HI Guys,

We all know the age old debate - which is the best bit-rate 128, 160, 192 256 or 320?

(dont even mention VBR !)

In my humble opinion, on the average computer set up it is very hard to tell the difference in day to day use.

But here is a new angle

I was recently invloved with providing audio entertainment at a work place in a large tin shed to about 50 people in a work envrionment - keeping the staff happy.

I was the DJ !! (mostly) (Led Zeppelin, Cars, Deep Purple, Franz Ferdinand (no rap)

We were working 10 hour days and found the radio boring. So I made up about 10 CDRW's with 100 mp3s on each, so that each CDRW lasted 2 hours, the time of our work periods.

We were using a Sanyo DVD player through an old JVC stereo and 4 speakers.. This worked great.

Then some of our workers asked if they could bring along their store-bought music CD's for a bit of variety and to play their own kind of music, Mariah Carey, Rap, The Bee Gees, Country and Western a very wide variety. I said yes as I like most music and like to keep people happy.

What I found, but did not mention to anyone, was that in all honesty their CD's sounded much better than my recorded MP3's.

They were all louder, but after adjusting the volume on the stereo I felt that the Music CD's had a richer, rounder, fuller more ambient sound than my MP'3.

Most of my Mp3's were at 128, but the were some at 256 and 320.

Any thoughts on this ?

It seems we loose quite a lot going to MP3's !

Kind Regards

Digby
NZ

Sigh... I'm getting so tired of those kinds of posts...

You listened to some rap or country CDs which happened to sound better than your rock MP3s and therefore conclude MP3 must be crap? Way to go...

What encoder? Or did you download them from P2P networks? (that could explain the poor sound quality)

No, there really isn't that much audible loss (if any) if you use a good encoder with good settings.

I surely hope I'm not feeding a troll here...

Basic Upshot
Your MP3s are poor quality.

Simple Resolve
Re-encode using LAME 3.97b2 -V2 --vbr-new.

Suggested Course of Action
If you are truely concerned that MP3 at any bitrate is inferior to audio CD quality in most cases then try some ABX tests to prove or disprove your assumption. Discover a LAME VBR quality (0-9) that is transparent to you in all, or 99%, of your samples and reencode your CDs using this setting. Most importantly: publish ABX results if you can truely tell the difference, otherwise you are in violation of TOS#8.

i feel the same, my original cds sound more performer, with better angulus, and a greater space-time relation, not to mention much more "chocolated".

For me the Cd's alway's sound better. I can tell the 2 apart very easily. I've done ABX tests. For those who have blasted there eardrums to bit's Mp3 sound better. But I found that Mp3's make me raise the volume more than do loseless files. I know a lot of people complain about the size of loseless file, but today storage is getting cheaper and cheaper so I dosn't really matter that much. I've seen 300gb drives for 70USD. Also it depend's on your equipment; 2 dollar headphones sound different from Sen. 650's.

I think you should better look trough this forum, before post anything.
Your post tells us everything, so no comment.

I don't want to sound harsh, but posts like this should be avoided: recognize the differences between an uncompressed Audio CD track and the encoded MP3 it's not easy like you're saying - unless you're using low bitrate settings, wrong encoding parameters, old encoder or tracks who contains hard-to-encode parts. You won't tell the differences very easily without ABX, or feel that the volume in MP3 is lower.

It's obvious that the CD always sound better than the encoded MP3. The problem is that you, usually, wouldn't hear differences so easily. I'm saying that because, from what I read in your post, it seems like you're able to recognize WAV to MP3 differences from a casual listening.

What kind of settings you used? Please post them, with a sample and ABX results. And the FAQ will be useful to you in solving some doubts you could have

You would think that by now people would have learnt one thing or two about placebo and how it can affect their perception...alas no. The same old issues over and over again, regardless the existence of FAQs, WIKIs, Double Blind Listening Tests etc etc.

I really can't see any new angle there...

Okay, I'll shut up for a while. It look's like I have a lot to learn.

...or just post ABX to sustain your claims.

I couldn't believe the post title when I read and my first thought was "Troll" but after reading some previous posts I see that you're probably being sincere although you really should read the forum rules.

Still to answer your question.

I would guess that you haven't been using lame to make your mp3 in the past and might have been using some nice GUI mp3 ripper which used an old buggy encoder in which case I'm not surprised that you can tell the difference. In fact if you look at the 128k listinging test you'll see that no encoder is tranparent at that rate regarless of hype. Other factors would also include the hardware (bad mp3 decoder or different signal path to the DAC).

Finally (and I think this is the one that's accounting for most of the difference) the music which you seem to have on mp3 is old which is probably why it's softer as it was mastered with a higher dynamic range (like movies). Newer music suffers from dynamic range compression which generally sounds "better" and louder when first heard but can become a little tiring after some time. This is also something you can look up on these forums.

Yeah, you about sum it up Zster.

Thanks Guys,

Sorry about my post, Looks like I've got a lot of reading (on here) to do !

But I am glad that some of you agree with me. It is obviously best not to mention any music types as that is really irrelavent and gets people side-tracked.

But I must say that I am VERY impressed with the number of replies I got and the quality of reply. This must be the best music forum there is !

Thankyou very much

Regards
Digby
NZ

Digmen1: This must be the best music forum there is !
It really is Digmen1.
Read it

Under the bridge downtown, is where I saw some trolls...

Ahem. Anyway, things like "a richer, rounder, fuller more ambient sound than my MP'3" really mean nothing. How can sound be rounder? How can it be more full and yet more ambient? I'll always be amazed at the different ways people can find to describe the placebo effect.