[royalcrown]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you are concerned about quality then buy them from Amazon or rip them yourself from a CD using the LAME mp3 encoder. There is a lot of crummy quality mp3 files on the p2p networks. Files that have been transcoded several times over shared by people who have no concern about actual audio quality. It used to be that 128 kbs was all good. Then along came private groups that would only accept 256 kbs or better. But in order to get accepted in the group you need to share out GB of files of 256 kbs or better. But what if your collection was all lower bitrate? Well, just run your collection through Xing and convert them to 256 kbs. Instant 256 kbs collection. Woot! Now 320 kbs is hip and the same kind of transcoding from lower bitrates still goes on. If you have even an inkling of a concern about audio quality you don't get your music from limewire or any similar p2p network.

I'm not going to discuss this in any detail due to forum rules, but there are several ways to get high quality music off of the Internet, you just have to play the game and get an invite to a snobbish elite bittorrent site or the like. I honestly haven't come across a private music torrent tracker that allows transcoding.

That said, for all transcoded files, however you may obtain them, you can use a program like Audition to analyze the spectrum of the file to tell whether or not a file has been transcoded (usually by the lowpass filter applied to various encoding settings).

 

[Backwards_E]

Haha yea it's perfectly legal here but rules are rules huh? Have never heard of private torrent sites, wouldn't that really limit options?

EDIT: well your right they are snobby and hard to get invited into, you need to have friends that are users already.

 

[ILikeMusic]

One does not really need to be invited to a private group as there are a zillion public torrents encoded in FLAC. Or at least, that's what I've heard...

 

[cornman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ILikeMusic /img/forum/go_quote.gif One does not really need to be invited to a private group as there are a zillion public torrents encoded in FLAC. Or at least, that's what I've heard...

That's true but how would you know if it is a real lossless file or if it has been transcoded from a lower bitrate?

 

[Umphrey]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cornman /img/forum/go_quote.gif That's true but how would you know if it is a real lossless file or if it has been transcoded from a lower bitrate?

Use audiochecker. Audiochecker - Home . It's based on auCDtect with plugins for common lossless files. I've tested it by encoding a wav at 256k and then re-encoding it to flac--it picked this up successfully 10 times out of 10.

 

[ILikeMusic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cornman /img/forum/go_quote.gif That's true but how would you know if it is a real lossless file or if it has been transcoded from a lower bitrate?

Simple... I just send a sample to one of the many here who can 'easily' tell the difference...

Hey Umphrey thanks for the Audiochecker link. That's a lot easier way to use the aucdtect engine than converting stuff to .wav manually.

 

[DistortingJack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFF /img/forum/go_quote.gif It really comes down to mastering quality and the encoders. I use an mp3 encoder that sounds lossless at 128kps cbr but this only because the encoder is a great one. FLAC is another great option especially with a rockboxed ipod.

I can't tell the difference between 320kps AAC and Wav, to be perfectly honest. But 128kps MP3? It doesn't matter how good the encoder is, it's NOT going to sound like lossless. You're throwing 92% of the audio information to the bin. Just No.
Mastering quality has nothing to do with mp3 quality. If anything, very poorly mastered music will suffer less than high-quality mastered ones.
The thing that makes the biggest difference is the harmonic complexity of the audio file. A soft piano solo or just a vocal track could sound the same on a high quality mp3 encoding, but just try crisp cymbal and drum recordings, and you'll tell the difference straight away.

 

[LFF]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DistortingJack /img/forum/go_quote.gif I can't tell the difference between 320kps AAC and Wav, to be perfectly honest. But 128kps MP3? It doesn't matter how good the encoder is, it's NOT going to sound like lossless. You're throwing 92% of the audio information to the bin. Just No. Mastering quality has nothing to do with mp3 quality. If anything, very poorly mastered music will suffer less than high-quality mastered ones. The thing that makes the biggest difference is the harmonic complexity of the audio file. A soft piano solo or just a vocal track could sound the same on a high quality mp3 encoding, but just try crisp cymbal and drum recordings, and you'll tell the difference straight away.

Yes, it does matter how good the encoder is and mastering quality does play a role as well. I've had to prove this time and time again with so many members on many a different forum. You are right in that harmonic complexity does make the biggest difference with most encoders. Most, but not all.

 

[zippy2001]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFF /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yes, it does matter how good the encoder is and mastering quality does play a role as well. I've had to prove this time and time again with so many members on many a different forum. You are right in that harmonic complexity does make the biggest difference with most encoders. Most, but not all.

You are correct, I have heard for myself some amazing sounding 128k MP3s and I have to say that this must be based upon the encoder. I've heard others that are complete rubbish. I can tell the difference between even a well encoded MP3 and lossless, but the differences are not night and day.

I have done some ABX comparisons with Foobar recently and you really have to listen carefully to hear the slight differences.

 

[jung]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFF /img/forum/go_quote.gif It really comes down to mastering quality and the encoders. I use an mp3 encoder that sounds lossless at 128kps cbr but this only because the encoder is a great one.

Which encoder? Thanks.

 

[paaj]

probably more important: what music

 

[iriverdude]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Umphrey /img/forum/go_quote.gif Use audiochecker. Audiochecker - Home . It's based on auCDtect with plugins for common lossless files. I've tested it by encoding a wav at 256k and then re-encoding it to flac--it picked this up successfully 10 times out of 10.

I reencoded my own 1.1.0 flac to 1.2.1 flac and afterwards it said 75% probability the track was lossy conversion.

 

[mbd2884]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Backwards_E /img/forum/go_quote.gif Just wanted to ask what is the best way to get best sound quality mp3 files. I do download alot of music via limewire, and have no clue how to tell good quality songs from not so good. Thanks for the help guys.

First off, Limeware is terrible. Get rid of it, just for the safety of your computer.

If you are going to be doing acquiring music in that fashion, do your research, I won't help as it is against forum rules.

Next buying CD, or if you get a hold of lossless. Use LAME. Set the LAME encoder to V0, VBR 245. Slow, highest quality setting.

You are done, now you got the best sounding mp3 possible.

If from using a CD look for instruction for EAC, just google it.

 

[nirvanaxp]

I can say that most tracks from limewire and similar are bad quality. You never know which tracks have been converted by someone to get it onto a music player, then shared and converted again. I haven't used limewire in years because of security issues. Using itunes to get an aac or mp3 rip of a cd is not a bad way to go. If you want to be super cool and get the ultimate mp3 sound quality rip with EAC and use the LAME external encoder, by all means do it!

 

[LnxPrgr3]

The fun game with files of unknown origin is determining whether each sounds bad because it was:

• transcoded from a 64kbps WMA to 256kbps mp3,
• recorded from the radio, or
• just a terrible sounding track to begin with.

At least once you've heard the CD you know the answer for sure