I've created MP3s using both Lame 3.90.3 --alt-preset insane and Lame 3.93.1 --preset insane. In both cases the MP3s sound great, incredibly true to the original recording.

But when I burn those MP3s to CDs (e.g. using Roxio Easy CD Creator), then I get a different story: I seem to get a notably heavier and more overbearing bass line than can be heard on the original CD recordings or even on the MP3s themselves.

This is particularly evident in newer, more bass-intensive recordings such as Peter Gabriel UP or Nine Inch Nails The Fragile.

I've tried adding the -q1 and -q0 switch to my command lines, which seems to decrease this bass boominess on the burned CDs a bit, but then the highs get too crisp on both the burned CDs and the MP3s as well.

Is anybody else experiencing this phenomenon, and does anybody know what might account for it? And, can anyone suggesst how to get burned CD's from the MP3s that don't overemphasize the bass as much as I'm currently experiencing? Should I use a different Lame command line?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Are you burning them to CD as CD-audio, or are you making an MP3-CD for playback on MP3 compatible players? I am wondering if Roxio is transcoding them to a lower bitrate MP3 if it is the latter case. Or it might just be doing a faulty decoding if it is the former.

If you are just trying to make a regular CD-audio disc, try decoding the MP3s to WAVE using the utility in EAC for instance, then burn these WAVEs with Roxio. See if that solves the problem.

The original MP3s are not the problem, so there is no point messing with the LAME command line. Like you said, those sound fine before the burning.

You should make sure you're really hearing an increase in bass, and not suffering from the placebo effect, by using a double-blind "ABX" test. I personally have heard all sorts of phenomenon with MP3's that I'm sure are real problems, but once I load the MP3 into an ABX comparator, I find out it's only my imagination. In case you don't know an ABX test will play the two known samples, and then an unknown sample, which is the same as one of the two known samples: you have to determine which one it is by careful listening.

A good ABX comparator to use is KikeG's WinABX (and if you're wondering, no, his name is not a reference to anti-semitism ). Re-rip the burned audio, and compare it to the original, un-MP3'd .wav. After that, you can try following Jebus's advice about converting the MP3's to wave format before burning, perhaps by using lame --decode on the MP3's. I don't think Roxio's MP3 decoder will emphasize bass frequencies (things don't really work that way with MP3), but it never hurts to try.

I have heard a few people talk about how some programs 'may' (I say may since I have never been able to hear the effect myself) produce differently sounding
cd audio from mp3 as a result of their decoding method. I personally have never been able to spot it in a blind test, so maybe I do not have the golden ears required, or it is indeed a placebo effect. just my .02

All - thanks for your replies. To answer Jebus, yes I'm burning audio CD's for playback in normal stereo equipment. The increase in bass emphasis on the burned CDs is rather noticable - for example try Peter Gabriel "Growing Up".

Might this be a normal side-effect of burning audio CDs from MP3s, since MP3 is lossy and hence decoding back to WAV will never be the same as the original?

Again, on older recordings the effect is almost negligible because of the minimal bass on such CDs - it's most apparent on newer CD's where the original bass is already very heavy. It's almost like a non-linear relationship between the original and the burned CD bass levels at the low end of the spectrum, as if the more bass there is then the more the effect becomes noticeable but for "normal" bass levels they are almost equal.

Nah, if the mp3 sounds good, so will the cd burned from it. No loss is encured during that process. I burn --alt-preset standard discs all the time with no noticable difference from the originals.

As mentioned before try decoding the MP3s to WAVE before the burning process using a high quality decoder like MAD, foobar2000 or mpg123 and see if the problem still exists. If it does not your burning software's decoder has serious flaws and you should switch to a software, which doesn't suffer from such problems (e.g. Nero or EAC); but if it still does you are most likely experiencing some kind of placebo effect.

dev0

1. Is it possible that either during creating the mp3s or during decoding/burning a volume change is applied (e.g. normalizing)? This could cause the difference. - What software/settings do you use for extracting/ripping audio from CD?

2. If you create audio CD-Rs from your own CDs (no matter if mixed or 1:1 copies) it might be a good idea not to use a lossy format .

3. If you want as much quality/security as it seems (you use --alt-preset insane = 320kbps) and hardware compatibility is not an issue you might want to give musepack a try (even better quality at lower bitrate, gapless, faster encoding speed).

MediaMonkey,

It's very possible that the possible differences you hear are caused by clipping. When you encode audio which is near-clipping (ie: much of modern pop, etc) the lossy LAME encoding process can make the waveform really clip on decoding.

If your Nero and other mp3 decoder are handling clipping differently (ie: if one of them does soft-clipping) you might end up with different sounding audio (from the very same mp3's).

Try decoding a boomy part of your mp3 with foobar2000, disabling all limiters, and have a look at it in a WAV editor

Cheers

If you do a frequency analysis on a wav produced from an MP3, you will see that low frequencies are enhanced and higher ones are reduced, but this does not mean a thing.

A friend recently gave me a CD recorded from another friend of his, and told me he observed pretty much the same things as you did. I ripped the CD, and by freq. analysis I deduced it was created from MP3's, but the problem was that the wave was overly clipped. Fortunately for my friend, I had all of the songs available (some of them on my own CD's, all of them as MPC's though , so I reburned the CD for him with my own versions of the songs (after (mp3|replay)gaining songs I rip, I do correct the volume manually --the *gain algorithms do need more work...-- so I can assure that CD's I burn do sound almost equal whatever the song selection, and, most important of all, not clipped.

Do you mp3gain your songs?

Thanks again for all of your responses.

The clipping issues several of you raise sound intriguing. I'm going to try three things: (1) I will turn on the option within Easy CD Creator 5.0 to "copy to hard disk first", which causes the WAVs to be created and cached on disk before the burning occurs - I didn't have this enabled, and (2) I will try a different commercial burning package e.g. Nero, and (3) I'll try using Feurio for burning my audio which apparently is one of the better regarded shareware apps out there for creating audio CDs.

I'll keep you posted on my progress. Again, thanks so much for your help.

Try burning from the original ripped .wav and the mp3, onto the same audio CD.

Do both versions sound bass heavy?

If you put your player in random+repeat mode, can you tell which version is playing without looking at the display?


cheers,
David.

Ciao..

as mentioned in post`s above..

use a propper decoder.. *foobar, mad, 123mpeg/321mpeg, *
either decode to HD. & burn.. or burn directly.
in your case.. BAO or Burrrn. comes to mind..
i guess you need a *all-in-one* replacement..
then BAO is for you..
easy to use, small size, powerfull..
perfect audio support..
(+ hidden features B) )
and don`t mess up your registry..
like all roxio products.. tends to do..

Did you try an ABX test?

If you take my advise, switch to another decoder. Use Winamp 2.xx decoder to manually convert the MP3s into wavs and then burn them. Don't use on-the-fly burners like Adaptec.