2
207
New member
Well I've been reading through a few threads and noticed people commenting on encodings which have sort of dampened the experience due to less than great encoders.
I've had the opportunity to work with various encoders, settings and such for a good couple of years now, and I've been achieving great garble free quality now for quite some time. There's a few things you can do to get as close to true cd quality as possible, even at 128kbps, which most of us know ISN'T.
first of all, before you assume anything about specific encoders, whether it be MusicMatch or Xing, or whatever, you ought to realize the following: it all starts with your recording job. For quite some time when I had very little experience with recording songs on my PC, after I mixed down, saved as a WAV and eagerly MP3'd it.. after one listen I knew I must be doing something wrong, because I was getting more garble than songs that were off cd's you'd purchase at a store. Well it was at about this point I began to try learning as much as I could about the rules of EQing, and how to accomplish a good mix. My main two problems were a really sharp trebly buzzing guitar, and a thin weak drum sound. What I do these days, is since I use Cool Edit Pro, and it has a real-time spectrum analyzer, I play back each track and observe what frequencies stand out. After lots of analysis of cd recordings and gaining some knowledge of what range instruments generally sound best with, I either compensate if the damage isn't too bad, and it's an otherwise killer take, or I just re-record with some more proper settings.
Now where I'm heading with all this is, you want a nice full sound in the end of course with the proper balance of highs, mids and lows. When you have too much or too little of a range, you will end up with one of the following three. Muffle, digital garble, or oversaturation (distorted, possibly very piercing). Be careful of using too much noise reduction then compressing, this will increase digital artifacts. If you keep all this in mind you should get a relatively crisp, nice quality mp3 with ANY encoder.
BUT..
It's true that some are better than others, also, some have more options, which is key. The first one I ever got was a trial version of MusicMatch. I found it pretty much sucked, even with great recordings. Next I got AudioCatalyst, which comes with the Xing Encoder. This is what I've used pretty much ever since for most purposes. When I want to achieve the HIGHEST possible quality in a 128kbps MP3, and am willing to wait a while for it to render, I now use the MP3 import/export codec for Cool Edit Pro. It has a buttload of options, including most importantly, a "quality" slider which goes from 1-9. crank it to 9, and you might have to wait a half an hour for your MP3, but you'll be pleased with the results.
I've got one more tip regarding EQing final mixes on limited equipment, ie. a PC, your instruments and mikes, but I'm gonna put it in a new thread, cause it really is a cool trick. Anyways I hope all this helps some newbie out there, cause that's who it was intended for. I don't claim to know all, but I want to share what limited knowledge I DO have.
I've had the opportunity to work with various encoders, settings and such for a good couple of years now, and I've been achieving great garble free quality now for quite some time. There's a few things you can do to get as close to true cd quality as possible, even at 128kbps, which most of us know ISN'T.
first of all, before you assume anything about specific encoders, whether it be MusicMatch or Xing, or whatever, you ought to realize the following: it all starts with your recording job. For quite some time when I had very little experience with recording songs on my PC, after I mixed down, saved as a WAV and eagerly MP3'd it.. after one listen I knew I must be doing something wrong, because I was getting more garble than songs that were off cd's you'd purchase at a store. Well it was at about this point I began to try learning as much as I could about the rules of EQing, and how to accomplish a good mix. My main two problems were a really sharp trebly buzzing guitar, and a thin weak drum sound. What I do these days, is since I use Cool Edit Pro, and it has a real-time spectrum analyzer, I play back each track and observe what frequencies stand out. After lots of analysis of cd recordings and gaining some knowledge of what range instruments generally sound best with, I either compensate if the damage isn't too bad, and it's an otherwise killer take, or I just re-record with some more proper settings.
Now where I'm heading with all this is, you want a nice full sound in the end of course with the proper balance of highs, mids and lows. When you have too much or too little of a range, you will end up with one of the following three. Muffle, digital garble, or oversaturation (distorted, possibly very piercing). Be careful of using too much noise reduction then compressing, this will increase digital artifacts. If you keep all this in mind you should get a relatively crisp, nice quality mp3 with ANY encoder.
BUT..
It's true that some are better than others, also, some have more options, which is key. The first one I ever got was a trial version of MusicMatch. I found it pretty much sucked, even with great recordings. Next I got AudioCatalyst, which comes with the Xing Encoder. This is what I've used pretty much ever since for most purposes. When I want to achieve the HIGHEST possible quality in a 128kbps MP3, and am willing to wait a while for it to render, I now use the MP3 import/export codec for Cool Edit Pro. It has a buttload of options, including most importantly, a "quality" slider which goes from 1-9. crank it to 9, and you might have to wait a half an hour for your MP3, but you'll be pleased with the results.
I've got one more tip regarding EQing final mixes on limited equipment, ie. a PC, your instruments and mikes, but I'm gonna put it in a new thread, cause it really is a cool trick. Anyways I hope all this helps some newbie out there, cause that's who it was intended for. I don't claim to know all, but I want to share what limited knowledge I DO have.