Best sound quality: MP3, Wave, or What?

N

northsinger

New member
Hi--

Is there a general standard most people are using for songs you will put on CD, and for songs you will send via Internet?

I want to take a lot of guitar/vocal recordings I made with analog tape, and convert them to a good CD/digital format. I see that the kind of format, MP3, Wave, etc., results in big differences in file size, especially as you increase the Khz. That makes sense, but I wonder if there is some general agreement as to (1) which format gives you the best recording, and (2) since size of file matters a lot with Internet downloads of music, what format retains the quality of the music best, while comnpressing or compacting it to where it is downloadable?

For example, I just transferred a stereo recording into a big Wave format (100+MB) and into two MP3's (approximately 5MB and 13MB). And I notice there are a lot of different formats and high/low variations in each one.

So there's my question: Is there a general standard most people are using for songs you will put on CD, and for songs you will send via Internet?

Thanks for any and all comments.

JoeLoesch@aol.com
 
I don't know much about the specifics, but in general when you make a CD that can play in your standard CD player you're burning .wav files. They're so large because they're not compressed like .mp3's. Basically .mp3 compression was developed to significantly reduce the size of CD-quality recording such that they can be more rapidly transferred over the internet, take up less storage space on home computers, etc. And although mp3 compression is pretty darn good, as with ANY type of compression you're going to lose some quality when you convert back and forth. So if you're planning on burning CDs to sell or whatever, to ensure highest quality you want to just directly burn from .wav files. If you burn from .mp3 your burning program is going to have to convert back to a .wav file anyway, and in the conversion you'll lose some quality that you had before converting to .mp3 format.

Does that make sense?

By the way, how are you going from tape to digital? How you do this will likely dictate to a large degree the quality of your .wav files.
 
Hi Tom, thanks for your answer.

A) On your question about how I am recording:

To go from the tape deck (a cassette deck for the first round), I have stereo RCA's from the cassette deck into my Soundblaster Live! soundcard. I then used the "Goldwave" program to record my test song, into various different Wave formats, some of which were quite large. I then also used the "Lame" MP3 encoder program, which rendered a smaller file than the wave's.

B) Questions about MP3's versus Waves versus other formats:

I see people using different formats. My general question is, which format is best for putting music onto CD’s, and which is best for sending music via Internet?

1) Music onto CD’s
a. Can you not transfer MP3's onto CD’s?
b. What formats can be used, and which are best? Wave’s? I got an “RMJ” format (rea.l system media) with CD’s that I recorded onto my hard drive from my computer’s CD ROM, and which sound pretty clear.

2) Music onto Internet:
a. What are the best sounding file formats for transfers via Internet?
b. Beck, for example, has a short piece of song that is less than 1MB in size. The file has an “ASX” extension on it. Other people are using MP3's. What is best, and where do you get it?
 
There really is only one format for putting music on audio CDs, and that's 16-bit, 44.1 kHz WAV. Some burners will convert any file to this format on the fly, but if the source material is not already in that bit depth and sampling rate, then the quality will not be optimal. Since MP3s are compressed in a "lossy" manner, if you save them back to WAV format, the data previously lost in the encoding is still lost.

You can transfer MP3s to data CDs... and I gather some newer CD and DVD players can play MP3s off CDs as if they were standard audio CDs... I'm not sure how you prepare a CD for that purpose, but older players will simply not recognize them anyway, so it's of limited use for general distribution.

For the web, MP3s are widely used, followed by Real Audio, Windows Media Audio, and a few other formats, approximately in order of popularity. You are probably best off with the most widely used, namely MP3.

BUT --

MP3s can be encoded into many differnt forms. Some will sound very close to identical to the original source, but will be barely any smaller. The whole point in posting them on the web is to keep their size down so folks downloading or streaming them don't have to wait so long. Which might suggest that more compression is better for your audience's experience. But at a certain point the loss of sound quality becomes very noticeable. What good is a really small file if it sounds like complete crap? So there's a tradeoff. Some sites that allow you to store MP3s have a fixed format that you might also need to be constrained by.
 
Good explanations; You've fine-tuned my questions

Thanks, Alchuck, for the clear answer. I wonder if you can fine-tune what I understand in these areas:

1) Recording onto CD-s, and regarding Waves: I see that saving a file in 24 bit or 32 bit is possible. I would think that is far clearer and more desirable than 16 bit. Yet when I saved a song in 16 bit, 24 bit, and 32 bit, only the 16 bit made it onto the CD. Is there a way to get the higher bitrates onto CD’s, or are they there as a form of fools gold?

2) Other CD/Hard drive formats: When I recorded songs from CD’s onto my hard drive, the saved files had “RMJ” extensions (rea.l system media). They sound pretty clear, but I guess these are not WAV files. Can they be saved onto CD, or do they need to be converted back to regular Wave’s first? And are they the best format to save CD songs onto hard disk in the first place?

3) Other Internet formats: Aside from MP3's, I notice other formats being used on the Internet, by people with record label money to pay for good quality. Beck has a short piece that is about 500KB in size, with an “ASX” extension. A country artist on AOL this morning has a song that is about 2MB, with an “WMA” extension. And I see MP3's and a few other formats out there. Do you have any comments or preferences regarding those formats?

Thanks again for any information you have.

JoeLoesch@aol.com
 
Audio CDs are 16-bit 44.1KHz. Period. That is what the Redbook spec defines, and what all audio CD Players expect.

You can store WAVs of audio files on CDs, much like you do on hard-drives, but they are DATA CDs, not Redbook audio CDs and very few (if any) audio CD players can handle them. They are readbale by computer CD-drives though (obviously).
 
Recording onto CD-s, and regarding Waves: I see that saving a file in 24 bit or 32 bit is possible. I would think that is far clearer and more desirable than 16 bit. Yet when I saved a song in 16 bit, 24 bit, and 32 bit, only the 16 bit made it onto the CD. Is there a way to get the higher bitrates onto CD’s, or are they there as a form of fools gold?
Click to expand...

Well, I thought I already made that clear, but if I didn't, hopefully Blue Bear just did. Or Slackmaster in the other place that you posted this same question. (This is a good moment to slip in the usual admonishment about posting the same question in multiple forums on the same board... that is, don't, please.)

There are some new things called Super Audio CDs or something like that that hold higher-quality WAVs, but these are not standard audio CDs and cannot be played in anything but a special player designed for them.

When I recorded songs from CD’s onto my hard drive, the saved files had “RMJ” extensions (rea.l system media). They sound pretty clear, but I guess these are not WAV files. Can they be saved onto CD, or do they need to be converted back to regular Wave’s first? And are they the best format to save CD songs onto hard disk in the first place?
Click to expand...

Never heard of RMJ files.

The best format to save audio in is really whatever standard uncompressed format works best for you. For example, if you are always needing to use WAV files, then it would not be very useful to save all your work in AIFF format and then have to convert them to work with them. On the other hand, if you were always sening master files to someone on a Mac, then maybe saving them as AIFFs would make sense.


Other Internet formats: Aside from MP3's, I notice other formats being used on the Internet, by people with record label money to pay for good quality. Beck has a short piece that is about 500KB in size, with an “ASX” extension. A country artist on AOL this morning has a song that is about 2MB, with an “WMA” extension. And I see MP3's and a few other formats out there. Do you have any comments or preferences regarding those formats?
Click to expand...

Well, I thought I said enough about that but, looking back, I was kind of skimpy. What the hell, I'm trying to avoid going back to thinking about a programming problem I'm stuck on, so this is as good a way as any to goof off...

I've seen ASX but I cannot recall what they are. WMA is Windows Media Audio, which I mentioned. The only comments I have are (1) MP3s seem to be the most widely used format, and most popular player applications (including Windows Media Player and Winamp and RealPlayer) and the afore-mentioned newer models of CD and DVD players will play them. Windows Media files typically can only be played by Windows Media Player, RealMedia files by Real Player, etc. I think the only compellign reason to use them is if you're distributing through an internet music channel of some kind that uses these formats -- but most use MP3s for the same reasons they're the most popular format. I'm sure that there are many subtle differences between the various formats, and there's some arguments that night be made aboiut what's best, but it's pretty subtle for the most part.
 
One more point to make about internet-friendly audio formats:

You will also see files that have extensions like .ra or .asf... these are stub files used for streaming audio. In this scenario, the entire file itself is not transferred to the user -- rather, the .ra or .asf file tells the player to expect a stream of data, and the player recieves the data, buffers it in memory until it can start to play (and hopefully keep going without catching up to the buffering steam). Your player recieves the same data but it is not saved on the local machine as an intact file -- the data pases from their server to your player and out into the airwaves and then is gone. So you can hear the file, but you can't save a copy of it...

One downside is the fact that if the player starts playing and the internet connection wavers at all, the player can run out of data before its buffer is ready to be tapped, and you get annoying interruptions.
 
Hi Northsinger,
I,m new here to and thought I would add that you can do your recording and mastering at the higher bit rates you mentioned above. Whenever you edit audio there is data loss so if you work at say 24 bit you will have a better quality file in the end to convert to 16bit for your CD. Beware though the higher bit rate means a larger file size and puts more strain on your machine.

-b
 
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