The Full FFXI OST?

He states there may be the one in 1000 people who can or whatever. So grant him that.

But his point is that in all likelihood, everyone who says they can, in fact, can...is very, very low.

For instance, even being a musician, I can't. I can tell a bad file from a good one, and pick out obvious EQ issues and the like, but for one, my pitch has never been very good and for two, I'm a drummer and using hearing protection is a priority, but not always a guarantee. The damage has been done and can't be undone. Hell, to my ear, I actually prefer analogue recordings and masterings to digital. The extra "noise" makes a recording feel more natural to me.

But I know people who do, in fact, have perfect pitch and have an amazing ear. Gainfully employed composers. People who produce music professionally.

At some point music fidelity -- even where you can observe the difference which, again, is not the case for the vast majority -- isn't about the quality, it's about being able to act superior to someone else.

His wine analogy is really good, actually.

Yes, your wine kept at precisely the right decimal place temperature may unlock the bouquet just a little bit more and open up the flavor that tiny bit extra.

But it's more a matter of being able to enjoy saying you did it over actually being that much better.

tl;dr: don't be a snob. Or, at the very least, acknowledge your desire isn't to enjoy what you're consuming, but to feel superior while consuming it.

While the article was pretty biased with an angry tone towards sound perfectionists, I agree when he said the music is only noticeably different depending on the equipment. I'm not a sound enthusiast, I do not spend hundreds of pounds on equipment, and only use cheap MP3 players and cheap earphones while I work.

Obviously in terms of storage, flac files are amazing and won't degrade over time. Saying that, when I converted them to MP3 I didn't notice any difference. I'm the kind of guy who used to put a cassette recorder next to the TV so I could record songs from the music channels before we had access to the internet and Limewire. Now that's bad sound quality! Terrible in fact. I couldn't afford to buy every new single from the music shops, so I had to make do with what I had.

I grew up listening to Queen, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath on my dads record player, and even today I much prefer to listen to older bands on vinyl despite the obvious difference in quality.

No idea why my VLC player wouldn't play them properly. I think Dilandu said it was something to do with the upload, but I can't be sure. Perhaps VLC uses flac files differently than other players? I don't know. All I know was that these files were not working, so I converted to MP3 and now I can appreciate FFXI away from home.

To not have them in .flac is not the end of the world to me. Maybe to some they absolutely need .flac because anything less sounds like I recorded them off the telly with a cassette player? I don't know. I've been listening to mp3s for over fifteen years and this is the first time anyone's said they are "lolmp3s".

Though if you want to be really picky about his blog entry, the fact that he says at the end that those Sony headphones are objectively better than anything Sennheiser produces in that range is abjectly false.

Sennheiser HD 280 pros can be had for about the same price if you shop around and have better low end.

In my experience, it's deserved.

Audiophiles can be worse than wine snobs or film camera enthusiasts.

And yes, unless you've spent a ton of dough on equipment, .flac isn't going to make a difference on the front end, all other things equal.


Rock on. As I stated above, I actually prefer vinyl to digital audio if there's a choice (which...if we're being honest is also kind of a music snob thing to say)...that said, digital is so much more convenient that 99.5% of the time I'm not breaking out the turntable and I don't go digging for vinyl or for new music releases on vinyl. I just have a few classics that are worth listening to from time to time.

While he had grounds to call them out on it, the tone of the article will always work against you. I write articles on a regular basis (not about sound..) and if I used that tone on my readers they would strike back and ask me why I'm so angry. The tone always ends up reflecting on the audience, and sometimes even the most well-explained article becomes overrun by the negativity instigated by the reader. He could have conveyed his message without sounding like he had to prove someone wrong.

My desire is to steer people away from inferior formats and bring uniformity. But my personal goals are strictly of the note of why keep multiple versions of the same file?

I didn't really judge the article's premise one way or the other, just that it's severely biased and is entirely opinion based.

It's odd that VLC isn't playing them, I'll grab them later and give it a whirl and see if I have the same issue.

I think it's fairly clear he wrote that after one too many discussions (internet or IRL, whichever) with an audiophile/many of them.

Fair enough. I suspect in part it's for the sake of playing on-the-go on portable devices where you're trying to maximize storage space?

I dunno at this point in time even that seems like a relatively weak argument.


Mmmm. Not entirely. Much like high frame rates, there's a limit to what the human body can perceive.

Yes it was a reaction piece. I have done this too, made an article after arguing a point with someone. It's usually about something controversial, something which gives a mixed reaction for one reason or another. Sometimes making an angry reaction piece is great .. it gets people talking, they understand your frustration and want to chime in. Other times it comes across as bitter and unnecessary. In this case I think his points were made clear, and I find it hard to disagree, but I wish his tone was lighter at the end. But that's me being a nitpicky perfectionist editor! Guilty.

Oh, I just realized how that may have come across. I wasn't saying "(You, Jet) don't be a snob..."

I mean in general. "People, don't be snobs about your music, etc."

I thought so, figured I'd cover it. Also tired, need a nap.

I've never been crazy about most of the songs in FFXI. Using custom song files from other games (along with an addon to change when songs will play) has really improved the game for me. However, since most songs are not mixed and balanced the way FFXI songs are, some files don't come out perfect and may have a slight scratch sound in specific moments. This is mostly due to the conversion process/program (XIMC), since I can't detect them in the audio editing stage.

I enjoy them for a mix of nostalgia and ambience.

They're not something I'd strictly sit and listen to while doing nothing else. But I enjoy them as a backdrop for work or reading.

That's part of why I use other songs, actually. It's nice when I go to a zone after neglecting it for so long, and then I hear something I haven't heard in a while.