.  There were those who make audio chips, people who create MIDI hardware, representatives from major OEMs, and those from audio software companies.  Yesterday was a general session with high-level information for everyone.  Today there were breakout sessions for business & marketing, software developers, and hardware developers.  I wandered between the hardware and software tracks.  I saw presentations on MMCSS, User Mode Audio, Audio Endpoints, Pull-Mode Audio, MIDI, etc.  Even though I work in the area, I still learned a lot from the sessions.  It was also a great opportunity to mix with people from the industry.  It was a chance to hear their needs and their concerns.  I will use this information to help shape the planning process for what we do next.  As a bonus, I was able to catch up with several of the friends I made at Project BBQ last summer.

DRM's Days Are Numbered

Many people have hoped for the end of DRM'd music ever since the first download services.  When EMI announced that they going to sell unencrypted AAC files via Apple's iTunes Music Store, the first crack appeared in the dike.  Today Amazon is announcing a similar effort.  This time, however, the files are going to be in the MP3 format.  Amazon has EMI on board and "12,000 record labels."  I suspect most of those 12,000 are people you've never heard of.  EMI appears to be the only big fish that has taken the plunge so far.  Can the others be far behind?  Not if this model proves to be of value. 

I've spoken before about the ephemeral nature of computing these days.  Music is one of those things that was easily lost.  If your music store went out of business, you could be at risk of losing all of your purchased music.  The music probably still worked, but only on that machine.  Certainly if something happened, you could never download it again.  If this new direction gains the momentum I hope that it will, this risk could go away.

Does this mean that DRM'd music will disappear completely?  I don't think so.  Having used MTV's Urge service for a few months, I have to say the experience of all-you-can-eat music is quite compelling.  DRM will live on to support this scenario.  Music rental will continue to be distributed with DRM but I suspect that music purchase will continue to move away from it.  I wonder how the video market will react.

The iTunes music is going to be in 192 kbps.  I haven't seen any figures on what the quality of the Amazon stuff will be.

Do You Have Golden Ears?

Here is an interesting demo I heard about on This Week in Media.  It contains 2 audio clips in both 128 kbps and 256kbps mp3.  One clip is Mozart and the other from R.E.M.  The Mozart clip has a lot of strings in it.  The R.E.M. clip has background vocals.  Both are where you might find the differences represented.  To be honest, I can't hear a clear difference.  The strings feel a little more mushy but that could be psychoacoustic too.  Certainly it's not the sort of thing I would notice without an A-B comparison.  Give the demo a listen.  Can you hear the differences?

A Crack In the DRM Wall?

...More like a gaping hole. 

To date there has been a unified face put on major digital media assets.  Whether TV, Movies, or Music, Hollywood et al have not released them without DRM.  Sure, there have been some independent labels and even artists who sold their music without DRM, but none of the big boys have done it.  The reason was that piracy would be too high.  Today we see a tectonic shift taking place.  EMI--one of the big four RIAA members--just announced that it will be selling non-DRM'd music.  Not only that, but the quality of the DRM-free music will be superior to the music it sells in DRM'd form.  The cost:  about 30% higher.  The report says that this will include "all of its digital repertoire."  Amazing.  That's a pretty big change in position.  Perhaps the recent drop in CD sales has them scared.

I've long held that the labels could sell a lot of music if they just made it cheap and easy to get ahold of.  Why risk the lawsuits, viruses, and slow links of KaZaa and company if for $1.29 you can buy the song without DRM from a reputable source?  Purchased digital music has never excited me because of the DRM.  I've never bought any digital music because I'm unconvinced that the mechanisms to play it will last very long.  I always buy on CD and rip.  Now that the music is unemcumbered, I may have to rethink that policy.  It will be interesting to watch how sales go now that this change has taken place.  How many others like me are out there?

The other aspect I'll be intently watching is how the other labels react.  Do they jump into the water too?  It seems like they would have to.  If I am torn between an EMI and a Sony artist, I'll buy EMI because it's higher quality and unencumbered.

Selling Discrete Audio Cards Isn't Easy

EliteBastards has an interesting article speculating about the future of Creative Labs.  Creative was one of the first PC sound add-in boards (AdLib was the first that I recall).  They are certainly the most successful of the PC audio card manufacturers.

The author talks about the threats to Creative caused by the changes to the Vista audio stack, increased competition in the discrete audio board market, and the dominance of motherboard audio.  I think there are really two main factors which make life hard for Creative:

1. Accelerated gaming audio isn't as necessary as it used to be.  Faster CPUs make it possible to mix dozens of audio channels together without the need for specialized hardware.


2. The quality of onboard audio is going up.  With the introduction of the HDAudio specification, onboard audio is able to get closer to feature parity with discrete parts.  The new audio fidelity requirements for Windows Logo compliance are driving higher quality audio into the system and helping to remove the quality deficit found in so many last-generation motherboard audio implementations.

That's not to say that Creative is out of it.  They still have a very powerful brand name and some nice hardware in their X-Fi cards.  There are still reasons to own add-in cards.  It's easier to get audio right on a discrete card than on the motherboard with all the signal noise right next to the analog audio traces.  Creative is also the only real game in town for accelerated gaming audio and a lot of games still utilize it.

The article not only talks about the PC sound card market but also gives a decent overview of the changes Vista made to the sound pipeline.

Soundscapes 101

Back in May of 2006 I was invited to a recording session at Microsoft Studios (yes, we have out own studios--very cool place) with Robert Fripp.  He's the artist brought in to help develop the Windows sound for Vista.  This was the 2nd of two sessions I'm aware he had here at Microsoft.  Robert Scoble was invited to the session and videotaped it.  I'm told that this is a rare recording of Fripp at work.  He goes through the creation of a soundscape and gives an explanation the gear he is using.  He also plays a few early versions of what became the Vista "Pearl Sound."  It amazes me that all this work was distilled down to just 4 notes.  I kinda like the power chord versions.  The video of the recording session is followed by an interview with Fripp.  The person working closest with Fripp here is Steve Ball who is one of the Program Managers I work closely with as part of the audio team in Windows.  If you have any interest in Fripp or the sound production process, I suggest you give this video a view.

P.S.  You can spot me in the white t-shirt at about the 7:30 mark.