Why do MP3s' sound so bad?

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Ok...before ya all bash me for not knowing some background we just recently started burning our own cds from MP3 files.
Now, I know of Cd parameters, sample rates, compression, expansion & such but these **** Mp3s sound awful...& what is that funny warbling sound on low volume?
Is there a sampling rate defieciency? A limiting factor? Some poor allocations of frequencies? Whats' up? Can these processes be compensated for?
Do I have to return to "store-bought" CDs to retain fidelity?
______________________________________Rick........
 
Richard Ellis said:
Ok...before ya all bash me for not knowing some background we just recently started burning our own cds from MP3 files.
Now, I know of Cd parameters, sample rates, compression, expansion & such but these **** Mp3s sound awful...& what is that funny warbling sound on low volume?
Is there a sampling rate defieciency? A limiting factor? Some poor allocations of frequencies? Whats' up? Can these processes be compensated for?
Do I have to return to "store-bought" CDs to retain fidelity?

Yes, you do. Better yet, try SACD or DVD-Audio. You'll be blown away.

The only use for MP3 is listening on a portable through cruddy earbuds in a noisy environment.
 
What bitrates are we talking about here?

People love to bash on MP3, but I think they sound OK if you keep the bit rates above 256 Kbps. Lossless is better, but MP3s have their place where disk space or bandwidth is an issue.

And if you still find them unacceptable at higher bitrates, you can use a non-lossy format like FLAC or WMA Lossless. No reason to go back to CDs.

If you are downloading these MP3s, then chances are they do suck. Most of the stuff that people post on torrent sites are ripped at 192Kbps or (gak) 128Kbps.
 
mp3's can do a good job with music that does not contain lots of high frequency detail. Doing blind tests I could not pick out the difference between a 192kbps and 224kbps mp3s, with most modern pop music.

The standard mp3 bitrate seems to be 128kbps, which sucks for any kind of critical listening.

Dan
 
owdi said:
mp3's can do a good job with music that does not contain lots of high frequency detail. Doing blind tests I could not pick out the difference between a 192kbps and 224kbps mp3s, with most modern pop music.

Keywords: modern pop music.

I think Rap and Hip-Hop fit into that too.... nothing much above 300Hz :-/



The standard mp3 bitrate seems to be 128kbps, which sucks for any kind of critical listening.


Yes, it does. We call those 128K posts "flamebait" on the Jazz and Classical mp3 groups :D
 
Lossy compression will always lose data.
Digital sampling and particularly 16bit, 44ks/S =CD has already approximated the analogue signal.
The reconstituted digital signal does not match the original.
It is bound to be different. It will sound different.

What is surprising is that we have the facility and technology to record at 22 to 24bit, 192ks/S and yet the industry has not yet released an MPx compressed version starting from that digital signal. It would compress down to a similar data rate as CD but should exceed the sound quality of CD.
Now, if we were being offered that as retail downloads for our music source.

Why do we pay for compressed music @ a higher price per track than the uncompressed music off the CD?
Surely if it is compressed by half then pay half the rate.
Compress it to 8% and we should pay 8% of the track rate.
That way we pay for what we get.

Lossless compression can just about achieve 50% compression but the retail price would be 100% due to the ability of the software to reconstitute the original digital signal.

The closest we have come to compressed high data rate music is on DVD video. But they need to fit in the video and thus must choose a lower data rate for the audio. We are just a step away.

As for the low level warble: no idea.
 
People don't seem to whine much about the quality of DVD sound, which is compressed using a similar codec to MP3. And who knows how many stages of compression and decompression your TV audio has gone through...

If your MP3s sound bad, they were ripped and encoded wrong. There are people out there who think that faster is better when it comes to MP3 encoding, and use poor quality but fast codecs and CD ripping programs.

Now, if you're building a digital library from your CD collection, I'd strongly suggest saving them both a FLAC or APE (lossless) as well as MP3. That'll save you the tedium of doing it over again once it becomes practical to load your xPod with lossless files. Burn 'em to DVD-R for backup in case the hard drive dies, or so you can haul a bunch of tunes to listen to somewhere else.
 
Originally posted by dangus
People don't seem to whine much about the quality of DVD how many stages of compression and decompression has your audio gone through...


Hi Guys

My opinion is NONE of these formats will ever resemble a live performance. The simple reason is dynamic range. The recording engineers restrict this, for intermodulation reasons and record multi-channel in the effort to stop each instrument intermodulating all the others. So the quality is destroyed before the recording is begun.

Also the human brain does VERY clever things. It knows the shape of its own face and head . It knows the huge nonlinear distortions of the eardrum and the oscicles (bones that act as impedance match lever between the two eardrums; one air-backed, the other liquid-backed). It knows its cilia in its auditory folded delay line (cochlea) with windows each end.
It COMPENSATES in a real performance.

There is no hope til record engineers use a dummy human head
 
The "Blind Test" I tried was loading up my player with a mix of .ogg, .flac, .mp3 (various rates) and hit "random". I then made notes of what they sounded like and gave them a 1-10 score.

My memory is poor enough, I couldn't remember how each was encoded to begin with.

For high dynamic range stuff (classical) It was something like 1) .flac, 2) ogg, 3) mp3 @ 320/vbr-0 and.

For rock, all were great, but aliasing on mp3 @ 192K was becoming noticeable.

Though the test wasn't a fair one, since Yamaha DS-XG soundcards have dynamic and vicious antialiasing filtration that can clean up a lot of junk.

Cheers!
 
AndrewT said:
Hi,
already been done here in the UK.
The BBC did a radio play with Andrew Sachs and NO DIALOGUE, recorded with a dummy head and intended for headphone listening.
I think it was broadcast during the 70s, can anyone point me to an archive of the audio file?


Headphones - Good point Andrew.
I think audiophiles are chasing an illusion unless they say what experience they are seeking.
Recording via a dummy head and listening on phones is ONE way to try to recreate "being there".
Otherwise to hear the concert hall in your living room is impossible (and undesirable due to all the coughs and sniffles and crackly chip-wrappers!)
 
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