[ucrags84]

A couple of songs like Colbie Caillat's "I never Told You"

& Lady Antellbellum's "Need You Now" sound pretty damn good on my computer. (320 kbps mp3 LAME).

Instrument separation and overall soundtage is decently wide with my X5s, unamped.

When I put these songs on the my Sony NWZ A729, they sound very narrow and tinny. The soundstage is squished, frankly it is surprising how much the sound has changed. Other songs managed to sound okay on the DAP ( also unamped), just a few of them drop off the cliff.

EQ'ing does not help. I refuse to get a separate amp, because I do not like fiddling with extra cables and equipment right now.

Any ideas as to what is going on?

 

[ucrags84]

Legitimate question, site full of wonderful and knowledgeable members who visit regularly.


Any answers?

 

[tds101]

The Sony dap's can enhance the faults of some encoded tracks. Re-rip/re-encode the tracks and see if it makes a difference on the playback.

This is what I do when I have the same issue w/some tracks, as sometimes they just didn't encode correctly.

 

[Young Spade]

Yea the tracks might have been encoded badly initially or somewhere down the road. As Ny said, try re-encoding/ripping the track and see how that goes

 

[ucrags84]

So it's already encoded at the maximum bitrate. Try a different encoder for example? Thanks

 

[a_recording]

Have you got any of the various "enhancements" turned on? Ie: DSEE, Clear Stereo, Dynamic Normalizer? I find that even the dynamic normalizer seems to diminish and compress the dynamic range of tracks (which isn't really supposed to happen, as it's meant to only do volume levelling *between* tracks.) Try turning everything off including EQ and see if that makes any difference at all - it did for me on my S739.

 

[tds101]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ucrags84 /img/forum/go_quote.gif So it's already encoded at the maximum bitrate. Try a different encoder for example? Thanks

Not try a different encoder, just re-rip or re-encode (if you have the tunes stored as Lossless) a few test tracks and see if they sound better.

Also, are you using a stock iTunes type program, or is LAME (if mp3) your codec of choice?

Anyways, test a few songs out, and see if it makes a difference to your ears.

 

[ucrags84]

These were songs given to me by my friend. He used some trial program and a LAME encoder I think.

I two free Amazon song codes, got them from the online store. They sound much better than the ripped versions on the computer and the Sony Portable, interesting.

Well, problem solved, thanks.

 

[Young Spade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ucrags84 /img/forum/go_quote.gif These were songs given to me by my friend. He used some trial program and a LAME encoder I think. I two free Amazon song codes, got them from the online store. They sound much better than the ripped versions on the computer and the Sony Portable, interesting. Well, problem solved, thanks.

Wow that is interesting; I would think that if the downloaded versions of songs (what is the kbs anyway? 256?) are clearer then the ones you had at a high encoding, you might have been using a rip that was bad to begin with.

Once you rip (or encode) to something low, no matter what you do to that file it will still sound the same. Sadly with encoding it's a one way street in quality (unless you're going from lossless to lossless).

 

[tds101]

Yup, Lossless to Lossless is fine, but any re-encoding between lossy codecs degrades the files quality.

Also, the songs might have been ripped w/a inferior encoder, FHG perhaps??? In Explorer in the files folder: Right click>Properties>Audio Properties, look down the list to Encoder and it'll tell you what encoder was used.

 

[ucrags84]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nywytboy68 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yup, Lossless to Lossless is fine, but any re-encoding between lossy codecs degrades the files quality. Also, the songs might have been ripped w/a inferior encoder, FHG perhaps??? In Explorer in the files folder: Right click>Properties>Audio Properties, look down the list to Encoder and it'll tell you what encoder was used.

Could have been ripped a lower bitrate, and then re-ripped up to 320. So someone lied about the last source, the Codec was the latest version of LAME, which is legit. Yeah I know re-encoding between lossy won't do much, introduces the limiting factor.