As I mentioned in my last thread, I'm out at the farm. We're listening to holiday music on the decrepit stereo out here (an old Sony CDP, a slightly disfucntional Pioneer receiver and my first speakers, a pair of Infinity bookshelves). Things sounded fine. Then, I noticed immediately that a new disc sounded awful. Tizzy indistinct highs, nasty mids, floppy non-existant bass. I was across the house baking cookies. I knew immediately that it was an MP3. Sure enough, it was a mix CD that appears to have been a gift from friends of my parents.
I was exchanging emails with a musician friend a few days ago. He was just listening to his mentor/teachers new system (big Cayin amp, neat looking two way bookshelves and a new DAC). He (friend) was pretty amazed, and is thinking about upgrading his own stuff.
I like to sell speakers. But, if you are listening to a bunch of MP3's ripped to a hard drive (as I believe my friend is), I honestly think the first thing you should do is buy a big hard drive and rip them all again as uncompressed WAVs or maybe Apple Lossless. For goodness sake, don't blow a bunch of dough on a fancy DAC until you have decent files!
Sure, new speakers (especially mine!) can increase your enjoyment of you MP3's. You may well like the sound, and everybody is entiteled to listen to whatever they like. But, if you are new to this hobby, please think about jettisoning those compressed files. Heck, if you want to be cool and get great sound, buy a turntable!
Paul
Wild Burro Audio Labs - DIY Full Range Speakers
I was exchanging emails with a musician friend a few days ago. He was just listening to his mentor/teachers new system (big Cayin amp, neat looking two way bookshelves and a new DAC). He (friend) was pretty amazed, and is thinking about upgrading his own stuff.
I like to sell speakers. But, if you are listening to a bunch of MP3's ripped to a hard drive (as I believe my friend is), I honestly think the first thing you should do is buy a big hard drive and rip them all again as uncompressed WAVs or maybe Apple Lossless. For goodness sake, don't blow a bunch of dough on a fancy DAC until you have decent files!
Sure, new speakers (especially mine!) can increase your enjoyment of you MP3's. You may well like the sound, and everybody is entiteled to listen to whatever they like. But, if you are new to this hobby, please think about jettisoning those compressed files. Heck, if you want to be cool and get great sound, buy a turntable!
Paul
Wild Burro Audio Labs - DIY Full Range Speakers
Mattmcl : Every Cowon MP3 player can handle flac, as can some of the iRivers, the Creative Zen X-Fi 2, most Samsungs and most of the SanDisk lineup, as well as any player to which the Rockbox operating system has been ported.
I particularly suggest the Cowon iAudio S9 and the Samsung P3, two quite remarkable players. The Sansa Clip+ is worth an honourable mention, too, although it's in quite a different class - its killer feature, aside from the price, is the microSD expandability.
I particularly suggest the Cowon iAudio S9 and the Samsung P3, two quite remarkable players. The Sansa Clip+ is worth an honourable mention, too, although it's in quite a different class - its killer feature, aside from the price, is the microSD expandability.
Pjanda1 I could not have put it better myself. MP3 at any bit rate have no place on any system with any pretensions of high fidelity.. I use FLAC on the media server, and Apple Lossless on my iPod..
I would also say IME that an iPod (Classic 160GB) in an Apple docking station does not make a particularly good sounding source either even when playing Apple Lossless files. (Something like the Wadia dock might be ok, but I have not tried it.) IMHO I think this comment would apply to most if not all MP3 players as well.
I would also say IME that an iPod (Classic 160GB) in an Apple docking station does not make a particularly good sounding source either even when playing Apple Lossless files. (Something like the Wadia dock might be ok, but I have not tried it.) IMHO I think this comment would apply to most if not all MP3 players as well.
Last edited:
I do much of my listening with MP3. It's because I stole 600+ tracks using filesharing years ago. I think the fidelity is top notch; except for some high frequency noise that my sound card is picking up from something. When I pop a CD into my modded Music Hall CD 25.2 I find almost no difference save the absence of computer noise that my soundcard has.
MP3 is pretty rubbish, but beyond 320 kbits/sec it's fine on 99% of the music in my library. AAC I can get away with 256kbits/sec (for more demanding tracks) or even 192kbits/sec (for recent overproduced pop/rock).
I certainly wouldn't say that MP3 is even tolerable below 160kbits/sec, treble sounds terribly artificial ("crispy" is the word I often use to describe it to people who can't hear it) and detail is muddied.
I certainly wouldn't say that MP3 is even tolerable below 160kbits/sec, treble sounds terribly artificial ("crispy" is the word I often use to describe it to people who can't hear it) and detail is muddied.
The main thing I can tell about the MP3's is that the cymbals sound swishy... But lately I find that the bass sound much richer with more impact with uncompressed files too... With online music shops now selling FLAC and apple lossless, there is now no longer a reason to use lossy compression at all,
I use an old IRiver with Rockbox, it's an awesome player. 40Gb, FLAC playback, and toslink out if you want to use a DAC. What more could you ask for? I think it's getting on for 10 years old too...
I use an old IRiver with Rockbox, it's an awesome player. 40Gb, FLAC playback, and toslink out if you want to use a DAC. What more could you ask for? I think it's getting on for 10 years old too...
What you are likely hearing is distortion from iTunes-ripped files. I have a few files from different people ripped to 320 on iTunes, and there's always some noise in the upper ranges. You wouldn't hear it on junky speakers, but it shows up on my Thors. IME iTunes does a rotten job of ripping mp3, but is pretty good for lossless. I'll confess up front to being a Mac hater though.
Mp3 can sound mighty fine , thing is there are many encoders, some are cheap and cheerful (and quick) others are better. cheap ones excell in phasey crappy sounding cymbals etc, but better encoding which takes much longer and nobody has the time for, can sound quite decent.
topt spec mp3 can sound worse than medeum spec with cheap encoding.
once you get to really high spec you may as well use flac and have lossless, since the file will be almost as big anyways.
topt spec mp3 can sound worse than medeum spec with cheap encoding.
once you get to really high spec you may as well use flac and have lossless, since the file will be almost as big anyways.
My experience:
1. (For PC) A decent cd-drive, clean cd's, exact audio copy, LamedropXP with the latest Lame encoder build in, at 320kb constant bitrate (joint stereo is enabled by default), highest (also slowest) encoder quality, then the result is really good! I think that in more than 80% one can't tell the difference to the original wav file. And even if one can tell a difference, it's just a difference. If the mp3 or the wav sounds better depends on the source. Some older recordings might become even more listenable through mp3 conversion because of the slight treble cut off, which makes the sound a bit less harsh in the highs and the upper midrange.
2. The source matters the most! I myself use flac, just to be on the safe side. (I also converted all my cd's into mp3 for the use with mp3 players and in my car.) But when I turn on a decent internet radio stream (e.g., blastfm from swiss), I can assure you: Most of the stuff these guys are streaming with 128kb mp3 sounds WAY better than most of my so carefully converted flac files! Why? Because the more modern electronic music is far better recorded than all the old stuff. It's more dynamic, more fluid, more punshing and more exciting to listen to well recorded music, no matter what file-type it is.
3. I never discovered any problems with high frequency hiss, artefacts or similar with my mp3's. But as mentioned in #1, you need a good computer with a professional, reliable setup of both, hardware and software. If you stress the cpu or mess around with a thousand other tasks when converting music files, you will get into trouble. But with a decent hard- and software configuartion and very well tested codecs, mp3's can be a small (literally) wonder!
BTW: Hey Paul,
just yesterday I saw (incidentally) your webpage with the Wild Burro speakers. Nice stuff! Unfortunately my room isn't large enough to fit in open baffle speakers... :-(
Martin
1. (For PC) A decent cd-drive, clean cd's, exact audio copy, LamedropXP with the latest Lame encoder build in, at 320kb constant bitrate (joint stereo is enabled by default), highest (also slowest) encoder quality, then the result is really good! I think that in more than 80% one can't tell the difference to the original wav file. And even if one can tell a difference, it's just a difference. If the mp3 or the wav sounds better depends on the source. Some older recordings might become even more listenable through mp3 conversion because of the slight treble cut off, which makes the sound a bit less harsh in the highs and the upper midrange.
2. The source matters the most! I myself use flac, just to be on the safe side. (I also converted all my cd's into mp3 for the use with mp3 players and in my car.) But when I turn on a decent internet radio stream (e.g., blastfm from swiss), I can assure you: Most of the stuff these guys are streaming with 128kb mp3 sounds WAY better than most of my so carefully converted flac files! Why? Because the more modern electronic music is far better recorded than all the old stuff. It's more dynamic, more fluid, more punshing and more exciting to listen to well recorded music, no matter what file-type it is.
3. I never discovered any problems with high frequency hiss, artefacts or similar with my mp3's. But as mentioned in #1, you need a good computer with a professional, reliable setup of both, hardware and software. If you stress the cpu or mess around with a thousand other tasks when converting music files, you will get into trouble. But with a decent hard- and software configuartion and very well tested codecs, mp3's can be a small (literally) wonder!
BTW: Hey Paul,
just yesterday I saw (incidentally) your webpage with the Wild Burro speakers. Nice stuff! Unfortunately my room isn't large enough to fit in open baffle speakers... :-(
Martin
Last edited:
Actually, thanks to the wonder of digital computing, for the purposes of encoding mp3s we don't really have to worry about things like this anymore, particularly now that operating systems securely manage memory for applications and everything is threaded and pipelined.
CPU load won't affect your encoding in the slightest bit, it will just make it take longer. It's all about the particular software that you're using to encode and the algorithms and settings it uses. The "culprit" mp3 from the original post was probably an old mp3 back when people still gave a hoot about hard drive space and slow internet connections and people encoded things at 64kbps and such. The software wasn't as good back then, either. Modern MP3s have come a very long way!
I didn't expect such a big response! It's nice actually, because I am now drifted in at my Dad's farm. I just hope the power holds out. I don't think I'll be allowed to use the computer if we have to fire up the generator. Powering the well is usually a higher priority. . . We'll be lucky to have power at all. The 1965 Case (diesel) won't fire, and the 1953 Ford barely pulls the generator (big old PTO driven unit. I wonder what the AC waveform looks like?).
I should qualify my position a bit. I don't know that much about computer sources. I thoroughly accept that high bit rate MP3's ripped and played in a well thought out manner probably sound great. IME, most newbies do not rip at a high bit rate or think much about software. So, they are looking at copying them again anyway. And given the prices storage has fallen to, I'm not sure why you'd choose a compressed format.
Interestingly, the HF of MP3's sounds, to me, stragely like many multiway speakers with soft dome tweeters. The cymbals sound overly splashy and indistinct: more of a cymbal like hazey noise than wood and metal. I know that comment will get a bunch of folks fired up!
But, I'm not here to bash anyone's choosen playback method, and I've never heard fancier implementations of compressed digital. If you are new to DIYaudio and fancy a computer source, my advice is to seek out folks like many of those who have commented here. Get your source in order prior to blowing a bunch of $$ on fancy DAC's or amps.
Paul
Wild Burro Audio Labs - DIY Full Range Speakers
I should qualify my position a bit. I don't know that much about computer sources. I thoroughly accept that high bit rate MP3's ripped and played in a well thought out manner probably sound great. IME, most newbies do not rip at a high bit rate or think much about software. So, they are looking at copying them again anyway. And given the prices storage has fallen to, I'm not sure why you'd choose a compressed format.
Interestingly, the HF of MP3's sounds, to me, stragely like many multiway speakers with soft dome tweeters. The cymbals sound overly splashy and indistinct: more of a cymbal like hazey noise than wood and metal. I know that comment will get a bunch of folks fired up!
But, I'm not here to bash anyone's choosen playback method, and I've never heard fancier implementations of compressed digital. If you are new to DIYaudio and fancy a computer source, my advice is to seek out folks like many of those who have commented here. Get your source in order prior to blowing a bunch of $$ on fancy DAC's or amps.
Paul
Wild Burro Audio Labs - DIY Full Range Speakers
Martin,
The BetsyK will fit in all sorts of reasonably sized boxes. You can go as small as 1 cu ft sealed, maybe even smaller if you are willing to really stuff it. I'm currently using them in floorstanding TL/TQWT cabients that are 12"Wx13"Dx44"H. I am thinking about a big OB setup though.
Paul
Hi Paul!
Thanks for the advice! But you see, if I would go for a nice fullrange setup with such nice and well designed drivers as you offer, then I wouldn't like the idea of making such compromises like a sealed box or something. And, most important, on your project-page is a picture of the Betsy in open baffle, and I LOVE this design for it's simplicity! Simple and elegant, this is the way things should be.
Sorry for my lazyness, but I'm not familiar with ft and inch measurements. Could you tell me the length and width of the front baffle and the side wings in cm? The driver is centered in the middle between top and bottom, right?
And one more question, even if this is really off topic now:
The frequency response graph shows a peak in the range of 3kHz. Isn't this audible? I found no hint about crossovers or filter networks on your webpage.
Thanks!
Martin
Thanks for the advice! But you see, if I would go for a nice fullrange setup with such nice and well designed drivers as you offer, then I wouldn't like the idea of making such compromises like a sealed box or something. And, most important, on your project-page is a picture of the Betsy in open baffle, and I LOVE this design for it's simplicity! Simple and elegant, this is the way things should be.
Sorry for my lazyness, but I'm not familiar with ft and inch measurements. Could you tell me the length and width of the front baffle and the side wings in cm? The driver is centered in the middle between top and bottom, right?
And one more question, even if this is really off topic now:
The frequency response graph shows a peak in the range of 3kHz. Isn't this audible? I found no hint about crossovers or filter networks on your webpage.
Thanks!
Martin
Last edited:
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.