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how do make my music better?

post #1 of 22
9/8/07 at 1:23pm
Thread Starter 
hey, if this isn't the right section, don't hesitate to move it

anyway, is there anyway I can make the mp3 files on my computer sound better? I know about bitrates but I heard converting say 128kps to 192kps will make it sound worse than before

so is there any way to make my music sound better?
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post #2 of 22
9/8/07 at 1:25pm
re rip from the source in a higher bit rate. TBH there isnt much more that you can do, 128kbps is just overall crappy. just re rip your collection.
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post #3 of 22
9/8/07 at 1:39pm
Like TW said, you'll need a re-rip at 192 or whatever bitrate you want (*cough 320 cough*), because converting 128 to 192 just recompresses the file and makes it even worse than it was before, since you're stretching the bits you already have to stream so fast. Or something like that. There is, however, Creative's 24 bit crystalizer which claims to make bad sounding mp3s sound better than cd quality. I have a creative soundcard, and I don't agree with the claims, but feel free to investigate for yourself.
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post #4 of 22
9/8/07 at 1:53pm
If you bought them off of itunes or some other site there isn't much you can do.

If they're all MP3's that you ripped from CD's definitely re-rip them. BUT don't re-rip them at 192 or 320. If you have the space, re-rip them in a lossless format, like FLAC or whatever. Then you can use a program like foobar to convert all the lossless files to say 192kbs, while preserving the lossless files. Then in a few years when you want to up the quality of your mp3's again you can just re-convert the lossless files into 320kbs. And eventually storage on DAP's will reach a point where you can carry around your entire music collection in lossless format.
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post #5 of 22
9/8/07 at 1:57pm
A good alternative is to use LAME to rip your cds to V0. It should be lower size than 320 and is lossless (I think). If you purchased your MP3's, there's not much you can do. The sound information has already been lost in the compression.
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post #6 of 22
9/8/07 at 2:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by rb67 View Post
A good alternative is to use LAME to rip your cds to V0. It should be lower size than 320 and is lossless (I think). If you purchased your MP3's, there's not much you can do. The sound information has already been lost in the compression.
Do you mean in MP3 format? I didn't think there was such a thing as lossless MP3? That'd be nice though.
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post #7 of 22
9/8/07 at 2:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tw33k2514 View Post
re rip from the source in a higher bit rate.
Like he said!
The encoder threw away lots of data when it compressed your files, and there are no way to get this back. So you have to re-rp to a higher bitrate MP3, or perhaps even go with a lossless encoder (like FLAC, Apple Lossless, WavPack, ..)
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post #8 of 22
9/8/07 at 2:55pm
Thread Starter 
i should have mentioned, i got all my music from sailing the high seas [ie, piracy]

so should i just convert to flac and then down to 320kps or something?
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post #9 of 22
9/8/07 at 3:00pm
A lossy format losses the info forever. If you do not have the CD or a lossless file to play with, a 128 kbps mp3 CANNOT be improved.
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post #10 of 22
9/8/07 at 3:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by quiksliver View Post
so should i just convert to flac and then down to 320kps or something?
No, that would be a totally waste of storage space.
The encoder threw away data when you/someone else encoded the 128Kbps MP3 files. This data can never be gained back.
Transcoding your files to FLAC will make the files about 4-5 times larger, but contain the exact same audio data. Then encoding to MP3 a second time will throw away even more data, resulting in worse sound than the original 128Kbps files...
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post #11 of 22
9/8/07 at 4:01pm
If you already have 128, that`s it. You will never get better SQ from it, it`s lossy.
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post #12 of 22
9/8/07 at 4:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jesselussier View Post
Do you mean in MP3 format? I didn't think there was such a thing as lossless MP3? That'd be nice though.
there's no such thing, mp3 is always lossy. v0 is the highest variable bitrate, but it's still lossy.
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post #13 of 22
9/8/07 at 4:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by quiksliver View Post
i should have mentioned, i got all my music from sailing the high seas [ie, piracy]

so should i just convert to flac and then down to 320kps or something?
Yes, if you feel cold That will give your CPU something to do. But will worsen you mp3 quality as someone else mentioned before. The only way to better quality than what you have is to get the CDs, flac or better quality compressed formats (mp3, vorbis).
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post #14 of 22
9/8/07 at 4:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by quiksliver View Post
i should have mentioned, i got all my music from sailing the high seas [ie, piracy]
Oh, and by the way that is not piracy (repeat after me: "not piracy"), it is demoing. That's why it is so low quality (f.ck itunes). If you want it better buy the CDs and rip to your pleasure.
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post #15 of 22
9/8/07 at 6:06pm
Or just download in higher quality... which is still not piracy. But it's fun to call it that. It causes global warming and stuff.

It should be possible to improve the perceived SQ of lossy files with DSP though. If nothing else, EQ can do wonders.
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