Pono Music is up and running

You can easily tell the difference between mp3 and wav for bitrates of 192 kbps and lower. The midrange and high frequencies will have an upleasant "whooshing" characteristic from the encoding - most noticeable on the cymbals.

I can hear the difference between 256 kbps mp3 and wav, but only on fairly high-end equipment, like my mobile DJ gear. The artifacts at 256 kbps are small, but they're still there.

At 320 kbps, I can't really tell the difference between mp3 and wav. I did some informal tests, with the same song encoded as a lossless flac file, and as a 320 kbps mp3. I couldn't tell the difference in an A/B comparison. Maybe I could have differentiated the two on a really high-end system, but I don't have a really high-end system.

A few years ago, when I moved my mobile DJ and radio work onto the laptop/USB-sound-card, I initially encoded everything as flac. My DJ software could search and play the flac files just fine, but it didn't display the ID3 tags very well. And then I ran out of space on the laptop's hard drive. (Crap From The Past has a much larger library than any normal person/show should need.)

So I re-encoded everything to 320 kpbs mp3 and replaced all the flac files on the laptop. I fit more songs fit on the hard drive, with better compatibility with my DJ software, and no real noticeable change in sound quality. My radio station streams at 256 kbps (which is great for a radio station), so you wouldn't hear a difference between a flac and a 320 kbps mp3 song anyway.

My advice, if you haven't heard it already from everyone else:

Rip your CDs to flac.
Make sure your tags are complete, consistent and correct.
Make multiple copies of your library on separate hard drives. If possible, trade hard drives with people, so you can recover your stuff in the event that something bad happens.

I notice Pono and 7Digital offering albums currently
available on CD (16 bit / 44.1 Khz). For example, you
could buy Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits, and you
could buy Bruce Springsteen's "Tunnel of Love" album.

Typically in these situations I would go for the original
album because the collections tend to be more heavily
compressed and / or clipped.

Has anybody checked to see if the albums on these sites
are as compressed / clipped as the CD versions, or if in
remastering them for the websites, they left off the
clipping?

Also, if you have a digital master at 16 bit / 44.1 Khz,
how can you then release a file of it at 24 bit / 96 Khz?
I haven't found a specific example yet, but I could
imagine it happening. Janet Jackson's "Control" album
was DDD, wasn't it? There's no way to create a higher
rez master, I assume...

Quote: Janet Jackson's "Control" album was DDD, wasn't it? Nope. It's an analog recording (AAD) all the way. her producers Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis were analog guys.

What a bizarre mis-remembering on my part, but I see in
Discogs on the CD label, "AAD."

Let's take a different example then: Billy Joel's "Nylon
Curtain" or George Michael's "Faith."

All you've got is all you're going to get with those...
no?

(I couldn't figure out why they "remastered" Faith
recently, other than maybe to make it a louder disc. The
bonuses looked nice, though.)

aaronk wrote: I bought the Faith remaster, because I didn't actually own the full album on CD (surprisingly). The bonus tracks are definitely nice. I haven't analyzed it in an editor to see if the tracks are brickwalled, but I would imagine they are.

I just ripped it to my hard drive, and I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the dynamic range is quite nice. There doesn't appear to be any brickwalled audio on this release.