fourrobert13
Headphoneus Supremus
Over the years I've bought a lot of music either in physical form or digital downloads. I've never really noticed any quality differences among mp3s I've bought from various sources until recently when I started buying better quality source and IEMs. I literally could care less about the bit rates so I just bought whatever I wanted from whoever had it the cheapest.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is I'm noticing the quality of some of my VBR mp3s is not to good and I'm hearing this poor quality when using my FiiO X5II. I bought some albums from a legit source (emusic.com) last year. When I checked the bit rate with WMP and foobar2000, the highest bit rate is 189. I'm hearing either distortion or the compression through my EX1. I'm confused by this because I never noticed this with previous setups. To test this, I bought 320 bit rate mp3 of the same album and that distortion or compression noise was not there. Now with a couple others I tested the noise was still there, but I'm attributing it to the poor production because some of these albums are from the early 1980's and it's heavy and thrash metal.
I don't think I'm imagining this because I never noticed it until a few months ago after I got my current setup. Anyone have any insight or should i just chalk it up to the mp3 compression?
I mostly buy flac or physical CDs and then rip to flac and then convert to 320 CBR for the past couple years, but still buy mp3s, but now I'm concerned to buy VBR due to what im hearing.
Your thoughts?
Thanks
Anyway, what I'm getting at is I'm noticing the quality of some of my VBR mp3s is not to good and I'm hearing this poor quality when using my FiiO X5II. I bought some albums from a legit source (emusic.com) last year. When I checked the bit rate with WMP and foobar2000, the highest bit rate is 189. I'm hearing either distortion or the compression through my EX1. I'm confused by this because I never noticed this with previous setups. To test this, I bought 320 bit rate mp3 of the same album and that distortion or compression noise was not there. Now with a couple others I tested the noise was still there, but I'm attributing it to the poor production because some of these albums are from the early 1980's and it's heavy and thrash metal.
I don't think I'm imagining this because I never noticed it until a few months ago after I got my current setup. Anyone have any insight or should i just chalk it up to the mp3 compression?
I mostly buy flac or physical CDs and then rip to flac and then convert to 320 CBR for the past couple years, but still buy mp3s, but now I'm concerned to buy VBR due to what im hearing.
Your thoughts?
Thanks