I respectfully disagree. On most of the MP3's I've heard, even the well encoded 320k ones, there are cues that are hard to miss if you simply pay attention. The easiest thing I usually notice is high frequency anomalies; cymbal crashes sound like they have a high content of white noise, violins tend to sound a little weird like there's a touch of "phlanger effect" applied to them, and so on. And again, it's important that the listening equipment be adequate to the task, and that the listener is paying attention and knows what to listen for.
Mike
In my book, that doesn't sound like "the differences in quality are hard to miss". Have you done your comparison double-blind?
I'm not going to get into a pi$$ing contest here. I've never had an opportunity to participate in a true DB test, but when I was challenged about this by a co-worker several years ago, I was able too ferret out most of the MP3's Vs. the non-compressed versions on a CD he burned himself to challenge me. I didn't nail all of them however. It seems to be dependent on the music itself in many cases, some MP3's do sound amazingly good, all things considered.
Mike
Mike
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Absolutely no need for a pi$$ing contest, especially as we seem to mostly agree. As you say, with training you can often pick up the cues, but not even trained listeners such as you can always tell the difference double-blind.
FWIW............
A lot of my mp3s are from the very early days of "Napster" but, some were purchased.
I sometimes just put my mp3 player on random play for background music when doing other thing.
Some are actually very good while others are just acceptable given the same the same bit rates .
Of course, the source and/or original media accounts for most of the difference.
However doesn't the particular mp3 encoder used account for something also ?
A lot of my mp3s are from the very early days of "Napster" but, some were purchased.
I sometimes just put my mp3 player on random play for background music when doing other thing.
Some are actually very good while others are just acceptable given the same the same bit rates .
Of course, the source and/or original media accounts for most of the difference.
However doesn't the particular mp3 encoder used account for something also ?
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Sure. Especially the early encoders were not very good - but bit rate is still the most important parameter. Some of the stuff you find on the net is done at a rather low bit rate, and often ripped off a CD using less-than-perfect software.
Hi,
What bitrate is hard to tell from the CD standard depends on the playback
equipment and the quality of the encoder and the assumption its a single
conversion from CD standard to MP3, WMA or whatever.
I have a load of stuff converted from CD's at 3/4 quality WMA VBR.
Used for my media portable and my laptop based PC. There is no
easily discernible difference to CD on the PC and the media player.
However I can tell a little story :
A friend had a Bose "boombox" type affair as his music system,
which I disliked quite a lot, so he challenged me to build a music
system for less than the same price. Which I did, a decent pair of
speakers, the dinky little used Rega Brio amplifier and a Cambridge
Audio I-pod dock, unsurprisingly the result was chalk and cheese.
After he got used to it I bought a very old Sony portable CD
player (early bitstream) that as a portable was useless, it
skipped far too much, so in mint condition, hardly used.
Battery powered it fitted perfectly next to the I-pod
dock on top of the the very dinky Rega Brio amplifier.
I checked that it was dual converter and had a proper dedicated line out.
End result, the CD player bested anything of any format plugged
into the I-pod dock, and cost less than about £15, £90 new.
That is not my opinion, it is my friends, (though I concur).
FWIW I had exhaustively compared it to my C.A. CD4SE
in my system beforehand and was well aware though
not as good, it was still pretty good, my friend agrees.
Source as well as format matters IMO.
rgds, sreten.
What bitrate is hard to tell from the CD standard depends on the playback
equipment and the quality of the encoder and the assumption its a single
conversion from CD standard to MP3, WMA or whatever.
I have a load of stuff converted from CD's at 3/4 quality WMA VBR.
Used for my media portable and my laptop based PC. There is no
easily discernible difference to CD on the PC and the media player.
However I can tell a little story :
A friend had a Bose "boombox" type affair as his music system,
which I disliked quite a lot, so he challenged me to build a music
system for less than the same price. Which I did, a decent pair of
speakers, the dinky little used Rega Brio amplifier and a Cambridge
Audio I-pod dock, unsurprisingly the result was chalk and cheese.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
After he got used to it I bought a very old Sony portable CD
player (early bitstream) that as a portable was useless, it
skipped far too much, so in mint condition, hardly used.
Battery powered it fitted perfectly next to the I-pod
dock on top of the the very dinky Rega Brio amplifier.
I checked that it was dual converter and had a proper dedicated line out.
End result, the CD player bested anything of any format plugged
into the I-pod dock, and cost less than about £15, £90 new.
That is not my opinion, it is my friends, (though I concur).
FWIW I had exhaustively compared it to my C.A. CD4SE
in my system beforehand and was well aware though
not as good, it was still pretty good, my friend agrees.
Source as well as format matters IMO.
rgds, sreten.
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BTW speaking of "early" encoders....
Not that I prefer CDs/digital over vinyl but.......
In the early days of CDs they seemed to sound much "harsher" than they sound now. Even with CDs purchased back then and played on modern high end CD players they now seem to sound better.
Is s is possible that some of the early harshness" was just due to poor DACs of the day?
Not that I prefer CDs/digital over vinyl but.......
In the early days of CDs they seemed to sound much "harsher" than they sound now. Even with CDs purchased back then and played on modern high end CD players they now seem to sound better.
Is s is possible that some of the early harshness" was just due to poor DACs of the day?
Hi,
Early bitstream isn't the same as early CD encoding, which
was all multibit, which FWIW reached its peak at 16x4.
Early CD suffered from using tape practices, where you
you would boost treble expecting a loss at each transfer.
Early DACs certainly had problems, but not as much as
ADCs, which by definition need good DACs to work well.
Its a circular argument, but basically ADC for recording
was poor, recording needs DACs better than replay,
and they simply didn't exist for early DDD CD.
Hence AAD and ADD. (Recorded/mixed/mastered).
rgds, sreten.
rgds, sreten.
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Some CDs presumably now use noise shaping to improve their LF and mid range resolution. But many of those also suffer from severe dynamic compression processing that would have not been found suitable for use in analog recordings due to the higher audibility of compression artifacts in analog.
With those, dynamic processing aside, it usually takes me a few minutes rather than a few seconds to become unhappy with their sound compared to their earlier equivalents, and it's not that they are always bad sounding per se - it is sometimes more that it eventually becomes apparent they simply fail to do some things that any decent all analog recording would handle as a matter of course.
With those, dynamic processing aside, it usually takes me a few minutes rather than a few seconds to become unhappy with their sound compared to their earlier equivalents, and it's not that they are always bad sounding per se - it is sometimes more that it eventually becomes apparent they simply fail to do some things that any decent all analog recording would handle as a matter of course.
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I have. Differences were apparent with some source material, inaudible with others. I was able to correctly identify it, but I would not say "night and day." It took some real concentration. The photo of me with headphones on the Linear Audio site was taken during the experiment- note the look of extreme concentration, not too typical of me!😀
Modern CD players (not just high-end ones) are much better than the early ones, and it is not just down to better DACs but also due to smarter digital electronics with better buffering etc.
The experiment was conducted using different bit rates (and the original thrown in) with the task being to put them in order.
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