Ok so after several years of holding out on the mp3/computer audio thing I have plunged in and am trying to get a grip on various things.
I have around 11k tracks now,which is most of my cds but not even a 25% of my albums, since as of right now I have no way to get my vinyl into my pc I find what I can and acquire it.
Now here is the question/problem some stuff is at 128kb and sounds fine, and yet some stuff at 192kb sounds lousy (it breathes like an old cassette), so what to do ? obviously when I obtain the ways and means to get my vinyl converted I will dump the ones that sound lousy,but is it worth it to also dump the ones that sound fine,I suppose I could listen and decide and I may just do that but Im talking around 1k worth of albums maybe more.
Why would 192 sound worse than 128 both being cbr?

You shouldn't hear encoding artifacts that obvious. What is your ripping/encoding process? Is it possible that it has subtly changed, besides the 128/192 change, that could affect the sound (perhaps an added plugin)?

Also, have you considered encoding to lossless instead of MP3, or at the very least, using VBR instead of CBR? I would highly recommend lossless if you can swing the disk space.

The problem is that cbr specifies a bitrate, not a quality. Some material requires more bits than others, but you have forced the same number of bits, regardless of whether it is sometimes too few and other times too many. The solution is to use vbr, which specifies a quality, regardless of whether that requires more or fewer bits.

If your time is valuable (and recording vinyl into your computer is very time consuming) then if at all possible I would use lossless encoding, from which you can make lossy copies whenever you need to fit them into a smaller space or play them on a DAP.

Generally, the encoder can have a large difference, especially if it was encoded early on in the life of mp3 technology.

Blade 192 vs. Lame 128?

...just a thought.

all my cds are flaced (is that a word) its the vinyl that poses the problem as I said when I "find" something I own on vinyl I grab it I really have no control over it hence the second part of my problem question,
When I get the ways and means to convert my vinyl I will do it
lossless
I was under the impression that a higher bitrate would ALWAYS be better I guess that is not the case?

Only if you make the mistaken assumption that all MP3 encoders are and always have been equal, which they aren't and most likely never will be.

Cheers, Slipstreem.

Vinyls are very RICH with lots of analogue sounds/noises the "limited" CD's in 16bit depth do not have. If you have a very noisy vinyl then the encoder does no longer suppress the noise and it becomes a part of the lossy encode.. maybe this explains a few things: there is simply not enough bitrate for the music as some bitrate is lost to encode the noise so your 192kbps encodes sound worse...

I've never tried encoding vinyl to MP3, but I would have thought that VBR would be the ideal encoding method under those circumstances. Once you've selected your target quality level with an appropriate '-V' setting in the case of LAME, the encoder is allowed to decide for itself how much bitrate it does or doesn't use dynamically to suit the source material.

Cheers, Slipstreem.

I don't think this is true.

Yes, vinyl is noisy (and CD is capable of transparently reproducing that sound, noise and all). The same encoder with default settings at 192 kbps will almost always reproduce the sound better that default settings at 128 kbps. Noisy source files don't seem to get their inherent noise reduced at low bitrates without simultaneously introducing worse artifacts (e.g. flanging) that make subjective quality usually worse (just IMHO - I haven't tried encoding a noisy source in CBR for years!).

I suspect that the use of stupid settings (like no low-pass filter) at 192 or a different and worse encoder for the 192 file is the more likely reason for the large file sounding worse. Perhaps the use of encspot by the OP would suggest reasons (e.g. no short blocks i.e. Xing (old), no low-pass, little use of bit reservoir, enforced LR dual-stereo - meaning 96 kbps for left and 96 kbps for right). I presume these files weren't ripped by you but were purchased/downloaded from online sources which don't specify the encoder settings. Many people have the wrong idea about settings and deliberately over-ride the lowpass filters etc. making nice graphs but poor sounding files.

Surely, as Linn used to say in their adverts, "rubbish in, rubbish out". Linn were selling expensive record decks at a time when most people who bought hi-fi equipment were paying through the nose for speakers and not caring so much about what they were sending to the speakers.

Maybe someone will tick me off for that -- I don't know how far Linn ever substantiated that in blind testing -- but in theory it seems a fair enough point to me. And maybe you've got a similar thing going on. What you're hearing, in some cases, might be the failure of the original recording not any failing in the codec used to encode it after you ripped it. If the original recording isn't good enough, you can't get it a lot better even if you do use more bits. You're just too far down the chain. You can't put back later what wasn't captured in the first place.

A 128kbps encoding of a CD that's a current release from someone like Deutsche Grammophon is going to sound better than a encoding of something from the 1930s be the bitrate what it may.

So by "finding" something he owns on vinyl and grabbing it, what wrat really means is that he is downloading MP3s from P2P sites that he feels justified in downloading because he already owns the vinyl. The take-home point here is that you should never take pirated MP3 qualities for granted. There was and still is a lot of misinformation and myth in that community.

I avoid P2P sites nowadays (and I transcribe my vinyl myself - and wrat doesn't have much of an excuse not to do so), but when I did use them, there was a LOT of badly-encoded music. Higher bitrates are only preferred because they are practically the only indicator available as to higher quality, but they are only a heuristic for quality, and not an accurate indicator of it.

It is so hard to read tone but whatever
http://mp3fiesta.com/
I wouldnt call that pirated. no p2p for me
there are a couple of other sites as above that I frequent as well ..not to mention the R.O.I.O as well

This looks like another of those sites that pays royalties to a Russian "agency" that has no connection to any music producer and passes on none of the fees to anyone. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

pdq, you are right

and congrats with 666'th post

That is funny that pdq's 666'th post was about being good and showing the truth behind these Russian websites and not something evil. Eh. I consider those Russian websites to be just as bad as illegal downloading. The artists still don't get any money (it would be pennies a year if they did), you still don't know the quality of those websites, and stuff that appears in other places often shows up on that website at the same time. Your best bet would be to use Amazon's mp3 download service. The files are encoded at either 256kbps CBR or VBR with the Lame mp3 encoder and it is perfectly legal not to mention that the artists actually get revenue.

I hate to continue this off topic line of discussion, but do you still find it objectionable to download from these sites when he already owns the original? The artists have already received compensation for their works.

The only objectionable thing in my opinion is that he's giving these sites money to continue their gray-area marketing operation.

What about the people involved with the production of the CD remaster? They're not being compensated.

I don't know anything about the internal workings of the music industry, but I would have guessed that they'd be paid by the labels (out of the hefty chunk of the revenue they took from the original vinyl recordings in the first place), and not on a per-unit-sold basis as their work is a one off job.

Please correct me if I'm wrong as this is purely speculation but I'd have guessed that this is how it works.

Good point. It takes a lot of people to provide that music in a digital format, not just the artist, and one should not forget that. Just because you own a work in an analog format does not mean that you have rights to that work in every incarnation, as it required many additional people to provide it in digital.

But do these people get long term royalties from CD sales? What about the legitimate digital channel, eg. iTunes (In which about 70% of the sale is royalties, and 10% total goes to the artists)?

In any case, I see your point.

I also found amusing the broken English at the site, and the curious use of the word "undermines".

(Thankfully I made it past post #666 - what a terrifying experience).

Here's the about page of the company, it's Ukranian.

http://mp3fiesta.com/publication/about.html

It was my understanding that these sites don't encode the files themselves but depend on their customers to encode and upload them in exchange for some free downloads. If that is the case then you could easily get some very low quality 192 kbps mp3 files.

Now there's a scary plan.

The most (in)famous of these sites, allofmp3.com, ripped the CD's themselves and stored their masters as either lossless or 380-something kbps freeformat mp3s, and would transcode on demand for buyers into their desired format.

I think you are correct about that. I think audio engineers and people involved with pressing the CDs just get a flat rate. I think that the producers and artists are the ones payed some percentage of the profits from the sales. It is a small percentage but still. That being said, people who get payed a flat fee are still having money taken away from them. By using they gray websites, you are taking money away from the record companies. The record companies then in tern reduce the salary of these people working on flat fees. Remember that the record companies take away from the bottom before they take away from the top. I am not sure how long this process takes or if it is serious but still, it can theoretically happen. That is why I have stayed away from these types of websites for a long time. I would rather spend $0.70 more a song, get a known quality, and know that the artists and other people who worked on the album will be getting their money.



I think you are right. I remember the days of allofmp3 and many of their files were encoded at 384kbps with Lame mp3. They considered that the "source" mp3s. They then transcoded down to whatever setting you wanted. Later on they started having FLAC sources (or so they said) but there were still many albums in which the source was 384kbps mp3's. Transcoding down isn't my idea of high quality audio and definitely not something that I would pay for no matter how inexpensive.