I perfectly understand phase inversion but the OP believes that MP3s will degrade speakers (no offence, everyone has to learn). I totally understand wearing in speakers and headphones, but it isn't one of the biggest problems in their studio and they needn't be a huge amount of time to it.

Only if the resolution is too low! Stick to at least 200dpi!

Theoretically, MP3s have less energy and dynamics than their WAV counterpart; the sub-bass is cut off, the treble is garbled up and the dynamics are reduced a bit. So you could say that MP3s don't wear out your speakers as well...

Actually, listening to low quality MP3s on headphones or good speakers can give you headaches because your brain is compensating for the missing stuff and it's putting some strain on certain brain regions. It's especially true for 1995 era dance music. Listening to the old MP3s of a Daft Punk album makes my head hurt, the CD doesn't.

Indeed. I told him it wasn't the case. My post referred to the fact that you told him not to bother wearing his speakers in.

Speakers often sound signifcantly better once worn in. With PMCs it's extremely important to do it, the sound quality really comes around once it's done.

Tell me about it. I'm being sued by someone who claims that my singing ruined his microphone, his amp, his noise gate, his converter, his computer, his headphones, his marriage, his life, and his breakfast.

The last may be true.

I wonder if you can get an mp3 and an sm7 to null..

only if you use the golden age 73 (does anyone have any experience with these, im thinking of buying one) if you use the pre-amp on the interface it won't work.

I think this all depends on the converters used.

The real problems begin when you play several mp3s in the same time. Only then you can really see how quickly the monitors can degrade. This phenomenon is known as the residual inferior compression stacking discrepancy, and it can potentially damage not only your monitors, but the entire chain implemented. Including cables. Only VoVox cables seem to resist this (but even that changes when you stack 12 or more mp3s, and that decreases exponentially when played through SounBlaster converters).

So: I think, like the oil spill: we will be hearing about the damage for years.
We are just beginning to see/hear the problem.
This is huge.
p.

Low quality grammer like that seen in the post above damages printers.

See if they'll take a plea bargain. Sorry-- but it sounds like an airtight case to me.

I think it's the poor spelling that really kills.

;-)

p.

Yea, anthony kiedis totally uses one.

LOL

Are you kidding? Are you actually having a bubble?
Your joking right?

Psychoacoustics, what you're referring to, is the process your brain goes through when its "compensating for the missing stuff".
Hi-fi systems and Car sound systems all do this all the time, and in fact its easier on the ear as Low Frequency signals have a lot of wave energy which would hurt your ears (Clubs, Gigs etc). Instead these speaker systems have a higher peak lift above the physical speaker limits and the ear interprets that as 'a clear deep bass'.

Almost all portable radios cannot reproduce anything under 80hz and does that hurt your brain? No.

Psychoacoustics is the way the brain responds to sound in all ways, things like the loudness button doesn't introduce more gain, but all it does it increase High Frequency and Low Frequency content in the infamous 'smiley face' curve. Listening to that probably would cause headaches but MP3s are not damaging to the ear/cause cancer/kill children blah blah blah.

I fathom the only reason you could get headaches from MP3s is by turning the volume up on your iPod too loud. Not a single iPod user has complained that the format they are using causes their ears to bleed.

WAVs and AIFFs are lossless and preferable when mixing because they are truer to the orignal but most importantly, can be the derivative to all other formats e.g. MP3, OGG, MP4 and MOV Audio etc.

There is no way that your brain compensating for anything could ever hurt it i.e. Optical Illusions, Eyes changing to lighting conditions, mental maths. etc

That's a big shout. Have you asked Apple if they've ever had a complaint like that? Or did you make that up?

Have you read the Daily Mail? I reckon something like that would be in there in a flash. I did say I fathomed. Is the rest of the post satisfactory to you?

The Daily Mail?? That's the worst of the lot.

So you're basing a statistic on what you've seen in the past few years in the times you've read the Daily Mail.

Don't ever, ever get into law. Ever. Seriously, hire somebody!!

The rest of the post is fine, and I completely agree. But making up statistics based on what you read in the Daily Mail is not the way to make a good post!

I am satirising how pathetic the Daily Mail is! They assume everything causes cancer and that all poor people are thugs.

I am satirising how they will jump on any fear mongering bandwagon and in fact own many for themselves.

I am pointing out that if the there was the slightest chance that the buying public suffer headaches because of MP3s, wouldn't you expect them to do an 11 page spread on it?

not unless iPod's were assembled by immigrants taking all our jobs away

That is hilarious.

The depth of ignorance, lack of technological understanding, and seeming dearth of any sort of logical abilities in many here who call themselves "engineers" is just mind-boggling.


[EDIT/Clarification: my scorn, above, is not directed at the OP, who, after all, is just trying to get to the bottom of this presumed myth. Rather, I'm heaping it on the unnamed 'theorist' who promoted that nuttiness in the first place.]

There needs to be a new product, the iMigrant.

Who happen to be gypsy kid touching alcoholics. If only Diana were here.

Daily Mail Watch

I don't think this could get any more off topic?

We can't openly blame the OP, he's on his learning curve which we all once sat upon. Just slap the guy who said it to them.

you started it! in order to escape the fact that you made a bone statement. :P

*politely ignored*

*the sound of positive constructive silence*

But... but... I was singing in French!

It's often said that a null-test is as much a test of the person creating the test as anything. There are so many variables at play that it is difficult enough for a lot of folks to get truly identical files to null. Any difference in volume/level will make an enormous impact on the difference file. Even as much as .1 dB difference in levels can really shift the results. Additionally, although it's likely not an issue in this case, many people do not realize that audio encoded by different AD devices will be unlikely to null (because of even very, very tiny timing differences between their crystal controlled clock circuits).

Additionally, anyone who understands what an Mp3 is, should not expect complete nulling under even the most rigorously and correctly applied methodology.

Mp3s, AACs, WMAs, Ogg and others are called perceptual encoding for a reason. They throw out large amounts of data, keeping 'just enough' in order to deliver the perception of relative accuracy (at a given bitrate).

The proper test of perceptual encoding is -- wait for it -- perceptual.

That is to say, we already know the files are far from identical -- but we are hoping that they may sound as similar as possible.

For that, we resort to the time-honored tradition of double blind testing perceptual preference testing.

If we're trying to gauge how a given codec affects the general popluation, we'll randomly select a pool of people, a large enough sample that we can interpolate results to the general population with a given degree of accuracy.

If, on the other hand, we are, as individuals, just seeing how the encoding affects our own perception, the job is much easier. Carefully prepare the comparison files -- and, here, too, volume is critically important, as the ear is extremely sensitive to changes in volume... as little as .3 dB difference has shown to be recognizable by those with trained hearing and even lay people seem to be able to identify files with as little as .4-.5 dB difference. So getting those levels between the A and B files as close to identical as possible is critical for proper results.

Anyone interested in playing around with double blind ABX testing can use the ABX test comparator utility -- it's quite good -- in the Foobar media player. (Sorry, darkside only.)

Oh, yeah... thanks very much, I had not realized it might look like I was being critical of him!

Yes, for sure, he was doing the right thing and trying to get to the bottom of it.

It's the people who spout nonsense as gospel that get me on my high horse.

Mind you, we can all be wrong from time to time -- and that's why it's important for us all to check our facts -- and remain open to contrary points of view.


FWIW, I'd love to hear the original theorist's rationale for how playing mp3s could degrade a monitor... (I mean, beyond normal wear and tear and compared with a non-Mp3 of the same material.)

Thirty years!

It's people like that who think because they're mastering through garageband and they borrowed their mum's iPod speakers that they make beats and know everything about this field that we know and love.