wma 128kbps -> not good?

[EBisky]

I do 192 on all my songs now...You can hear the difference in some songs between 128 and 192. All depends on the song really.

-E

 

[periurban]

OK, I carried out the experiment I described in my last post -

"You can do a simple test by putting a 128kb file and a VBR file of the same song into an audio editor like Audition. You'll be able to see the differences in the waveform, and if you cut between the two files in the multitrack editor you'll probably hear it.

Guess what? I couldn't hear what I was talking about!

I think I've been experiencing some badly encoded material from my friends, on which I can hear the problems I was talking about.

I took a straight wav file from ExactAudioCopy and a VBR file produced by EAC/LAME. Then I made a bog standard 128kbps file using Musicmatch.

I put them all into Audition and cut between them, playing each short section of the track one after the other. I can't hear the difference between the wav file and the 128kbps file!

Am I going crazy? Have I encoded everything at too high a bit rate?

Anyone else care to do the test and see if they can hear a difference?

 

[notnormal]

What sort of headphones and equipment are you using. If your using decent equipment, then 128kbs mp3 will sound like it's being sung under water. Well okay it's not that bad, but it should lack a crispness to it.

 

[iancraig10]

128 is seriously lacking to my ears. Funnily enough, it's even worse through speakers where the sound becomes so dull, it sounds like a cassette tape being played on a cheap machine.

Now we have 20 and 40 gig players, go mad - use the space for cleaner music, it's kinder to your ears. It's easily changed.

 

[Lisa]

You know what's weird about this 128kb mp3s. When I was testing mp3 quality I tested the same song encoded at 128 kb, APS, 320kb and wav. On a NAD CDplayer, Headsave classic and a pair of MS-1s. Now that isn't the best system around but you should be able to hear if 128 kb is crap and sounds like underwater singing or cassette tapes on cheap stereos. Right?
But the strange thing is that I could hardly hear the difference between 128kb and the wav. Yes when listening carefully the wav was better, especially in the bass. But to say it was anywhere near to horrible, no I honestly can't say that.
I'm sure with a better setup the differences will be more apparent and anyone would want to listen to the better encoded file. But I think that this bad reputation of 128kbps mp3 is not entirely fair. Especially if you're listening on the go with something like a PX100.

 

[iancraig10]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lisa Especially if you're listening on the go with something like a PX100.

Exactly. I suppose if you encode at a bitrate good enough for what the music is being played on, then fine. I use 128 if I need a load of music to play in the car via one of those tape cassette thingies.

I even listen to downloads at silly low rates because that's all that's available but I would rather have a clean sounding recording to listen to if I could get it.

The problems come later if you upgrade your gear and you haven't got the original CD's to re-rip. Maybe when that time comes, we'll all be listening to something else ... who knows.

 

[Aschlon4]

Well i ripped a Staind cd and a Deftones cd to Monkey's Audio codec (ape) with the jetaudio software..adn then ripped again with flac..which people here say is the best compresed file format (?!)so anyways..i maxed out all the settings and for some rason the ape files just sounded better..cleaner..and the flac sounded grungy and crappy, like 128KBPS although it was 1.1KBPS..
how does that has anything to do with the topic you ask ?! well from personal expirience the ape format is better quality and i wonder what players support it..
damn ! i hijacked a thread..

 

[Publius]

You should try SHN sometime. It is considered the best "rocking-out" lossless file format. Like Grados.

 

[blessingx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Publius You should try SHN sometime. It is considered the best "rocking-out" lossless file format. Like Grados.

Not sure if this a joke, but why and who considers it the "rocking-out" lossless file format?

 

[notnormal]

If your using lossless, then they should all sound the same. Hence, they're lossless. If they sound different, then either your ripping something incorrectly or there's something wrong with the software/codec that is being used.

Flac is popular because it's open sourced and uses integer arithmetics so it's faster at decoding and less processer intensive. However, it's compression ratio is not as good as the other formats that use floating point arithmetics., but it's only a minor difference in file size. See hydrogenaudio.org for more information.

 

[periurban]

I'm listening on a Yamaha SW1000XG Audio card, running through its analogue output into a Mission Cyrus 1 amp and Grado SR60s.

When my pal gives me 128kbps files of his favourite heavy metal bands his files sound crap. There's that ringing harmonic on everything. yet, when I did my test, the differences were minimal.

Something strange is going on.

 

[notnormal]

Could you be more specific? Which music were you testing. Some types of music may actually work well at 128kbs. Did you use lame, and if so what settings? Can you also post some samples so that others may have a look?

 

[periurban]

I tested in Audition using the opening of Smells Like Teen Spirit. I thought the cymbals would show up badly at 128kbps.

The LAME settings I used for the VBR file were - output -joint stereo, quality - high quality, max VBR rate - 320kbps, use VBR high quality.

To make the 128kbps file I used MusicMatch Jukebox 7.1 at the default setting.

I've actually gone back to check the files again, and at about 3:30 theres a hi-hat overlaid on a subtle guitar riff, just before the line that starts "I forget....", and I can hear some cycling around the hi-hat!

Hooray! I thought I was going mad.

But where I'm hearing this effect most of all is on everything my pal encodes! I might have to have a word with him.....

 

[RedLeader]

Personally, I can't stand 128 wma or mp3. When I put the new components into my car, I had to stop listening to my mp3 cds and listen to the original media. When I got my new home amp, I had to re-rip everything from 160mp3 to q10 ogg. I wish that I couldn't hear the compression, it would save me so much time and money, but alas it is a problem I was born with, and am successfully combating, thanks to the help of folks like you

 

[periurban]

OK, got it cracked.

I used the spectral display in Audition, which revealed, no compression for the wav file; some compresion above 16k for VBR; total compression above 16k for 128kbps (MusicMatch); but some kind of terrible progressive degradation of the sound from about 10k up when using Magix, which is what my pal uses.

That's why I could hear upper range artefacts. The spectral display looked like someone poured acid all over it.

Moral of story - check your pal's encoding before you tar all 128kbps coding with the same brush.