Less Is More...

[Ringo]

I've been using my Gp32 as a musikplayer for a good while now. But I began finding the 3+ hours of music that fit on 128mb SMC just wasn't enough for me to go through a day.

I've been considering actually getting a "real" music player, but with the GPX2 on it's way I am not going to buy one now....

I began experimenting with compressing some .ogg's more than the 96 kbps I've been using until now - actually I compressed them as much as possible (48 kbps - variable bitrate and stereo still though).

To my surprise the result isn't all that bad!! It's not ass bad as a 96 kbps mp3!!!
Now I have just over 6½ hours of music on my SMC, which is enough to keep my going until I figure out if the GPX2 is anything for me B)

It's not like I'm going make all of my ogg's 48kbps, since I'm aware that there IS a quality loss - it's just not very notisable on the train to and from work

As an added bonus I found that ogg's that have a longer duration, don't "stutter" anymore. I've noticed they did before, so I guess this has some thing to do with the filesize.


Just wanted to share my findings

 

[alyinsanfran]

This is a good tip, cheers. As someone with a lot of music but without the 'ear' to distinguish between bitrates this will be handy.
I always felt like a near-heretic when in a top-end stereo store with a friend. I had 10 times the music library, but he could tell the difference between speakers to the n'th degree.
I blame my core belief that some music just sounds better on a nasty system. Jesus and Mary Chain sounds great off a warped cassette tape that's been kicking around the car for 10 years, but get the CD and you'll wonder what the hell you were smoking in '85. :blink:

 

[K0K0NUT_h3lmut]

You probably could just get 2 SMCs . But the GPX2 is coming out in october...

 

[c0ncept]

Jesus and Mary Chain sounds great off a warped cassette tape that's been kicking around the car for 10 years, but get the CD and you'll wonder what the hell you were smoking in '85. :blink:

​

thats why vinyl is still alive and kicking. Some things really do sound better analogue (especially things like drum n bass)

 

[Quiest]

You probably could just get 2 SMCs . But the GPX2 is coming out in october...

​

:lol: haha I also thought of that.

I would rather invest 20-30€ to buy two new 128mb SMC that on converting and loosing quality...

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

thats why vinyl is still alive and kicking. Some things really do sound better analogue (especially things like drum n bass)

​

I will have to disagree with that, a good quality digital recording is just as good as analogue. Something like 32bit 96k will be just as good as your vinal. Why do you think all the professional recording studios use digital. Any new vinal these days started out in a digital recording studio. And most of the old multitrack analogue are now being converted to digital as the tapes are perishing.

I will however grant you that a cd player isn't quite up to the standards of a good quality hifi turntable. CD spec is 16 bit 44.1k. This will have all the fat base sounds but will not have the resolutution to capture all the minute harmonics that some of the hifi or professional sound engineers will notice.

Another thing you may need to be aware of, most sound cards including the creative labs range are hardware clocked at 48k. you can play samples at 44.1 or 96k etc, but it's converted in software. Anything not recorded/played back at 48k on these cards will always have some form of distortion in them. But usually not enough for the average Joe to hear. If you want true hardware playback of 44.1k or 96k, you're going to have to buy a more prefessional sound card like an M-Audio Audiophile 2496.

 

[JyCet]

OGG at 128kb/s is better than MP3 at 192kb/s
but it need more ressource to decode, this is one reason why lot of mp3 device cannot read OGG

 

[Aaaaaaaa]

what sould I use to convert my MP3s > Ogg?

And what are the settings?

I dont understand the technical bits.

Thanks

 

[Ringo]

I use dBpower AMP music converter for converting... I would use CDex, but it doesn't apear to preserve the ID-tag of the file.... which is rather anoying if you wan to rip for Svorbis because of the 8-character limit if filenames on the GP32.

I think you'll need a ogg vorbis encoder installed to, but it should be easy to find

 

[Fishbong]

Yep, me too.
But if your´re not into music encoding, you might also want to try WinLame...

 

[pea]

And of course converting from original source directly to OGG will result in better quality than MP3 to OGG, as MP3 already has some quality loss.

 

[dreamwarbird]

Fluffy: I prefer using vinyl to cd's from a DJ perspective, but as with most things, it only sounds as good as the weakest link. Most times this is your speakers, and in this case the gp32 speakers.

p.s i think i love the smell of vinyl too much.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Fluffy: I prefer using vinyl to cd's from a DJ perspective, but as with most things, it only sounds as good as the weakest link. Most times this is your speakers, and in this case the gp32 speakers.

p.s i think i love the smell of vinyl too much.

​

Oh I totally agree from a DJ's point of view, It's not easy to manipulate CD's. If you got a couple of Mk II SL 1200's/1210's then it's a lot of fun to mix vynal.
I also agree that the huge downfall of an audio system usually lays within your AMP and speakers, and also where the speakers are positioned in a room.

I was only holding up the side of digital as a media, not really CD's but more so from the point of direct hard drive streaming at high sample and bitrates. I.E. from the point of view of a recording studio technician .

The statement that c0ncept made that analoge does things like drum n bass better than digital is actually impossible, as this type of music started out being mixed digitally in the studio, and probably the sounds were created digitally too! A lot of the "Analogue" sounds you hear these days were not actually created using an old style analogue synth, but from plug in software effects and synths in a studio audio package!

 

[unlucky]

Windows can be a bit crazy for destroying sound quality with a creative sound card the path would be loosely for many of the 48 khz mp3s i have be resampled by windows mixer to 44.1khz then into the soundcard and resampled back to 48khz though i do instead use asio and kernel streaming to get around this though the improvement in treble i hear is probably completely pseudo. I wish i could afford a better card....

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Windows can be a bit crazy for destroying sound quality with a creative sound card the path would be loosely for many of the 48 khz mp3s i have be resampled by windows mixer to 44.1khz then into the soundcard and resampled back to 48khz though i do instead use asio and kernel streaming to get around this though the improvement in treble i hear is probably completely pseudo. I wish i could afford a better card....

​

Asio is good for low latency too, I use an Audiophile 2496 with Sonar and a Studiomix controler for music muself. The Audiophile is really kewl for realtime plugins in the audio streams. Playing with the vocoder is a dream

The Creative cards use Direct X drivers, and they are okay for games and playing simple audio. Actually I have a creative card in my music PC. but I only use it for the odd bit of midi. i.e. the MIDI Keyboard and it makes a good metronome while realtime recording.