lossless audio

[Anarchist420]

why don't PC games have their audio in FLAC or WMA Lossless? Is it more likely due to space reasons, or because people don't appreciate the difference? They could put the lossless audio files on one CD-XA disc and that would cover it.

I don't know about you all, but in my opinion, 2 channel lossless beats the hell out of 5.1 Dolby Digital.

 

[uclabachelor]

Because there are like 0.0001% of the gamers that can actually discern the difference between lossless and mp3 encoded audio while they're busy unloading a magazine on their buddies.

 

[MJinZ]

Because there are like 0.0001% of the gamers that can actually discern the difference between lossless and mp3 encoded audio while they're busy unloading a magazine on their buddies.

I'd say 0.00000001% of all humans can discern the difference between 128kbps Mp3 and better.

 

[theorignalAMD Overclocker]

If you have good audio equipment its quite easy. But if you're trying to tell the difference using some sweet Sony speakers, then I agree.

 

[Cogman]

Lots of reasons not to. flac and the likes are just slightly better then no compression at all.

I've read that it is somewhere around 1000kb/s , You take just about any lossy compression at half that bitrate and you have stuff that is pretty much indistinguishable from the source.

Use a better compression method, like AAC, and you've got no reason to go with something like FLAK. 2 channel 256 kb/s of AAC will be pretty much indistinguishable from any lossless 2 channel source.

 

[PottedMeat]

i'd say most people can tell the difference between 128 and 192+, as said before though, when you're blasting the shit out of someone music quality isn't really that much of a concern.

anyone know anything about games with licensed audio? like would a 64kbps track from an artist cost less than a 192kbps?

 

[DominionSeraph]

I'd say 0.00000001% of all humans can discern the difference between 128kbps Mp3 and better.

There's a pretty good difference between 128 and 196. With a good bass setup like my three enclosed 12" subs, I wouldn't recommend anything under 224VBR unless you like listening to muffled farts.

 

[jimhsu]

The difference between 128 and lossless is quite freaking apparent with a good pair of headphones (i.e. Sennheiser HD595) - esp. on things like complex orchestral passages (less so for, say, speech). That said, I'm not too bothered by the difference, and neither are most game developers. If you don't have the source audio as comparison -- then yes it is impossible to tell the difference between the inferior encoding or inferior recording environment.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I listen to music in my home office with lossless audio, a receiver and a $300 (on sale) pair of Polk bookshelf speakers.

I play games with a $75 logitech 5.1 speaker set, and I'm happy with it. Audio quality is just much less important to me games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, while surround does become more important for enhancing the 3D visuals with properly positioned sounds.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I thought most games did encode their music losslessly, but it's either in .wav (because of its massive compatibility), or in the publisher/designer's proprietary or inhouse format.

I'd say 0.00000001% of all humans can discern the difference between 128kbps Mp3 and better.

If you're in a recording studio the difference is literally night and day. The difference is indescribable, it's so immense. The reason people can't tell with their personal hardware is because their personal hardware is crap; onboard sound, interference from other components, crappy speakers/headphones, crappy encodings, etc etc. And just to let you know, I can. Stop speaking out of your ass.

 

[MrMatt]

I thought most games did encode their music losslessly, but it's either in .wav (because of its massive compatibility), or in the publisher/designer's proprietary or inhouse format.


If you're in a recording studio the difference is literally night and day. The difference is indescribable, it's so immense. The reason people can't tell with their personal hardware is because their personal hardware is crap; onboard sound, interference from other components, crappy speakers/headphones, crappy encodings, etc etc. And just to let you know, I can. Stop speaking out of your ass.

I gotta agree with you here. I don't even have a studio setup and I can hear a massive difference. I've actually tested it by taking multiple bitrate copies of the same track and listening to it on random with my monitor off. I can absolutely tell the difference

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I'd say 0.00000001% of all humans can discern the difference between 128kbps Mp3 and better.

Change that statement to 192Kbps VBR LAME-encoded and add in the qualifier "for the majority of music" and I'd be inclined to agree
I keep all my FLACs offline on DVDs.

 

[gsellis]

Change that statement to 192Kbps VBR LAME-encoded and add in the qualifier "for the majority of music" and I'd be inclined to agree
I keep all my FLACs offline on DVDs.

Yep. Mastering these days is lost art as they seem to tune everything for ripping. After you compare something like the digitally mastered Boston albums with about anything, folks would hear the difference. If your source sucks, your copy is not going to improve no matter what you record it at.

 

[markdvdman]

Ultimately, uncompressed audio will ALWAYS be superior.

PC music is ok but people are mainly deluded as to what they hear as awesome.

I used to have a separate hi fi sustem built as I felt fit that kills ANYTHING I hear on the PC these days.

Interconnects, interference etc have a part to play. I have a blu ray of 3:10 to yuma with 7.1 uncompressed sound. Much more impressive is the sepultura dvd with LCPM sound.

With technology as it is we need to get away from compressed sound. It is ok but i remember the great sound of heavy metal on a separate system. No PC will match that without spending big bucks!

 

[Absolution75]

Ultimately, lossless audio will ALWAYS be superior.

Fixed



But ya, a lot of games actually use OGG for storing sounds. Its more efficient at lower bitrates (128kbps ogg is about equal to 192kbps mp3) and generally sounds pretty good. The real reason they are compressed to highly though is generally the recordings aren't that great to begin with =/. I would argue that music generally should be compressed less, but things like footsteps/doors opening/whatever else don't really warrent the increase in size, at least until pc games start coming out on bluray...

 

[motsm]

Doom 3, which was widely praised for it's fantastic sound was using almost entirely 22khz audio files. So I think it's safe to say not many people are going to know the difference between lossy and lossless.

I'd be all for lossless game audio, but I'd rather just have more properly recorded and mixed sound.

 

[Modelworks]

A game can have hundreds of sounds for a level. A good portion of them are cached in memory. Using 5MB of memory for a single gunshot sound uses too much memory compared to a 120KB file of the same sound.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

A game can have hundreds of sounds for a level. A good portion of them are cached in memory. Using 5MB of memory for a single gunshot sound uses too much memory compared to a 120KB file of the same sound.

If you know an audio compression format that can compress lossless audio 40 times with no major quality degradation, cough up. I want to use it.

 

[Modelworks]

If you know an audio compression format that can compress lossless audio 40 times with no major quality degradation, cough up. I want to use it.

Games usually use Bink for audio because it decodes faster than MP3 and compresses to about the same size. Lossless is not the goal , fitting all the sounds in memory is . Some of the newer game engines can also use procedural sound generation which requires no recorded file at all.

 

[Anarchist420]

I thought bink was a video codec, not an audio codec

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Games usually use Bink for audio because it decodes faster than MP3 and compresses to about the same size. Lossless is not the goal , fitting all the sounds in memory is . Some of the newer game engines can also use procedural sound generation which requires no recorded file at all.

But that doesn't answer my implicit question, which was "can it compress a 5MB file into 120kB with no major quality degradation?"

 

[Cogman]

But that doesn't answer my implicit question, which was "can it compress a 5MB file into 120kB with no major quality degradation?"

2 Channel 44000Hz 16-bit PCM has a bitrate of 1375 kb/s (approx the quality of a CD). The same can be placed into a 128kb/s MP3 which for most, is pretty much transparent.

So 29.78 seconds of audio goes from 5 megabytes to 477 kB.

That's just regular old MP3 with its age-old crappy quality. AAC can get similar performance at nearly half the bitrate. At those rates, the loss is barely perceptible. You could lower it to noticeable levels and get away with it in fast action games for things like gun fire. In which case, 32 kb/s (which is the bitrate needed to go from 5mB to 120kB) may, in fact, be plenty.

Of course, I'm talking about transparent encoding. Your origional question was for no major quality loss. Major quality loss is such a subjective thing that its pretty impossible to give you a straight answer. Is major loss "it sounds similar" or is it "I can't tell the difference".

 

[Modelworks]

I thought bink was a video codec, not an audio codec

http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=Bink_Audio

 

[Cogman]

I should note that my post above didn't even take into account changing sample rates. For a lot of sounds, you could easily lower the sample rate for a better compression without terribly degrading the quality of the sound.

 

[Murloc]

both reasons: space and not needing it.

I have average audio equipment (a micro hifi) and a normal audio card, and I can tell the difference between 128kbps mp3 and higher, but to tell teh difference between 256k and 320k is much more difficult.
I think audio should be at least 192kbps everywhere, if there is enough space 256kbps is best.