The "sound" Of Mp3`s........

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steve p

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Joined 2003
The "sound" Of Mp3`s........

Hey,I`ve noticed some things about Mp3`s lately. Has anyone ever listened to an Mp3 with your headphone plug pulled out a little bit (to disconnect the ground between the channels and get that out-of-phase sound with no vocals?) You can REALLY hear the distortion,man! More artifacts than a Mexican museum during Aztec history week! (That was Mexico,wasn`t it?) :) What I`m hearing with some Mp3`s,I call a "swirly" type sound,like a metallic rustling or ringing noise. Other people have said they hear a "jangling" of the treble,and that must be what I`m hearing. VERY noticeable when you listen out of phase! Makes me wonder how much of that distortion is perceptible sub-consciously,without really "hearing" it,even when the music is playing normally (in-phase). I think 128-160 kb/s Mp3 wrecks havoc on cymbals. Listen to some songs with high-end or really metallic-sounding cymbals,like "Lack of Communication" by Ratt, "Interstate Love Song" by STP,or most older Van Halen stuff. The cymbals sound like they`re under water. They really improve at 192k,though. At least to me they seem to.
 
Cradle22

Cradle22

Member
Joined 2003
Hi!

That must have something to do with most people encoding mp3's with "Joint Stereo" encoding, which combines the signal of both channels whenever that can be done without problems, therefore saving bitrate for more complex passges.

Joint stereo is actually considered superior to "Stereo", at least in blind listening tests done at HydrogenAudio, which is why it has become the default encoding scheme for the Lame MP3 encoder.

But of course, if you listen only to the differential signal, it will sound very different from the original differential signal of the audiol source.


Bye,

Arndt
 
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tschrama

Member
Joined 2001
I agree that that is a large auduible difference between 128/s and 192/s. I just can't enjoy the 128/s ... it's horrible.. . the jangeling, the treble ..all you just said.. I hear it too ... maybe there's something wrong with my MP3 /decoder/enconder.. but I can enjoy the 192/s....

Greetings,
Thijs
 
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steve p

Member
Joined 2003
Thanks for the replies, guys. I`ve heard that Lame is the best,so I`ll try that. I`ve been using MM Jukebox,and I scanned in about 800 songs from CDs the other day,encoded at 192 k. One thing that has me concerned about MMJB, possibly, is the fact that some of the songs are not correct. When I ripped the Cds, I let CDDB look up all the song titles,and I unchecked the tunes that I did not want recorded. But when I looked through my library afterward, I saw songs listed that I had not selected on one certain CD. So I played those songs, and they were not even by the right band! They were actually songs that I remember ripping,but could not find in the list. However, the songs on that CD that I DID select, they were OK! Anyone else ever have that? Missing songs showing up under titles that you didn`t even want? Another thing is occasional skips,maybe one song out of 60-100. Is Musicmatch not very reliable? Not a good encoder? Or do I need to slow down the ripping speed? (It`s only 7-8X on my laptop) Thanks.
 
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Benjlv

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Joined 2003
chartermi.net/~benjlv/index.htm
i personally use a program called CDEX which uses the lame encoder. I personally recommend that you use a varable bit rate encoding to get the most quality for the size of the file. I personally use a 112-224 variable bit rate with a average of 160kps. I have been pretty satisified with the overall sound, but i dont listen to these files very intensly...

http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

thats the link to CDEX. it will rip and encode and also name the files automatically.
 
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Tensop

Member
Joined 2003
steve p said:
Thanks for the replies, guys. I`ve heard that Lame is the best,so I`ll try that. I`ve been using MM Jukebox,and I scanned in about 800 songs from CDs the other day,encoded at 192 k. One thing that has me concerned about MMJB, possibly, is the fact that some of the songs are not correct. When I ripped the Cds, I let CDDB look up all the song titles,and I unchecked the tunes that I did not want recorded. But when I looked through my library afterward, I saw songs listed that I had not selected on one certain CD. So I played those songs, and they were not even by the right band! They were actually songs that I remember ripping,but could not find in the list. However, the songs on that CD that I DID select, they were OK! Anyone else ever have that? Missing songs showing up under titles that you didn`t even want? Another thing is occasional skips,maybe one song out of 60-100. Is Musicmatch not very reliable? Not a good encoder? Or do I need to slow down the ripping speed? (It`s only 7-8X on my laptop) Thanks.
Click to expand...



From memory music match jukebox uses a horrible encoder, in lines with Xing for mp3 encoding. Use lame encoder + cdex :)
 
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moses

Member
Joined 2002
If you're going to be ripping at 320Kbit/s you could pretty much go lossless compression without that much more space use. And keep in mind a much lower bitrate VBR could still be "better" then a 320kbit/s CBR file. I use CD-ex with the libvorbis plugin with q=7 on a Plextor UltraPlex.
 
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steve p

Member
Joined 2003
Thanks again,guys. I looked around at different programs yesterday that I had already downloaded,and never got around to using,and found dB Power Amp music converter. I discovered that it uses Lame,so I spent about four hours with it the other night,just trying different settings,comparing between them with the same song. (It allows conversion to MP3 or WMA-9). I was amazed to see just how many different ways you can encode an audio file. Multiple bitrates in CBR and VBR, 44 khz,48 khz, stereo, dual-channel, joint stereo, etc,etc., and WMA settings are just as bad! I listened very carefully, and found that the first thing you lose as you descend in bitrate is treble consistency, then the apparent dynamic range,then the stereo field collapses last. At least that`s my take on it. What surprised me the most was how close WMA and MP3 sound at low bitrates. Both had similar effects on strings and cymbals. Papery,watery,whatever you want to call the sound,I just could not get near CD-quality sound at any setting below 128k with either format. But there again, there are SO MANY combinations of settings! I did get *good* sound with lower settings. For example,a WMA-9 encoded at VBR 50 (stereo,and 44khz) sounded to me a lot like a pop FM station. Not unlistenable. Treble kinda glossy, with heavy compression. But a WMA-9 at 80k (CBR) sounded like it was underwater through a cell phone,very close to an MP3 at 96k CBR. I`m curious as to whether anyone knows how to get very good sound around 80-96k with ANYTHING. I`ve yet to try OGG. Don`t know much about it,but from what some people are saying,it`s the berries,man.
 
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kiwi

Member
Joined 2002
As moses said, if you're goign 320kbps just go lossless.

As for ripping, I use either Media Center 9.1 or Exact Audio Copy.


I just helped a friend put together a system for the "source" in his stereo. Basically, it was a PC connected to a 4 bay firewire hard drive enclosure (so that it can be in the next room for noise) and he's using an RME HDSP-9632 sound card. I haven't heard it yet, because I'm out of the country at the moment, but will get to hear it in a couple weeks. He said that it's amazing and ditched his old CD player. Granted, the CD player wasn't a wonderful model... a slightly older Yamaha player. He's storing all of his music losslessly, so that he can pack all of his CDs up and put them in storage. He's at about 400 CDs ripped so far.

kiwi
 
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