Thanks!

Yo, duder! So, I made a video that I think the video-game-playing members of the sift would enjoy, but I'm aware of the rule that we're not supposed to share stuff we had any involvement in. But I also recall the rule saying that exceptions were occasionally made.

Would it be possible to get such an exception for this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2oKH3fSU0c It's basically the progress of video game graphics over time, starting from pong and going until modern day graphics and augmented reality.

Alternatively, perhaps another sifter would post it, like Ant or whoever else has an interest in gaming. I figured I'd ask you first since you're IN DEEP with the sift.

Thanks!

I vote for death by slingshot into a wall for the creators of these viruses.

Hi! Thanks. I am using 1Password. Also, I tested it to see if that was really it and it blacklisted me again. I'm on my phone now.

HALP! Thanks again, duder!

It makes that squeaky cork sound!

My favorite way to eat sushi is to not eat sushi.

tl;dr: No, not really and no, probably not.

-

MP3 compression methods are pretty good these days. A well encoded mp3 sounds quite good at 224k. 320k is ideal, but 224k sounds fine to me.

I think most people would be incredibly hard pressed to tell the difference between a well encoded 320k MP3 and a FLAC file.

To showcase this and hopefully answer your question through demonstration, I've put together an odd sound file here for ya: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/837649/soundtest.wav

It's a 24bit 48kHz wav file of a piece of bright and full audio thrown together just for this (using 24-bit 48kHz audio sources). The audio loops a few times and each time it loops it's in a different format or quality.

The odd part is that I've dropped the audio volume down all the way to just barely above the 16-bit noise floor before exporting into each format, then cranked the volume back up again. Just to see what would happen.

Anyway, the play order is as follows:
1. Original 16-bit audio (sound normal, as it should.)
2. 16-bit audio re-gained (noise city - the 16-bit FLAC was the same.)
3. 24-bit audio re-gained (Sounds as good as the original.)
4. FLAC 24-bit re-gained (Sounds as good as the original.)
5. MP3 8 k re-gained (What?)
6. MP3 64 k re-gained (Sounds like a bad MP3, because it is. but, do note it's mostly just dull and a bit unstable sounding, not all weird like the 8k one.)
7. MP3 128 k re-gained (Pretty good, but still a bit dull. Not horrible though.)
8. MP3 224 k re-gained (Sounds as good as the original? Pretty close, I'd say.)
9. MP3 320 k re-gained (Sounds as good as the original as far as I'm concerned.)

This is just one test though. There are most certainly songs or sounds out there that wouldn't fare as well as this one. No idea what those would be though, as everything I've MP3-ified in the last decade or so sounds absolutely fine to me.

Going from 16 bits, to 24 bits will lower the noise floor which, if you have the audio turned up enough, you can hear it ever so slightly. It's not a huge difference and you're not going to hear it in a typical song. It's definitely there, but it's already insanely quiet at 16 bits. An "Audiophile" on pristine gear may notice the slight change in hiss in a moment of silence, with the speakers cranked up - but that's about it.

As for pushing up the sampling rate, when you get beyond 44.1kHz, you're not really dealing with anything musical anymore. All you're hearing, if you're hearing it at all, is "shimmer". or "air". It sounds "different" and you might be able to tell which is which, but it's one of those differences that doesn't really matter in effect. A 44.1khz track can still make ear-piercingly high frequencies - the added headroom just makes it glisten in a really inconsequential way.

This is coming from 17 years of music production. I've gone through all of this, over and over again, testing myself, trying to figure out what is and isn't important.

At the end of it all, I work on everything in 16bit 48kHz - I record audio files in 24 bit 48 kHz - then export as 16 bit 44.1kHz. I don't enable dither anymore. I don't buy pro-audio sound cards anymore. I don't use "studio monitors" anymore. I just take good care of my ears and make music now.

"Uh... *looks around* Where've my atoms gone?" - a great way to start a video.