MP3's = : (

[tailamix]

Originally Posted by Chaellus

everything on my itunes playlist and ipod encoded from my cd's stay as Wav Format...i will not listen to mp3's....

Can an ipod even play wav's

[Fredrik]

Originally Posted by tailamix

Can an ipod even play wav's

Yes it can.

[neilio]

Originally Posted by robot gigante

Whaat?

I mean c'mon.

You don't need to waste all that time and effort just to figure out that MP3's sound like crap!

I can't rip MP3's even to put on my ipod, even at higher bitrates and even with the Apple AAC which I guess is supposed to be better than most MP3 encoders- they grate on my ears , WAV or AIFF is like a blessed relief.

I don't mean to be rude, but if you honestly think that the difference is small enough that you need a double-blind test to prove it or to discern the differences then perhaps you might want to reconsider this audio engineering thing, or at least train your ears to hear digital distortion a little better (since you have to deal with managing digital distortion when you're tracking and mixing anyway). Maybe this is why people dig plugins that create digital nastiness like VintageWarmer? Their ears aren't really picking up on digital nastiness when it happens..?

hey robot, pleasure to see ya outside of the dungeon, anyway, i find that aac is very good and a fair COMPROMISE, if space is indeed an issue, currently i have a 100gig, 22,000 thousand song library, and three/four years ago when i started to archive everything, terabyte drives were still just out of reach, now that i could have a good 1.5 terabyte drive for sub-$300 , i may just go out and re-do everything as flac, or ogg, or even apple lossless...but that basically is a month or more worth of work and will guarantee the death of whatever drive i use to rip, so more added cost...

the way ive ripped my stuff is to use aac at 192 and use error correction when possible...

i really have to say that ive been very happy with the results using that, with a generic mp3 codec, i seem to experience that fatiguing syndrome alot more...

and while weve got the experts assembled...what is the best lossless codec? and why?

[neilio]

Originally Posted by uosdwis

I'm not advocating MP3 as a format. I don't particularly care for it and do not consider it even close to a decent distribution format (i.e. I wouldn't buy MP3-encoded music). However, since it's become the worldwide standard I keep a portion of my music collection encoded and ready to be played in the millions and millions of devices everywhere, for when I want music on the road. That's how I think it should be used, for portability and convenience.

I guess it makes people feel special to bash it and to claim they totally can hear the difference. That's fine, but it's sort of a moot point. Fact is, it's good enough for most people, it has become the format of choice in consumer electronics and yes, with a little care it can work really well.
.

thats another aspect of this that i forgot to put in my last post....to me i love hi fidelity, i really really do, but as i have children now, when i listen to music at home, it is typically when i am doing work around the house, or when driving in a car...hence compromise, for the sake of quantity, in this case, a vast library...

[travisbrown]

Originally Posted by Chaellus

just think about it this way the best mp3 conversion yet 320 kbps is about 1/5 the quality of a 16bit 44.1k wav file at best

This is wrong. This is not how MP3 compression works. Also, just using your ears should tell you that a 320kbps MP3 isn't 1/5th the quality. That's just nonsense.

To things happen with MP3s - you've got the "lossy" bit - superfluous data is thrown out in order to reduce file size. This is called perceptual coding. Yes, there is a reduction in fidelity here.

The other thing that happens is the data is compressed. This is the "lossless" bit - similar to zipping a file.

The MP3 decoder decompresses the data on the fly, so while you've got a bitrate of 320kbps going in into the playback software, it's expanded into a "thicker" file with higher fidelity than what 320kbps would suggest.

The difference between lossless audio formats and lossy formats like mp3 is the lossless schemes do not perceptual encode, where MP3 does both perceptual coding and data compression.

This is also what happens with some popular video and image codecs. This is why a 1gb divx video can look as good as a 4gb DVD.

You cannot hear a difference between data compressed lossless audio and the uncompressed raw audio. They are bit-perfect matches coming out the otherside of the decoding engine in the same way an unzipped file is exactly the same as the pre-zipped file.

[Chaellus]

what i meant was the compression rate is 5:1 320kbps vs. 1411kbps there is a diffrence in sound that i can notice...maybe not 5 times better but still...>>>>Better... i kinda understand how mp3's work but thanks for the info...i dont mind reading agian...but the point is there is a notible diffrence, more for some than others...at 192 and under its a given , averge listing people can hear effects but for 320kbps i find that most of the people that hear a differnce are people with seasoned trained ears

[marcan]

Yeah yeah...
I've seen several AI's on www.hydrogenaudio.org pretending they can definitely hear the difference between a wav and any mp3.
After proper encoding and a blind test, they were gone ashamed…
So please make your homework (=good encoder, proper preset and abx test) and then come back:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ABX

[warhead]

Originally Posted by Mike Derrick

32kHz (sample rate) means you're only getting frequency response up to 16kHz for your audio, that will explain your washy top end,...

Yes, I knew that...

War

[bcgood]

Originally Posted by robot gigante

Whaat?

I mean c'mon.

You don't need to waste all that time and effort just to figure out that MP3's sound like crap!

I can't rip MP3's even to put on my ipod, even at higher bitrates and even with the Apple AAC which I guess is supposed to be better than most MP3 encoders- they grate on my ears , WAV or AIFF is like a blessed relief.

I don't mean to be rude, but if you honestly think that the difference is small enough that you need a double-blind test to prove it or to discern the differences then perhaps you might want to reconsider this audio engineering thing, or at least train your ears to hear digital distortion a little better (since you have to deal with managing digital distortion when you're tracking and mixing anyway). Maybe this is why people dig plugins that create digital nastiness like VintageWarmer? Their ears aren't really picking up on digital nastiness when it happens..?

[eligit]

Originally Posted by Fredrik

Yes it can.

not only that but if you use a special usb line out to stereo out cable and hook an ipod up to a headphone amp and then good phones like the etymotics....that shit is pretty high fi actually.

i hear stuff i missed on my monitors (lavry blue D/A and dyn bm6)

sounds great!! i get pin drop listening on the subway even at medium playback volume.

the real achilles hill of the ipod is the headphone output stage. it hurts the sound WAY more than then D/A conversion. the headphone amp in there sort of sucks ass. just bypass it.

with an 80GB ipod you can have tons of music as wav files. no problem. if all your stuff does not fit....just select certain playlists for syncing on certain days. extremely easy to do. no real painful trade off there between storage and sound quality.

however i really hope that with expanded bandwidth that is bound to come along in the pretty near future we will have a choice of downloading either mp3, wav, or 24/96 for many releases.

i should also add that i have only bought maybe 3 songs from the itunes store. everything else on my ipod is from CD tracks imported at 16/44.1.

[travisbrown]

Originally Posted by eligit

with an 80GB ipod you can have tons of music as wav files. no problem. if all your stuff does not fit....just select certain playlists for syncing on certain days. extremely easy to do. no real painful trade off there between storage and sound quality.

The thing I don't understand is why some here insist on using .wav/.aiff. Why not AAC lossless and at least save 50% of the space? The benefit of data compression without the purported fidelity compromise.

[bcgood]

Originally Posted by travisbrown

The thing I don't understand is why some here insist on using .wav/.aiff. Why not AAC lossless and at least save 50% of the space? The benefit of data compression without the purported fidelity compromise.

Personally the reason I use wave files is because they can be used in some of my video editing and audio programs while the Apple lossless formats can not.

Hard drives are pretty cheap these days, no big whoop. I have probably over 5,000 dollars worth of CD's. Although I don't have them all in my external Seagate hardrive yet but I'm working on it!

[travisbrown]

Originally Posted by bcgood

Personally the reason I use wave files is because they can be used in some of my video editing and audio programs while the Apple lossless formats can not.

Hard drives are pretty cheap these days, no big whoop. I have probably over 5,000 dollars worth of CD's. Although I don't have them all in my external Seagate hardrive yet but I'm working on it!

Ah, I was referring to those who insist on putting .wav/.aiff on their iPods or for simply listening in iTunes - commercial tracks that aren't working files. Like you, I keep files I might need to edit as uncompressed - same with video as DV and images as tiff.

I've got almost as many CDs. Not quite, but almost. I didn't encode them all at the same rate - unimportant stuff at 128/256, more important stuff at 320, and really important stuff like Joshua Judges Ruth as AAC Lossless.

Truth be told, on 99% of sound systems out there, I can't tell the difference between 320 and lossless/uncompressed almost 100% of the time, so for most intents and purposes, lossless is irrelevant. I really only encode as lossless so I know what my ears won't tell me.

[eligit]

Originally Posted by travisbrown

The thing I don't understand is why some here insist on using .wav/.aiff. Why not AAC lossless and at least save 50% of the space? The benefit of data compression without the purported fidelity compromise.

with one 1TB drive and one 500MB drive....i really don't have to bother.

i can only listen to so many songs in a day anyway.....so converting to AAC literally has no point for me.

i store whatever i want on my computer at full res (whatever that might be in each case) and select specific playlists in itunes when i sync my ipod.

i don't need 10 million hours of music on my ipod at any one time.....500 hours is more than enough

[Dan Lavry]

Originally Posted by bcgood

Personally the reason I use wave files is because they can be used in some of my video editing and audio programs while the Apple lossless formats can not.

Hard drives are pretty cheap these days, no big whoop. I have probably over 5,000 dollars worth of CD's. Although I don't have them all in my external Seagate hardrive yet but I'm working on it!

But I think it is also worth pointing out that the music itself has a lot to do with the results. I heard some MP3's done with a specific compression engine that was not all that bad. Then I heard other music done with the same engine that was real bad.

Audio data compression is based on some principles. The masking of a weak sound by a loud sound at nearby frequency allows for virtually "ignoring" of the weak sound. But the opposite is also true - if the frequencies of the loud and weak sounds are far apart, one should NOT ignore the weak sound. Of course there are more principles that make a compression engine. The point is - some music is easier to compress then other music. Take a loud organ note at say 500Hz, and a weak clarinet at around 500Hz. Now take a loud bass at 200Hz and a weak piccolo at 1KHz. Clearly, the second case is more difficult to compress...

So it is no wonder that some people find data compression OK, others hate it. I see that some people recommend a specific compression engine over others, and that makes sense, but the music itself is also a factor.

(My comment does not apply to lossless compression which is limited to about 2:1 data reduction).

With technology moving forward so fast - faster internet, more storage space, more powerful processing, I hope it will not be long before the need for audio compression goes away completely. I hope to be around when 96KHz/24bits files will zooming on an internet connection and stored in tiny memory storage devices.
Audio compression is a tool for overcoming present technology limitation. I hope for a better future, when there is no reason to live with any compromises due to data compression.

Regards
Dan Lavry

[kittyboy]

Originally Posted by Dan Lavry

. I hope for a better future, when there is no reason to live with any compromises due to data compression.

Word.

[memedesigner]

Finally got a Apogee Duet, and thought about doing a comparison of MP3 rip (256kbs, iTunes) and WAV, just for personal education purposes. But the stuff I found out was pretty interesting so thought about sharing.

I used my dear old pair of Sennheiser HD520s to monitor and my dear old pair of (pretty poor) ears.

Listened back'n'forth My Morning Jacket's Smokin' and Shootin', just the very beginning of the song.

Notes from the listening session: the song opens with a 1/8 kicks. Surprisingly, in the MP3 rip the kick seemed to be lower - first I thought *positioned* lower in the audio field (not between the eyes as with the WAV but instead somewhere at the level of upper lip), but then I realized it sounded actually *tuned* lower. Pretty weird.

Then there's a bit of studio fun in the song between 0:07-0:08: just really short (gated?) cuts of voice, very rhythmic and transienty. The rhythm of that short weird passage in MP3 rip was different from the WAV, like they were different song. MP3 messing the transients or something.

At 0:13 the instruments come along and in the WAV they settle neatly in a really skillfully constructed space, and the bass slides into that space real nice at 0:24. In the MP3 the space is not there, the instruments are separate.

Of course my expectation of the WAV to sound better colors my judgement, but still, these were pretty clear findings and it was pretty enlightening listening moment for me.

[O.F.F.]

To my ears mp3s reduce the 'space' of the recording: Any spatial information appears to be reduced to hard left-center-hard right with nothing in between.
And with lower bitrates the treble goes from annoying via grating to painful.

This is just the way I hear it, it is not a scientific statement of fact.
Also I find it more obvious when listening through monitors rather then 'phones.

[bcgood]

Originally Posted by Dan Lavry

I hope to be around when 96KHz/24bits files will zooming on an internet connection and stored in tiny memory storage devices.
Audio compression is a tool for overcoming present technology limitation. I hope for a better future, when there is no reason to live with any compromises due to data compression.

Regards
Dan Lavry

I hope to be around when 1 bit 5.6 MHz DSD files are the norm...

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by bcgood

I hope to be around when 1 bit 5.6 MHz DSD files are the norm...

Some heavy folks, including Dan Lavry, are fairly dismissive of supposed sonic benefits offered by DSD. (aka SACD, how many more names before they give up trying to market it?)

I don't really have an opinion myself. But I've learned to give a bit of weight to Lavry's opinions. He seems to know his stuff and be able to back it up, as a rule.

[bcgood]

Originally Posted by theblue1

Some heavy folks, including Dan Lavry, are fairly dismissive of supposed sonic benefits offered by DSD.

Yes, I know what Dan has said in the past hence the smiley face. I highly respect his opinion as well but value my own findings even more...

1 bit 5.6 MHz DSD is much different and better sonically than past discs labeled DSD/SACD which where at lower sample rates.

[Chaellus]

some people cant tell the diffrence from a 320kbps mp3 file and a wav file but once your ears gets better it becomes quite obvious even more so when your mixng and you export a wav and mp3 file and compare...because yo u know what to look for and for those that want more ipod space to me it doesnt make sense, im the kind of person that likes to hear my music the way it was intended to at full resolution the only purpose or the main purpose it was created i should say is soley for putting on the internet... but me i want to hear every lush and detailed note clearly... i want my stero image to be solid...i dont want to be robbed from my highs..and etc....

[hello people]

But some posters are saying that it depends how it's encoded.

They seem to be saying that good encosion = barely a difference.

Anyway, when I post some songs on soundclick it sounds like they are being played from inside a cement mixer.

[toasteh]

So much money on prime and exquisite gear, skilled people mixing, recording, eq'ing and compressing to the best of their ability, only to have the public buy their finished products from iTunes at mp3 quality...

[roadsweeper]

ok, I have been sad enough to do some visual analysis for you, it's not perfect, but nothing is.

The song is 'Rain' by Tom Waits from the album Real Gone. This was taken straight from CD via Nuendo's CD importer. I then used Nuendo's MP3 export function to create 2 mp3 files, 1 at 128 bit/s, the other at 320 bit/s. I then used the Waves PAZ analyser for all 3 tracks, wav's and mp3's. I also used Isotope RX for spectral analysis.

If you click on the images the description of each one should be at the top bar on your screen - I'm sure that there is an easier way of doing this but have never uploaded pictures before.

Unfortunately, it seems that Nuendo's mp3 converter is very good, much better than you get from iTunes etc.

I will let you do the analysis, however I shall tell you that sonically they all sound very similar. I am not saying that mp3 are ok because I hate them possibly more than all of you lot put together, however it does seem that Nuendo does do a good job of converting them.

[marcan]

Nuendo mp3 compressor is not the best (I think it is from frauenhofer).
The best one is Lame:
LAME - Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase

[Agreed]

Someone panned VBR on the basis that it "actually varies the bitrate, compressing some areas more than others!"

This indicates a misunderstanding of the technology, or rather, a passing familiarity with the technology which leads to knowing just enough to get yourself in trouble. Yes, it changes the compression - as needed to preserve a consistent level of quality. It turns out that, for example, very quiet parts need less data than very loud parts. The complexity of the information being encoded is evaluated by the adaptive algorithm and the output as a result has a filesize that is much lower than a CBR equivalent, but when necessary the full 320kbps bandwidth of mp3 is used. You can demonstrate this yourself by encoding very complex, loud material of the same length as, say, someone speaking quietly. It isn't that CBR is giving you the full quality while VBR is starving you of much needed bits; rather, CBR has a lot of wasted space because the same information could be stored much more efficiently. If you encode LAME -ape VBR, you'll have plenty of sections in complex songs which get 320kbps bandwidth, but you'll still also have plenty of sections that range from 160-256, and lower when there is no quality loss from doing so. It's all in the information to be conveyed. Encoding silence at 320kbps is a waste, and once that principle is understood, the rest follows naturally.

This is not simple technology and simple explanations and generalizations tend to poorly represent the complexity of the codec. As someone else said, this isn't 1998.

[Ike Witt]

Some people can truly hear a difference.
Some people claim to hear a difference but are deluding themselves.
Some people can't hear a difference.
Some people don't care if there is a difference as long as they are moved by what the artist has to say.

What group of people would you WANT to be in?
What group of people make up the majority of the world?