buffalomatt
100+ Head-Fier
I found a trick using Google Play Music (GPM) to upscale my lower resolution MP3's to 320kbps. I'm not sure if anyone has posted something like this before, but I found it helpful so I thought I'd share.
I have a pretty large collection of lower res MP3's from years ago when I was more worried about space than sound quality. Now that the opposite is true, I wanted to re-rip my CD collection, but over the years I have either lost certain CDs, or they have been scratched etc. So I was trying to figure out a way to replace the lower res MP3's with 320kbps versions.
That's when I had my idea about using Google Play Music. If I understand this correctly, when you "upload" your MP3's to Google Play Music, it actually matches the song to their version of the MP3 on their servers. This is the version of the song that you stream at 320kbps. But when you download the song, it will download a version of the MP3 that closest matches the bit rate of the one you uploaded. For example, if you uploaded a 128kbps MP3, you will download a 128kbps MP3.
But what if you could trick it to thinking you are uploading a 320kbps MP3? So here is what I did:
1) Start with a 128kbps MP3 and then using foobar2000 re-encode it to 320kbps
2) Then upload that fake 320kbps MP3 to GPM
3) Download the song from GPM and it should be an actual 320kbps MP3
I used Spek to test the songs and here are my tests to show the MP3 in all 3 stages:
The original 128kbps MP3:
The "fake" 320kbps MP3 that has been re-encoded in Foobar:
The 320kbps MP3 downloaded from GPM:
I have a pretty large collection of lower res MP3's from years ago when I was more worried about space than sound quality. Now that the opposite is true, I wanted to re-rip my CD collection, but over the years I have either lost certain CDs, or they have been scratched etc. So I was trying to figure out a way to replace the lower res MP3's with 320kbps versions.
That's when I had my idea about using Google Play Music. If I understand this correctly, when you "upload" your MP3's to Google Play Music, it actually matches the song to their version of the MP3 on their servers. This is the version of the song that you stream at 320kbps. But when you download the song, it will download a version of the MP3 that closest matches the bit rate of the one you uploaded. For example, if you uploaded a 128kbps MP3, you will download a 128kbps MP3.
But what if you could trick it to thinking you are uploading a 320kbps MP3? So here is what I did:
1) Start with a 128kbps MP3 and then using foobar2000 re-encode it to 320kbps
2) Then upload that fake 320kbps MP3 to GPM
3) Download the song from GPM and it should be an actual 320kbps MP3
I used Spek to test the songs and here are my tests to show the MP3 in all 3 stages:
The original 128kbps MP3:
The "fake" 320kbps MP3 that has been re-encoded in Foobar:
The 320kbps MP3 downloaded from GPM:
