someones a little bit pissy today aren’t they…? 
Eh, there were some slight artifacts and degradation on the vocals (it took me a while to notice) on the 128 kbps track, and I am using shitty SONY in-ear buds. I imagine with a good pair of studio monitors or headphones you’d definitely notice.
Most of the articles I’ve read on this sort of thing, and ABX testing conclude that most people can’t spot a 128/192 from a 320/raw wav like for like.
Not sure about on larger systems etc.
There is that great audio myths video googlevideo that goes into this sort of thing saying how even pro engineers can be riding a fader, thinking they hear a difference until they realise they are moving the wrong one (so it was doing nothing) Basically, the act of listening for a difference is often enough to ‘find’ one.
Also… in the DJ world, saying you only use Wav’s and can totally tell the difference is safe play as it makes you sound like you know your shiz. Like a win connoisseur… they aint gonna vouch for some cheap supermarket plonk, even if it tastes ok!
It takes a braver man to say, you know, I listened and though they both sounded ok.
(probably linked before, but here it is: Vid on youtube),
I’m with you there.
Storage space
Juno and Traxsource that I know of
Who are you and what have you done with brad?
You guys know each other right? :eek:
See I just don’t buy this at all. I can buy a TB hard drive for £50 and that’s an expensive one off! Even if I wasn’t buying storage in bulk that makes the price of data pretty damn low, certainly too low to warrant tiered pricing for different rate mp3.
It’s just charging people because they are willing to pay. I guess I understand their motives even if I don’t agree with the ethics.
I did the test blind and picked 1 because it sounded or felt brighter.After a few listens I second guessed myself but still went with my first choice!Correct!
Im using a pair of Alesis M1’s so I guess you’d really hear it on a big system
Consumer hard-drive != server hard-drive
Also, bandwidth.
That being said, I’m actually with you in terms of thinking the price differential is more than is actually warranted. +$1USD because the .wav is 50-70 MB bigger? hell no.
thats the kinda stuff that makes you want to illegally download 
The bandwidth is neligible. I’ll use more surfing their website than I will use downloading tracks.
And yes, that’s my point. It’s a fuck load cheaper to buy storage in bulk.
Okay – bandwidth then. The same reason WAV costs more than 320. If you don’t like that, then “quality”.
EDIT: What ellgieff said.
You aren’t every user though.
[quote]And yes, that’s my point. It’s a fuck load cheaper to buy storage in bulk.
[/quote]
Does this have anything to do w/ your argument? It’s simple math + economics really. 320kbs is a bigger file, and is “higher quality” than 192kbs. Therefore, it costs more. Nobody seems to be confused but you.
I could not hear the difference with my mac speakers either, will take a try with my headphones later on.
To the “why are higher quality audio files more expensive” thing: It is not the server storage, it is the upload rate of the connection to the Internet. The connection exists anyway, but they have to pay before hand for a fixed maximum value or per use. So they just allocate the percentage of the maximum upload used per file type onto it.
Storage hasn’t been a costumer price relevant problem in years for companies.
My knowledge of it is based on the German it-marked i work in, but i doubt that this is a big difference oversees.
@kiss-o-matic The point is that the difference in cost to the company is measured in fractions of a penny rather than a handful of silvers they actually charge. I understand why, it’s just not on to be honest. It’s like charging the same for a download licence for a video game and a a boxed copy + licence for the same game at the same price, it’s only done purely because they can get away with it. Not something I think is ethically ok.
And if you’d read what I said you would have realised my point about it being cheaper to buy storage in bulk was about the costs of storage and delivery of both files.
either way, bullshit reason. might as well be “if you want more quality pay more” or just have one format and everyone sticks with it
A two second sample is difficult to listen for much in, and there’s not as much information here to compress in the first place. My guess is the way this is compressed you’re going to have two virtually identical files of different sizes. Try VBR on a bunch of old soul music files and see how low the bitrates can get.
Then again maybe I’m just rationalizing the fact that I couldn’t tell the difference between the two samples either 
first one, the 320 was clean.
second one had tinny highs and some artifacts, pretty easy to tell it was the 128.
I got it right too despite my fucked ears.
Got it right! 
Got it rite!
It actually is slightly noticeable because the one with lower quality has some noise and it isn’t nearly as clear, but nobody really gets to find that out until you mix with high sampling rates, that’s when speeding up or slowing down shows flaws in your audio quality and/or hardware power IMO.
well done… 
exactly.
no one will notice you playing low quality files at a gig unless: the dj before you was playing high quality files, the dj after you is playing high quality files, or you mix and match high quality files with low quality ones during your set.
most people won’t.
i’d be very surprised if other djs and music geeks didn’t though, the difference between 128 and 320 is pretty substantial compared to say, 320 to WAV or FLAC.