Muzman on 25/4/2007 at 16:23
Quote Posted by Bjossi
Speaker systems tend to hide the flaws of low bitrates nicely, but the same can't be said about good headphones.
Just as good headphones don't hide flaws, good speakers also don't hide flaws.
Rogue Keeper on 25/4/2007 at 16:24
Quote Posted by Bjossi
You don't happen to have a X-Fi and headphones do you? The lack of quality in 128k playback is pretty damn obvious with that listening gear. And I mean audible enough to be a major annoyance.
Closed design headphones yes, X-Fi not, just Audigy SE. Does X-Fi significantly better playback of mp3s in comparison with A-SE?
I know 128 is usually so-so, but the quality of a track heavily depends on more factors, most importantly the sampling frequency, initial quality of the CD recording and last but not least, quality of the encoder. For example older CDs recorded using AAD or ADD techniques won't sound as sharp and noiseless at high bitrate as current, fully digital recordings of the same bitrate.
For example LAME is such a great encoder it has output of awesome quality even at 128kbps, with additional options to put emphasis either on quality or encoding speed, full stereo instead of joint stereo and more.
Bjossi on 25/4/2007 at 16:42
I rip with LAME at 320k and the result sounds gorgeous.
CDs nowdays are 44.1 kHz aren't they? Mp3 supports 48 kHz, not sure if it'd do any good ripping with that sampling rate though.
ZylonBane on 25/4/2007 at 17:49
Quote Posted by Bjossi
CDs nowdays are 44.1 kHz aren't they?
CDs have always been 44.1 KHz.
MorbusG on 25/4/2007 at 18:39
Quote Posted by Bjossi
Then something is wrong with either your audio hardware or your ears. :erm:
Speaker systems tend to hide the flaws of low bitrates nicely, but the same can't be said about good headphones. I can hear the difference between 256k and 320k.
128K AAC -- I seriously can't hear any difference on my seriously good speaker system, nor on my seriously good headphones with my seriously good hearing.
Bjossi on 25/4/2007 at 18:48
I have never tried AAC, is it mayhaps a much higher quality format than mp3 eh?
MorbusG on 25/4/2007 at 19:02
I did a lot of testing with different encoders when I decided to re-rip all of my music and in my honest opinion, AAC beat the hell out of LAME (this has been debated a lot on different forums around the net, and I came to the understanding that it boils down to personal preference. But I thought LAME produced utterly "artifacted" results). What continues to puzzle me, though, is that when I choose variable bit-rate for AAC, the file-sizes go up :confused:
Bjossi on 25/4/2007 at 20:13
LAME may not be the reason for the artifacts, I don't hear any artifacts at all when ripping my (unscratched) CDs, and I have expensive headphones along with 24bit crystalizer enabled.
I'm gonna try out AAC sometime, I'm an audioholic and I follow recommendations. :cool:
ZylonBane on 25/4/2007 at 20:35
Quote Posted by MorbusG
I did a lot of testing with different encoders when I decided to re-rip all of my music and in my honest opinion, AAC beat the hell out of LAME
You clearly have a very shaky grasp of this subject.
AAC is a lossy audio format.
MP3 is another lossy audio format.
LAME is a utility used to create MP3s.
LAME is widely considered to be the best MP3 generator around. So if you're getting inferior results with it, you're using it wrong.
Bjossi on 25/4/2007 at 20:39
LAME is more like an audio codec rather than an utility as far as I know. There are many programs on the internet that utilize it though, I for one use WinLAME.
