by the time that you, as a consumer, get this wav file on your computer, it's been so badly degraded, anyways...

but, that's not true if you're listening to music that doesn't go through this destructive process by major label production teams.

i mean, that's what i'm trying to get across here - that the compression done by the producer is 100x worse than anything the mp3 algorithm could do, in the first place.

and, yes - i know that they record at 48 khz or higher,

it doesn't matter, if they sculpt 50% of the frequency range out and then compress the shit out of it, in the end.

they're selling you cds at 44.1/16, so you think it's actually pretty good, right?

see, that's where you go wrong with this...

if it's radio music, the sad and pathetic reality is that it's more like they're functionally upsampling a master done at 22 khz, 8 bit - so your mp3 compression isn't degrading the sound nearly as much as you imagine that it is.

any artist that's actually taking advantage of cd quality audio isn't going to compress to mp3 well at all...

it is true that some of the more sound-conscious artists out there at least used to do things like create mixes for radio and mixes for cd/lp. you'll also find tv mixes back in the mtv/muchmusic days, and i've heard of corporate rock musicians mixing for mp3 (that was even really what the loudness wars were actually about). so, don't take my statements too broadly....

but, generally speaking, if an artist is marketed for radio play then the product that you buy on a physical media in the store is mixed to play on am radio, and plugging it into an expensive sound system is pointless because the source is intentionally garbage.

then, when you compress it it doesn't matter - because it's shit to begin with.

that is why people can't tell the difference - because they're listening to trash.

well.

what kind of music do i make?

the answer is that it's electro-classical music with jazzy and bluesy flairs and only vague references to rock music instrumentation (i play electric guitar. that's not very "classical". but, besides that, i'm a composer.), and while i don't think i need the dynamic range of 24 bits to get those super quiet oboes and flutes, i do insist that you try not to butcher the frequency range too badly, please.

to put it another way, this is the actual pathetic truth - corporate music is so badly produced, in general, that you can run it through massive compression and not lose anything important.

but, what this really is about is garbage in / garbage out, and it's not an argument for the parity of the technology, in a broader sense.

the ranges of frequency that mp3 removes are not chosen at random - frequency bands that are ignored by your kind of standard or "normal" corporate pop/rock/rap producers are taken out rather consciously. mp3 programmers refer to this as "psycho-acoustics".

it's not just the high and low bands that are outside of your frequency range, it's also a fairly large amount of frequency bands that corporate pop producers cut out on purpose. so, it's actually very true that you can't tell the difference if you're listening to celine dion or taylor swift or something - because the production process intentionally cuts out the frequencies that the mp3 removes, which is why the mp3 removes it.

but, if you're listening to abstract techno that's mixed by non-professionals (or professionals that don't know better), anything labeled "classical" or "jazz" or even interesting psychedelic or progressive rock then things actually do exist in those frequency bands - and i demonstrated the point when i posted that ping-pong effect, which the compression algorithm just demolished. you will lose a lot of music with an mp3 if you're listening to these types of music because they weren't mixed with the corporate pop techniques that the mp3 compression is designed to take advantage of.

so, the process is like this:

1) corporate pop producers eliminate specific frequency bands, because they get in the way (and can't be produced on am radio, for example)

2) the designers of the mp3 algorithm realized that and took advantage of it. so, they cut out the same ranges that were cut out during the corporate pop production process. they call this "psycho-acoustics", which is just a pretentious term to describe what i'm describing.

3) creative musicians then come along and they don't cut those ranges out when they're producing their music.

4) somebody uses mp3 compression to compress these songs, unaware of what i'm trying to explain to you.

5) large amounts of the music disappears, and they don't understand why.

a good rule of thumb is this: if the music you like is released on a major record label, it probably doesn't matter if you use mp3 or flac. but, if you're listening to anything that is remotely interesting at all, you're really better off avoiding any kind of lossy compression - because the mp3 algorithm didn't intend for you to use it to compress the music you're listening to.

and, i'm an expert on this topic - you're not.

so, i hope that's clear.

if you can't tell the difference between mp3 and flac, it's because the music you're listening to is boring.

i listen to interesting music, and, to me, it's immediately obvious.