[MPlayer-users] RFC: docs update for "how to create a high quality DVD rip"

[Wayde Milas]

On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 16:10, rcooley wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 21:04:35 +0200
> Hans du Plooy <hdp at webmail.co.za> wrote:
> 
> > And, sorry, say what you like but 96kbit/s (even ogg at that rate)
> > sounds disgusting.
> 
> Lots of people convince themselves they hear defects in lossless audio,
> but few really do...  At 96k, I'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference
> between a Vorbis file and the original, and I have pretty good ears. 
> Any audio encoded to MP3 (even with lame) at less than 192k VBR sounds
> terrible to me.  Yet with Vorbis, even at 64k, I'd say few people will
> be able to hear even a rare artifact.  At 96k, I'd bet less than 1 in 10
> million can hear the difference, and I sincerly doubt anybody can
> honestly think it sounds "disgusting".

I'm a huge audiophile and I follow audio alot more than I do video. I'm
the author of kexis, which was a quick prrof of concept on flac like
encoding.. came out before flac. but after shorten. Anyways, I digress.

The reason most people can't hear the difference from something lossy
like vorbis, to something nonlossy like flac, is not because they are
unable to. Its because the hardware they are using can't reproduce the
singals correctly.

I'm not talking about your mboard tossing the signal out (although that
mayb e the case if you ahve a cheap sound card, or arent using a spdif
interface) Most people have REALLY horrid amps and speakers.

I'm serious. The $100 amp and $200 set of speakers you pick up at kmart
sound like utter garbage. Some people dont spend that much. Buying "name
brand" doesnt mean squat either. Sony's $700 5.1 multimedia system is
the biggest scam on teh face of the earth. The speakers have PAPER
cones, and very small magnets. The speaker boxes are increadably small,
not well made, and don't produce low or midrange signals worth squat.
Even the high khz signals are muddy.

Take someone, put them infront of a good pair of speakers and amp (note,
good != expensive, althought hats often the case) and I gurantee 9 out
of 10 are going to pick a clean 44.1 khz 16 bit signal over a 96k vorbis
one.

The parallel to the video world is like trying to look for artifacts
that mencoder produces on a 13 inch black and white tv. You just arent
going to see them.

Oh, and except of 1 or 2 exceptions (and they arent really that good)
all powered speaker dealies that plug into your computer sound like
garbage.

>  
> > Either you are using onboard sound (there isn't such a thing as good
> > onboard sound), 
> 
> There certainly is such a thing as good onboard sound, and it comes on
> good motherboards...  That said, I'm personally using SB Live soundcards
> on my systems (they're dirt-cheap these days), so you can't blame the
> hardware.

Except for onboard spdif out, which isnt really :"sound" all the stereo
out signals are pretty mediocre. But thats not the question is it.
Trying to use those unamplified signals to do anything is a waste of
time. You need to amplify them somehow. Amplifying them with cheap
powered speaks is going to produce garbage.