Would people please upload MP3 at 320 kbps...

Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 10:38 am

OG wrote:

FLAC!! Then you can convert it to whatever you like, but have a good as cd version to, well, burn to cd, or store on a dvd. Your ears will thank you for it. Laughing

Yes, totally agree with you on that too guys, .mp3 is good for the ipod I guess, but if independent groups, want us to hear them in their glory, Flac is the only way to go. Only problem is I can hear the newbs typing about 30,000 posts on the forum saying how do I play Flac? Wink

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 8:55 pm

I think 192 in just fine

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:06 pm

192 kbps is good enough for me!

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:00 pm

there is no difference beyond 128kbs. If you have a good ear for different pitches (like real musicians) than you might be able to tell a difference in a 160kbs file. Anything higher is a waste of disk space. Sound quality in an mp3 comes from the way it was encoded or where you downloaded it from.

PS....how do you play a flac? Laughing

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 11:25 pm

As a student of the audio arts (4 wasted years in recording) I can tell you that yes, you can hear a substantial difference between 192 and 320 if you listen to music that way. Audio is like Visual, If an artist looks at a painting, he sees it differently than a layman, examining brush stroke and composition rather than just saying "That there is a perrty pickshure"

As an audiophile I enjoy hearing the way the musician intended it to be heard... as a dude who loves jogging to an iPod I could care less.

Give and take, Though I like the idea of the higher bitrate, I'll take what I can get.

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 12:18 am

Vizzible wrote:

there is no difference beyond 128kbs. If you have a good ear for different pitches (like real musicians) than you might be able to tell a difference in a 160kbs file. Anything higher is a waste of disk space. Sound quality in an mp3 comes from the way it was encoded or where you downloaded it from.

PS....how do you play a flac? Laughing

This may hold true if your listening source is a pair of cheap headphones or some mid priced active pc speakers, where the limiting factor of the quality is more than just the bitrate of the audio. Listen to the same tracks on a proper stereo, i.e. a quality amplifier, and a quality pair of speakers, and you eliminate the chance of the hardware as being a factor in the quality of playback, and you most certainly can tell the difference between low bitrate mp3 and a high bitrate mp3, and in some cases between a high bitrate mp3 and a lossless source such as flac or wav. The problem is with most people is that they may never have heard the music they listen to in a lossless format, so cannot tell wether it is any different from the original. Its like if you bought a book that had pages missing, the story might still make sense, but never having read the book before, you dont realise exactly how much information from the book is missing.

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 9:31 am

I too reencode all my music to 192kbps--it gives me more space and I can't hear any difference anyway, nor has anyone I've spoken to.

Doesn't make sense to enlarge the file size for a few notes that might be clearer.

Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:36 am

With the latest LAME encoders you can't tell the difference between a 256 and a 320kbps file. Indeed, the new --vbr-new routines give better quality at even smaller filesizes. Encoding at 320k is overkill - either go for --vbr-new V 2 (which is indistinguishable from the CD) or use a lossless codec if you are that anal.

Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2008 11:49 am

VBR works much better than CBR. I find myself ripping my very, very small collection of CD's onto VBR, or .FLAC. Lately i've been running low on room (but I did find a 40GB hidden away that I forgot about Razz

) so I normally attempt to stick to VBR these days.

On my speakers (Sony SRS-02100) I don't notice a big difference. I generally stick to high-quality formats for music such as classical and techno, where the beats and melodies often rely on 320kbps or better. however, when it comes to hard rock, it doesn't make much difference.

Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:18 pm

For the hell of it I converted an mp3 song (192kb/s) to a IEEE Float 64 bit Stereo WAV file. Basically it went from 3 mb to 150 mb. Audio compression sure has come a long way.

192 kb/s to me is all I need. I can understand why people want the best quality music but can you really tell the difference between say, 256 and 320. I cant even tell the difference from 320 to 192. Its not worth the bandwidth.

Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:57 am

Why would you convert a 16 bit track to 64 bit float then complain about the filesize? What did you expect would happen. Not only that, the original uncompressed wav would have been 16 bit. Even high resolution audio is only 24 bit. 32 bit and 64 bit float are used only for one thing, editing/production, where bit resolution is paramount to the accuracy of the edit. Its certainly not for 'average' listening.

Yes, compression has come along way, but not far enough. Lossy compression is a compromise between file size and sound quality. That is an absolute certainty. For the purist, compromise is not an option, and only a bit perfect copy will do, and for everyone else, there's mp3. There is even a significant difference in quality between a 16 bit 44.1 khz cd and a 24 bit 96khz dvd-a when both are auditioned on a truely awesome setup. To get the most out of any music,, everything must at least be of the same quality. Just as with a pc, the slowest bit of hardware will cause a bottleneck, with audio, it will only sound as good as your cheapest bit of equipment, right down to your source material.

Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 10:11 am

OG wrote:

Why would you convert a 16 bit track to 64 bit float then complain about the filesize? What did you expect would happen.

1 I was not complaining, merely laughing at the difference.
2 I did not know what filesize to expect, thats why I did it (just for shits and giggles.

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 3:30 am

Quote:

It's too weird: technology has always grown to become better and better and then all of a sudden some schmuck invents the mp3 format, downgrading any and all music ever made to some background noise without any clarity

While I understand and respect your point, I think you're missing just how revolutionary the invention of the MP3 was. It isn't just a format; it isn't just a file type. Professor Karlheinz Brandenburg and his fellow scientists worked for nearly twenty years, at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated circuits, to develop the technology most of us now use every day. The first machine that encoded MP3s, (built around the mid-1980s), was the size of a fridge, and could reduce a sound file to 8 percent of its original size.
Maybe you don't remember the early days of MP3 downloading, searching for individual, zipped files, on obscure-as-f**k websites in the middle of ethereal www. nowhere-land, then waiting 10-15 minutes for the very real pleasure of listening to one song! This was about 3-4 years before Napster had even been dreamed of. Seriously, the main problem with MP3s, and indeed any type of media rip, regardless of format, is lack of care in the ripping process. All this is changing now though, with better bitrates, faster upload/download speeds - as well as faster ripping and encoding speeds - and, of course, the number one reason for better quality across the board; pride: pride for your rips, (born out of competition as much as anything) pride for the art you are propagating, and above all pride for the sharing community.
Quality is most definitely a factor for me, but, with a music collection of 16,000 songs, I literally cannot afford to be a Flac-Fascist! Anyway, apologies for this rant/essay, respect to the scene and all you pirates and piratesses,

much love,
Twisted

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 5:35 pm

MI think 192 is the sufficient to listen perfectly on an iPod, but on advanced media centers, trained ears can easily listen the difference between it and 320.

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 5:47 pm

twistedgnome wrote:

Quote:

It's too weird: technology has always grown to become better and better and then all of a sudden some schmuck invents the mp3 format, downgrading any and all music ever made to some background noise without any clarity

While I understand and respect your point, I think you're missing just how revolutionary the invention of the MP3 was. It isn't just a format; it isn't just a file type. Professor Karlheinz Brandenburg and his fellow scientists worked for nearly twenty years, at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated circuits, to develop the technology most of us now use every day. The first machine that encoded MP3s, (built around the mid-1980s), was the size of a fridge, and could reduce a sound file to 8 percent of its original size.
Maybe you don't remember the early days of MP3 downloading, searching for individual, zipped files, on obscure-as-f**k websites in the middle of ethereal www. nowhere-land, then waiting 10-15 minutes for the very real pleasure of listening to one song! This was about 3-4 years before Napster had even been dreamed of. Seriously, the main problem with MP3s, and indeed any type of media rip, regardless of format, is lack of care in the ripping process. All this is changing now though, with better bitrates, faster upload/download speeds - as well as faster ripping and encoding speeds - and, of course, the number one reason for better quality across the board; pride: pride for your rips, (born out of competition as much as anything) pride for the art you are propagating, and above all pride for the sharing community.
Quality is most definitely a factor for me, but, with a music collection of 16,000 songs, I literally cannot afford to be a Flac-Fascist! Anyway, apologies for this rant/essay, respect to the scene and all you pirates and piratesses,

much love,
Twisted

One thing I miss are specially the low pitched frequencies on LPs. I nevermore heard something like those vivid penetrating basses. on mp3's and CDs the basses make me fell like that is something missing.
I think this may occur 'Cause of valved transistors, but I'm not sure about this...