Today I learned...

[Buffalobiian]

Today I learned (or so it seems, I can't scientifically verify) that a high(er) end sound system may improve the sound of lossy encodes more than lossless ones. This contrasts with the common (and true?) perception that a high fidelity system brings out the flaws in recordings. I think that statement applies more to physical/mastering flaws.

I was playing around with lossy codecs today because the AAC-LC encode from Freac (an audio conversion program) sounded worse than anticipated. I spent a good few hours playing with some LAME mp3 settings as well as the output from a handful of AAC encoders. I was having much more difficulty telling the difference between themselves compared to my brother's less-hifi speakers. On my set, I was trying to tell how they were different. On his speakers, I could hear the difference - the headache was deciding on which type of distortion I could deal with better.

I think what happens is that the low-fidelity (but not complete rubbish) system's non-flat frequency response thwarts the psychoacoustic masking techniques employed by the codecs when they try to make artefacts "inaudible".