Downloadable Mp3s Are They Killing Quality?

[sam fisher]

Also yes Vinyl captures the full sound, but all of the frequencies are captured meaning there are many frequencies which are redundant due to the limitations of the human ear. The developers of MP3 and AAC take that into consideration and throw much of the redundant frequencies away. Yes their judgement of what may be considered redundant might not suit all ears, but they are continually refining this based on blind audio tests.

You are wrong there I assume you, as a programmer, are fairly knowledgeable in the field of physics? Therefore you understand the concept superposition? Well, even if you cannot directly hear frequencies above the 20Khz threshold, the waves above the 20Khz threshold can superpose the waves below the threshold and thus actually can have an effect on the audible sound. Simple physics.

 

[krosfyah]

Also yes Vinyl captures the full sound, but all of the frequencies are captured meaning there are many frequencies which are redundant due to the limitations of the human ear. The developers of MP3 and AAC take that into consideration and throw much of the redundant frequencies away. Yes their judgement of what may be considered redundant might not suit all ears, but they are continually refining this based on blind audio tests.

You are wrong there I assume you, as a programmer, are fairly knowledgeable in the field of physics? Therefore you understand the concept superposition? Well, even if you cannot directly hear frequencies above the 20Khz threshold, the waves above the 20Khz threshold can superpose the waves below the threshold and thus actually can have an effect on the audible sound. Simple physics.

This is why you often get a more pleasing sound from vinyl whereas a digitally sampled version will give the feeling that something is missing, even though you might not be able to pinpoint the difference.

 

[PokeParadox]

Also yes Vinyl captures the full sound, but all of the frequencies are captured meaning there are many frequencies which are redundant due to the limitations of the human ear. The developers of MP3 and AAC take that into consideration and throw much of the redundant frequencies away. Yes their judgement of what may be considered redundant might not suit all ears, but they are continually refining this based on blind audio tests.

You are wrong there I assume you, as a programmer, are fairly knowledgeable in the field of physics? Therefore you understand the concept superposition? Well, even if you cannot directly hear frequencies above the 20Khz threshold, the waves above the 20Khz threshold can superpose the waves below the threshold and thus actually can have an effect on the audible sound. Simple physics.


OK, you have me there and that is certainly something that never occurred to me before and it certainly makes sense in terms of interfering waves. Regardless of theory, to me it simply makes no difference, I cannot perceive any difference from audio I encode at 170kbps AAC or 180kbps VBR MP3. I could very possibly drop the bitrate lower and it would still sound perfectly fine to me. In addition the comment about blind audio test holds.

 

[BaDToaD]

there are many frequencies which are redundant due to the limitations of the human ear.

That argument doesn't hold water when you realise that the best Hi Fi gear has capabilities way beyond the supposed human hearing range.

My own Audiophile cans reach 38500 Hz and the really top end stuff goes up as high as 80000 Hz.

I can't imagine these manufacturers give their kit this level of performance just for the sake of it.

If you remove the "redundant frequencies" as they are called, you change the very thing that make the music sound "right"

Even the professionals do this. Digital remastering often results in a track being cleaner than the original analogue version but lacking the originals feel and presentation.

 

[sam fisher]

If you remove the "redundant frequencies" as they are called, you change the very thing that make the music sound "right"

However, if you sample at a higher bitrate, you require a larger bitrate to achieve the same quality. Else you will get aliasing induced by the compression algorithms.

Let's say you want to sample waves at 80Khz. Well then you need to sample at a rate of 2n where n is 8*10^4 to achieve an approximation without sampling induced frequency aliasing. So that a sample rate of 160Khz vs the 44.1Khz of a regular CD. Now if you can see you really need to be sampling the position of the wave four times more often than you would with a CD. Hence you need 4 times the bandwidth to achieve the same level of quality as you would have with a CD. Thus you wouldn't need 320Kbps but 1280Kbps, which happens to be 160KBps. Then you get into the issue of whether you need to be more accurate with the positioning of the wave and how many quantum levels you are going to use, what sort of companding etc.

 

[kknd_cf]

I download way too much music to even begin to think about buying it and I agree anything below 192 is sick I think except crazy audiophiles such as yourself (jokes) it's most people's limits.

 

[lubidog]

@kkind of, tried to PM you with a begging PM for an invite to any site you might use...but you can't get PMs...

Oink, then Demonoid... what is happening?

@Bad Toad, yes-I can tell and I agree a little. But the Ipod has brought lots of music to lots of people! But I recently got an Archos gmnini and the difference in sound quality is amazing!

Encode as high as you can, get good cans etc!

 

[Javacat]

I didn't used to be able to notice the difference between really crap encoding and something like 192kbps, but then I got some headphones with a built in graphics card and I could suddenly notice the difference. Unfortunately I've not got the disk space or time to go through re-encoding all of my CD's.
When I finally get around to building the media center I'm dreaming of I'll rip everything again, using FLAC.

 

[Nova]

I recently discovered that Windows Media Player rips music at 128kbps by default. Last night I ripped a CD into 128 and 192, and I could really hear the difference. Thing is, I really can't be arsed to re-rip all of 100ish albums, some of which i've borrowed, some of which weren't aquired off of a Compact Disc at all (wink wink, nudge nudge).

 

[sam fisher]

I recently discovered that Windows Media Player rips music at 128kbps by default. Last night I ripped a CD into 128 and 192, and I could really hear the difference. Thing is, I really can't be arsed to re-rip all of 100ish albums, some of which i've borrowed, some of which weren't aquired off of a Compact Disc at all (wink wink, nudge nudge).

Try 320

 

[Nova]

I recently discovered that Windows Media Player rips music at 128kbps by default. Last night I ripped a CD into 128 and 192, and I could really hear the difference. Thing is, I really can't be arsed to re-rip all of 100ish albums, some of which i've borrowed, some of which weren't aquired off of a Compact Disc at all (wink wink, nudge nudge).

Try 320


What?

 

[sam fisher]

320kbps.

 

[Nova]

320kbps.

Sure, I'd do that, if I wanted to rape my HDD.

 

[bhess]

I can most definitely notice a difference. Whenever I get music, I try to get it in FLAC format so I can encode it to whatever, usually anything thats Lossless and VBR. I listen to a huge variety of music, from heavy metal to trance to happy hardcore and with everything I listen to, there is a massive difference. I think it may be because I listen to music either with my Klipsch speakers or my Shure earbuds. I simply cannot listen to music with the crappy iPod headphones everybody uses nowadays.

I also think that the music that is popular today, is designed to sound the same no matter the sound system. A "dumbing down" so to say. Take the most recent #1 hit "Crank Dat Soulja Boy". Not that I like the song, I think it's making kids my age completely unintelligent, but I've heard it in 320, 128, and even lower. It sounds pretty music the same at any bitrate. It could be because all of this "crunk" and "snap" music has very simplistic and basic beats.

 

[saehn]

192kpbs is fine for 95% of listeners. Anything more and you get into "audiophile" territory.

http://s88932719.onlinehome.us/audio_bs.htm

 

[daclassicgamingmaster]

I can most definitely notice a difference. Whenever I get music, I try to get it in FLAC format so I can encode it to whatever, usually anything thats Lossless and VBR. I listen to a huge variety of music, from heavy metal to trance to happy hardcore and with everything I listen to, there is a massive difference. I think it may be because I listen to music either with my Klipsch speakers or my Shure earbuds. I simply cannot listen to music with the crappy iPod headphones everybody uses nowadays.

I also think that the music that is popular today, is designed to sound the same no matter the sound system. A "dumbing down" so to say. Take the most recent #1 hit "Crank Dat Soulja Boy". Not that I like the song, I think it's making kids my age completely unintelligent, but I've heard it in 320, 128, and even lower. It sounds pretty music the same at any bitrate. It could be because all of this "crunk" and "snap" music has very simplistic and basic beats.

When I hear that song, I gnash my teeth and start twitching like some sort of weirdo. I see you're from Atl; I just moved here from NY where the most good rap and hip/hop comes from. This is an embarrassment and it truly saddens me that people like "soulja boy" exist and are somewhat successful.

Also, way to take the name "soulja" from tupac's song Ballad of a Dead Soulja

:gp2x :gp2x :gp2x GO SUPPORT GOOD HIP HOP. 8 DIAGRAMS IN STORES THIS SEPTEMBER gp32_console gp32_console gp32_console


achem...sorry about my outburst :unsure:

 

[Draken]

I listen to a huge variety of music, from heavy metal to trance to happy hardcore

Congratulations on listening to the faggot subgenre of each of those independant genres (metal, electronic music and hardcore "techno")

 

[BaDToaD]

192kpbs is fine for 95% of listeners. Anything more and you get into "audiophile" territory.

http://s88932719.onlinehome.us/audio_bs.htm



Just for info Audiophile doesn't have to mean mega bucks. Some of you may already have a passable soundcard so try plugging some half decent headphones into it.

My own HD595s were £75 off ebay. My headphone amp is a cmoy amp that cost £40 and another tenner for a decent Opamp chip and my main source is an £80 Sony DVD player. So for under £200 you have a system that would embarass most speaker based systems for 3 or 4 thousand quid. I will admit I have a Graham Slee Solo headphone amp on order but that's as far as i can afford to go. So my own headphone kit will total about £600. A far cry from the real top end gear Opheus Headphone System

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Audiophiles are a dying breed in the age of the Ipod.

My boyfriend is very much the audiophile, he even has his own record cleaning kit which brings vinyl back to like new, sometimes better than new as he has found some vinyl that is dirty from the factory. Amazing how things sound through his system.

One thing about vinyl that you may not be aware of, creating good vinyl is an art form, you can't simply take any recording and throw it onto a record, one such reason is that a lot of the bass has to be moved to the mono channel, Bass isn't that directional anyway and you don't really notice. But why do you have to do that? Simple, if you had a loud bass note on one channel only, it would knock the stylus out of the groove! CDs however do not suffer from this as it's all digital and there is no stylus (obviously). So if you have one of today's recording studios churning out CD and Vinyl versions of the latest groups, the vinyl and CD versions will never be the same.

Regarding mp3's I agree, I can hear terrible artifacts in some of the music I download, even from iTunes. The worst thing people can do is to try and clean up the audio themselves by using automated noise reduction. I hate with a vengeance that underwater sound when you get to quiet audio YUCK. Even the so called professional studio engineers sometimes get it very wrong!

MP3 will never be for the true music enthusiast, it's there for Joe public who think the quality is amazing compared to the tape systems they used to use years ago. And don't forget the younger generation are being brought up on MP3s, they have nothing to compare them to.

Oh and while we are on about quality of recordings, what's up with record companies trying to make every CD louder than everyone else's by thrashing it through a compressor? It's the worst thing they every could do, totally ruins songs!

 

[sand_man]

most of my mp3 collection are high quality VBR because these days that is the scene standard. But FLAC is getting more popular (not with the scene though AFAIK). FLAC sounds sooooo much better even than high quality VBR mp3, but the size of the files just doesn't please me.