I didn't make this thread to change my way to encode audio for TASVideos. It's my own personal research. I'll still use FLAC as the audio codec for my YouTube encodes, because YouTube compresses it anyway.
This thread is for everyone. I'd like opinions from anyone, no matter if you're experienced in audio encoding or not at all. If you paid over 9000 dollars on headphones, or if you're using these earbuds that come with an iPod, I'd also like your opinion.
There are people who pretend that they can hear a difference between lossless audio and lossy audio. What's the difference between them?
Lossless audio is encoded from an uncompressed audio, without losing any important data, so you can hear absolutely everything from a sound. The file size is freaking big, but you miss nothing at all. Examples of lossless audio are FLAC and ALAC (Apple Lossless).
Lossy audio is encoded from an uncompressed audio, by losing data. It makes waaaaaaaaaay smaller files than lossless audio, but the quality is lowered. But why are lossy audio so much used? It's because (I think that) the average Joe can't hear a difference between lossy and lossless when it comes to simply listening to music. Examples of lossy audio are MP3, OGG and AAC.
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TL;DR. Let's get to the main point. Today I've found some of my favorite tunes in WAV format. I was like "Yay! Finally! I can hear why FLAC maniacs can hear a difference between lossless and lossy!". Then I've encoded a part of that tune in FLAC, MP3 (320 kbps) and MP3 (128 kbps). I've compared all three of them, and even if I tried to hear a difference, I couldn't. I've tested them in VLC media player, using a
Logitech G35 headset.
So I got the idea to share these pieces of music with you, so you can compare them and tell me if you hear a difference between these three audio files I've encoded. But they are all encoded in FLAC. Two of them were encoded in MP3 (one is 320, and the other is 128) before they were converted back to FLAC. It's like a blind test, if you wish.
Audio 1
Audio 2
Audio 3
I seriously can't hear a difference between these three files. I'd use FLAC for editing and producing, but I don't see the point of using it just to listen to music. It's like 5 to 6 times bigger than a good lossy audio file. Anyway, I'm still storing these tunes in ALAC format in my iPod Touch because it's 64 GB big and it has too much room for my music, videos, photos and apps.
So, do you hear a difference between them?
At the left, you see how an absolutely normal shoot would look like. The game picked Blue randomly for the canon's queue.
At the right, you see that the Red ball shook a little bit and then a Red ball appeared instead of the Blue one in the canon's queue. That's because I touched the next Red ball while it wasn't ready to be shot. In other words, I touched it too early. The shaking animation is there to tell the player to wait a little bit. But for some reason, if you touch the ball at the exact right moment before the next ball gets ready, then you'll get any other ball.
So with that trick, you can decide which color do you want, and then you'll probably get the Luckiest TAS of the year, if you're patient enough to make a complete Challenge mode run using this trick. That's not what I am, so I ain't doing it. Also, it looks time consuming at its best, since you must try a couple times, trying to touch at the exact right moment, and trying to get the exact color you want, for each ball you shoot! It looks like a pain in the ass.
inb4 lol + sex jokes