Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by aianus 3907 days ago
It's very easy to tell the difference between 192kbps and FLAC if you have a decent subwoofer and the song ever goes below 30hz. On run-of-the-mill speakers and earbuds, probably not.
1 comments

It's extremely rare for music to contain anything below 30Hz. Even below 40Hz is rare. The only place you're likely to find such low frequencies is sound effects in movie soundtracks.
I'm sorry, I pulled that number out of my ass.

I should have said 'if the frequency goes sufficiently low'.

Unless you are into Bassnectar and the like... ;)
Interestingly, a lot of "bass heavy" music focuses on frequencies around 50Hz, not the really deep sub-bass. This makes sense when you consider human hearing. Those higher frequencies sound much louder to us, and they're still low enough to get the tactile feeling.