[grancasa]

I have a large collection of music in mp3 format on my computer, and I often just throw it on random when I just was some backround music, and don't want to get too distracted by my refernece system (sometimes I just have to stop whatever I'm doing and listen to the music comming out of my setup... it can be that good)

What I've noticed is that I can easliy tell when a mp3 has been encoded at a higher than average rate (most of my mp3's are 128 kbps/44kHZ) Whenever a 192 kbps or similer "hi-quality" mp3 comes up, the difference, especially in the upper ranges, is dramatic. Do other people notice this with their mp3's?

As a side note, do people know of any resources for high quality mp3 rips/shn files? Please PM me with the info, as the mods don't usually like file sharring discussed in the forums. Thank you.

 

[Audio-Me]

the difference sure is obvious, even with sound blaster.

mp3 sucks, (jk, it's not that bad IF done right) if there was an mp3 player that had a better DAC and output than my pana570, I'd jump all over it.

why not rip your own? download eac and lame, it's practically click and wait once you set it up.

 

[ClearYourMind]

Yes I notice... and usually I try to avoid MP3's lower then 192.

I use the P2P client called Piolet when I'm looking for high quality MP3's. It's a client that only shares MP3's. Has a lot of users, I always find the songs I'm looking for. Other times I use Shareaza 1.8 and once in a great while i'll use Kazaa Lite. Just be picky about the file you download, you can almost always find the file in a higher quality. I remember when 128 was top quality and it was hard to find that. Now 320 or whatever the number is, is the high quality standered.

ShareLive.com seems promising for downloading albums and such. Although I wasn't succefull with it, I just used it as a source to find the track names of the songs and got them via differn't mediums.

There is a new wave of people who use ogg files that use what is called Uberstandered. It's primarly found on Shareazaa. Just do a search on Shareaza on " Uberstandered ". It's only really known to the Gnutella community, almost exclusivly to Shareaza.

Remember you didn't hear this from me

I personally like .OGG files much better then .MP3, .OGG files I find, sound much better and are still rather compact.

 

[JahJahBinks]

MPC and AAC may offer better quality sound than 320 MP3 at comparative or smaller bitrates.

 

[ClearYourMind]

That might be true, but it's pretty hard to find those. That's why I like .OGG, it has alot of room and potential to grow, it's open source, it's always getting better, there not that hard to find compared to other formats and alot of media players (software) support it.

 

[grancasa]

Quote:

Originally posted by Audio&Me why not rip your own? download eac and lame, it's practically click and wait once you set it up.

Well, I thought it was obvious. I'd like to listen to music that I, um, don't have in my possession at this moment.

 

[jimbobuk]

Quote:

I personally like .OGG files much better then .MP3, .OGG files I find, sound much better and are still rather compact.

Ogg is a great format.. and sure its open source nature can not be underestimated... but its very much targetted at the lower bitrates .. as such its best compared with other codecs at the 60-100k range... up to possibly 150k too tho MPC is scaling down to lower bitrates all the time..

ANyways i just wanted to counter your opinion above... for purely quality reasons, ogg is not really better than mp3... or let me correct that further... its not better than lame --alt-preset mp3s... MPC is the most highly tuned codec around, and basically just sounds the best.. especially if you can afford a minimum bitrate of about 175k to get the standard VBR working... at this bitrate it sounds better than 320k mp3s.. yes, even Lame AP ones...

Lame tho is also a highly tuned codec.. sure mp3 has problems but the altpreset settings counteract mp3's inherent problems by throwing bits at it when neccessary...

There are a collection of difficult to encode samples available that have been used to tune lame and other codecs over the years (MPC and ogg included) ... some mp3 just can't do, these represent like 0.3% of all music... my reasoning for ogg being inferior to mp3 is that ogg struggles on some of these difficult samples which can't be helped until further improvements are made but and here is the difference... OGG also fails on a large collection of samples that other codecs have no problems with.. this includes a kind of swishing, pumping artefact along with soundstaging problems...

Basically.. if you want to encode all your CDs.. use altpreset standard / extreme lame mp3s.. they'll cope the best you can hope with diff samples and deal with everything else flawlessly... also you can play them back on hardware players.... MPC just copes flawlessly with everything but thats its calling card... great reproduction.. there are very few samples that cause problems with MPC.. i don't actually know of any, but there are some that result in minor problems.. OGG tho has its problem files that it shares with other codecs like mp3 but also will randomly add in dodgy effects in the middle of songs where u wouldn't expect them..

I've tried a bit of ogg, and i love the idea of it.. i'm sure it will improve over time.. when they nail down lower bitrate stuff they will be able to have a go at the mid to high bitrates... until then I'd say your better off sticking with mp3 lame APS/X or MPC... AAC is good.. not tried it too much tho.. hardware support isn't really there yet, and its no where near as consistent as MPC... at the end of the day its all about that... consistency.. and lame alt-preset mp3s are more consistently higher quality than OGG..

 

[chillysalsa]

Yes, there's a definite improvement for upper freq.'s at higher bit rates. I've found the bigger differences between encoders though - every so often I get a file that sounds just horrible at 128k, even though the same song from another person at 128k sounds much better.

Some types of music it doesn't make as much of a difference when there isn't a lot of high-freq's. As a point of interest, I put up 128, 160, and 192 rips of part of Kind of Blue on my Yahoo Group - See "Files", KOB Ver. 1, 2, 3, 4. See what you can pick out between the encoding rates.

 

[jimbobuk]

try out these samples.. i described them earlier... these are known test samples that are difficult to encode

http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/gpsycho/quality.html

in particular this one

http://lame.sourceforge.net/download/samples/fatboy.wav

will sound awful on lower bitrates of mp3s.. the artefact (preecho) is still audible at 320k tho its very quiet by then...

 

[chillysalsa]

Quote:

Originally posted by jimbobuk in particular this one http://lame.sourceforge.net/download/samples/fatboy.wav will sound awful on lower bitrates of mp3s.. the artefact (preecho) is still audible at 320k tho its very quiet by then...

Very interesting... that file is a heart-breaker for Fraunhofer too. I can clearly hear the artefacts on 320k... I've posted the MP3s on my YahooGroup.

 

[jimbobuk]

yeah... try it out with ogg too.. dunno how it copes with it... mpc copes fine...

suprised you hear it so clearly with FHG.. fhg is supposed to have better pre-echo handling than lame (at lower bitrates) ...

i've not tried it out recently but if you do

--alt-preset standard
--alt-preset extreme
--alt-preset insane

on it and you will see ... i'm sure they should all cope quite well with it.. it shouldn't be clearly audible at insane quality which is 320k .. it hurt my ears to hear the problem at 320k lame last time i tried...

 

[punosion]

So...what's wrong with the Fatboy sample? That sample is so damn dirty, who gives a care what kind of artifacting is going on

Maybe I need to compare with an original CD (which I haven't listened to for a while), but I can't because mine was stolen

 

[JahJahBinks]

Quote:

Originally posted by punosion So...what's wrong with the Fatboy sample? That sample is so damn dirty, who gives a care what kind of artifacting is going on

Agree, I am damned if I listen to that kind of stuff.

 

[jimbobuk]

the fatboy sample is the first 30 seconds of fatboy slims kalifornia track off of his first album... I agree its a horrible sound...

whats wrong with it is its a great tester for preecho.. it allows anyone to hear the problems mp3 can have with preechos... its to be used to demonstrate to people who claim 128k mp3s are good enough for them...
This artefact, preecho is audible a collection of other samples and sounds too... anything with sharp transients, and sounds that repeat this transient a few times are incredibly difficult for mp3 to deal with... castanets is another sample on there and is relevant to those that listen to chilled acoustic style music...

fatboy is a convenient sample that basically shows you if you like electronic music (as in electronica, dance etc) then mp3 has to be used with good presets.. preferably lame.. there are a load of difficult electronica tracks out there.. aphex twin has created a load single handedly... Electronica is one of my favourite genres and as such i use a codec that copes with all of what it can throw at the encoder.. namely MPC...

Looking further into this will reveal a whole load of samples available.. whenever a new one is discovered encoders try to beat the problem... firstly u need a group of people who can ABX it blindly... fatboy is obvious on headphones, not so with speakers.. in fact unless you have really decent speakers you may even struggle to tell the difference...

The earlier comments about mp3 and its high frequency performance is valid when really low bitrates are used, and aggressive filters are employed to remove sound leaving enough for bitrate saturation to not reveal lots of blatantly obvious artefacts.. but usually filters are far less intrusive... i just wanted to point out that lossy encoders in general aren't the same as lesser quality hifi equipment... the sound is generally not mis-shaped as equipment can do.. so descriptions like brightness, darkness, muddying is less valid, aside from the latter one with respect to really transient sounds...

Finally the fact is that given a reasonable amount of bits... described by what bitrate

--alt-preset standard

creates on a particular file (around 170-190k depending on the source) in general mp3 can create a reasonable copy of a sound... problems occur on only small segments of a small selection of songs.. so simply saying mp3s of this bitrate sound ok on this type of music isn't really capturing the potential problems u may find... and if you are intending to encode your entire music collection you are best to test target bitrates on difficult samples to see if you could put up with those kind of artefact sounds in the middle of a random song in your collection... if you can, then go ahead and encode at that setting.. if not.. upgrade..

as I assume we all use headphones on here, i'd say just use the APS settings... the bitrates are low.. lower than 192k usually... and the sound is superb...

 

[punosion]

Well, I can hear MP3 artifacting on other examples, and bad quality MP3's really jump out at me, I just don't hear what would be so distracting about artifacts in that Fatboy sample.

Maybe if you were experiencing pre-echo on the quiet stutters at the beginning of even Bucephalus Bouncing Ball...oh, what a sweet track that is...

EDIT: To clarify, as some people say, "YMMV"...and it really is true.