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 Now online (2)big dariusgriffin ...and 649 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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ok i have 2 questions for you: how big/important is the difference between mp3 and cd quality audio? is there a bitrate of mp3s above which you dont care? ALSO: (IMPORTANT!) im having a disagreement w/ a friend... he says that 320kb/s mp3s are actually CD quality....... like theres NOTHING missing from the sound i thought all mp3s are compressed... 320 may be the highest it goes, and its even called "cd quality" but thats just cus most people dont care about or cant tell the difference... i mean, most people dont even want anything above 128! so, even if 320 sounds like a CD to most people... is it actually totally the same quality? is the sound lower at all? ......and if you have sources and links about thiskind of stuff please share.. it would be useful thanks |
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great topic AMinal! me, i like CDs way more than mp3s... i can tell the difference for lower bitrates, but ive never tested a 320 bitrate mp3 and a CD so i dont know about that the music i like most i buy on CD eventually.. both for the quality and i guess to support the artist too |
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yeah, I dunno about 320 kb/s but it's still compressed. If you have uncomressed mp3s, then you can even get better quality than CDs (more than 44 khz)... But that's another story. Yeah cds are better I buy them all the time. I would by more vinyl if I had more cash, but I prefer CDs before mp3s... |
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Second Bad Vilbel is an mp3 codec killer. You can probably tell the difference at any bitrate in a blind test unless you have poor hearing. There are that show weaknesses in mp3. |
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I hate way mp3 compresses the highest frequencies to a blurry mess. Cd and Vinyl is the shit . |
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By the way encoding at 320 Kbps is a waste of space. It's much better to use a high quality variable bit rate setting. If you care that little about disk space you should probably be using some sort of lossless encoding anyway. |
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for casual listening.. in the car, at work.. i dont mind mp3s at all. i prefer the medium over sound quality. but i can tell a difference, so for serious listening on the really expensive speakers s'gotta be cd. |
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yeah I hate bad compressed stuff... really hate it. sounds like a mess. |
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......what exactly makes VBR better? i know it stands for variable bit rate.. but i dont get how that makes it sound better anyways thanks guys.... |
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With 320 Kbps constant bit rate, you're using that much data even for silence. It's not efficient. With variable bit rate the encoder analyzes the music and uses as many bits as it thinks are necessary to preserve the original sound, up to 320 Kbps. The first implementations of mp3 VBR on hardware and software were a bit buggy, but everything these days should be pretty solid. VBR is the future: all modern post-mp3 audio codecs use it. |
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Yeah, it doesn't matter what bitrate you choose, you're always losing data. There is no CD quality equivalent for mp3, they're all poorer. It's just the higher you go, the less noticeable it is. It doesn't matter if you decompress the mp3 back to wav, it's still lost the data and you'll never get it back. Recompressing that wav into mp3 again just compresses it even more. 320k is definitely overkill, but it's still lots smaller than lossless audio codecs produce, and usefull for nuts like me who like to be sure it's the best it can be. VBR is much better these days than it used to be, but I can still hear the difference between best-quality VBR and 320k. Having said that, I usually go for 256k. Cos it's a nice "round" number (for computers at any rate :D) As inverted whale was saying, try encoding Second Bad Vilbel at 128k, 320k, VBR, 48k, and listen for the differences. Of course it helps to have decent speakers. I have my PC connected to my HiFi system in surround and you can really hear the shittiness of low-quality mp3 in the rear-speakers. Try it, go on. You know you want to. |
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I can still hear the difference between best-quality VBR and 320k. Can you list some of these? I occasionally participate in listening tests to help tune the LAME encoder and the more samples we have like this, the better. |
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give me cd any day... I rarely ever download a full album of mp3's... extremely rarely... I usually just download single tracks I want... for whole albums I need the cd! |
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I did an attempt at a dj mix recently (my first!), with plenty of stuff that had no right going together and encoded it at best-quality VBR for one reason, then at 320k for another and I noticed artifacts in the VBR version that weren't in the 320CBR version on the following tracks: Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: Greyhound [Moby/Genius remix] The Sabres of Paradise: Theme II (from CDR sourced from tape) Scanner: Flaneur Electronique Sheila Chandra: Sacred Stones |
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oh yeah... on surround systems low bitrate mp3s are SO shitty anything below 160 is unbearable :( by the way, i dont give a shit about taking up space.. so anyone knows a good lossless compression thingey? |
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Thanks xceque, I have the source material to at least one of those, I think. You were using LAME --alt-preset extreme for your VBR, right? There's still room for improvement in LAME and the lame-devs could always use another pair of golden ears if you wanted to help out in the next listening test. Jaroen, I'd say the big 3 lossless codecs are Shorten, Monkey's Audio, and FLAC. Shorten is pretty popular in the live set trading community, but Monkey's and FLAC are probably technologically superior. But you can move from one to the other without quality loss so you don't have to commit to one format from the start. :-) |
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...can anyone show me a site or something.... some way to prove.. that even 320 kb/s mp3s are not cd quality? i remember seeing somewhere that w/ some special software you can encode and play up to 640 kb/s mp3s.. why would it go that high if 320 gives you everything? ... ...exactly. |
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cd's are 1400 kb/s or something aint they ? |
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yeah, what is the bitrate for a CD? |
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according to itunes its 1411kbps. i'm pretty sure its a logarithmic rating tho (ie. 1411 is not 4x as good as 320) ... imo there is a significant difference, tho mp3's are very convenient, and don't mind listening to them [depending what]. |
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I hate Cd's cuz they scratch like a cat with fleas. my setup: ipod 10 gig mp3/cd player for car winamp thats all I need. |
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The LAME encoder can encode mp3s up to 640 Kbps in mode, but you'll be severely restricted with what you can play them back with. I think if someone believes that 320 Kbps mp3 = CD quality you will have to disprove that with a listening test. This is highly subjective and to their ears it may very well be true. |
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just use the spectral analysis in cool edit on an mp3 and a wav i wanna bump this up caus ive found a way to check the differences between mp3 and wav (cd audio) in a sound editor, get a wav file, encode it, invert it, and mixpaste it over the original wav. youll get some noisy artifacts, to demonstrate mp3s sloppyness just in case someone wants to know :S |
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i don't have an earing that good anyway... at least with mp3s you don't have the problem of shitty CD players. but with CDs you can (if all works well...) listen to everything without little cuts in-between the tracks when they're supposed to flow together breakless, you have cover art, and it continues playing even if your computer crashes. but no format is perfect of course. everything is defective in this world. |
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IMO, in the car 128kbps is fine, once you take into account the quality loss due to engine noise, air flow, vibration etc. you cna't really tell much of a difference. At home listening to 128kbps mp3s sound quite rough, especially when listening through sennheiser HD25 headphones or the hi-fi speakers. The most noticeable thing, esp. with 'phones is the little clicky artifacts you get. |
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Oh and I've done a paid DJing gig in the past just using 2 cd-rs with wavs burnt from 128kbps mp3s and no one complained about the sound quality (I knew their speakers were shite anyway, so I wasn't that fussed :D) |
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CD |
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Some well encoded (read: non-fraunhoffer) mp3s, with encoding rates of 192 and above are really good. They sound good even on my speakers at home (Inspire 5700). I can make out the difference on my Sennhieser HD600, though not on my regular Philips HP890. So, I prefer CDs, yes...but until music of my choice is available to me in that format, I am stuck with mp3s. I try to get CDs as and when they become available though, and delete my mp3 collexn... |
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192kb mp3 ownz cd any day.... the only reason for cds nowadays is to get cool art along with it. |
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"It doesn't matter if you decompress the mp3 back to wav, it's still lost the data and you'll never get it back." Yep- I remember a flatmate of mine who was insistant that converting DLed mp3s to CDs put the lost detail back in :) He didn't seem to realise it was because he then played these CDs on his Marantz Hi-Fi as opposed to on his PC with a SBLive and bottom of the range Cambridge Soundworks speakers... |
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yeah, it wouldnt be a lossy format if you could go either way :D |
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i downloaded an mp3 from bleep.. its 465kb/s that is all. |
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That is impossible actually, mp3's are limited to 320kbps. Divide that in half and that will be the proper bitrate. Windows has a way of improperly reading the bitrates of vbr files. People should really consider using lossless compression. Flac is by far the best. |
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Cd all the way. |
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more like mpgay vs cd |
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Oooooooooooooooooohhh... |
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mpgay? I can't believe people don't like mp3's... did I say like? I meant love. |
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I don't like mp3's. Lossless compression or CD all the way.I'll sacrifice hard drive space for quality. |
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whats the point in using lossless compare to high bitrate mp3's when you can't actually hear the difference? i'm encoding in AAC format (better than mp3's) at 256kbps and i can't tell the difference between the AAC and the original cd. And i'm using high quality earphones (shure) to compare. |
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I prefer CD |
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me to CD is best |
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Luckily I don't have a $10.000 stereo so I don't know the difference between an lame APX mp3 and the original. I can tell the difference for a 192 kb/s mp3 but mostly I don't really care about a tiny difference. The furniture in the room will make more difference. I try to avoid 160 and less mp3s although I think some sound very decent if they're encoded with lame The worst thing about mp3s are the gaps in ambient and mixalbums (*recommends ripping them as one track with cue sheet) |
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*recommends ripping them as one track with cue sheet or play them in gapless mode |
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"or play them in gapless mode" my mp3discman doesn't have a gapless mode... |
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that is kut same do I, but I still prefer to download mixalbums as individual songs if I really wan´t to listen to a mix album on my mp3 player I will make a large file of it, but that happens rarely |
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MP3 is a shite format. Compare them to WAV files on a computer with a good soundcard and a nice pair of hi-fi headphones and you will see what I mean. If you want lossy compression, use Ogg Vorbis. I don't know how you guys can tolerate IDM at anything less than 256 kbit. It sounds just terrible. Although, I use reasonably high end headphones so I can hear a lot more detail than a lot of you (who I suspect are using speakers). But really, if you want to be faithful to the music and the artist, use a lossless compression format like FLAC. |
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Oh, and it should also be said that MP3 is not capable of CD quality compression at any bitrate. |
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"but really, if you want to be faithful to the music and the artist, use a lossless compression format like FLAC." but whats the point when you can't tell the difference? i bet 99% of people can't tell the difference between 320kbps and cd quality. |
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AAC is the best format i've used, small file size with superior sound quality. |
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vinyl. |
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