N
NickHall
New member
I posted this in reply to a quesion in the Mixing / Mastering forum, but you lot may aswell benefit from it aswell:
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Right...where to begin.....
If you rip a CD to WAV, the bit rate will be 1411Kbps.....therefore anything lower than this is not CD quality and will have a loss in data.
MusicMatch and other programs use 3rd party encoding software to reduce the size of the file by reducing the number of bits. Typically 128 Kbps is bad, and 256 kbps (using musicmatch) is almost indistinguishable from CD quality.
quotes from www.r3mix.net
In february 2000 c't magazin organised a blind listening test. 300 Audiophiles were involved, finalists tested 17 1-min clips from different artists (classic and pop):
original CD recording
128 Kbit/s Joint Stereo [MusicMatch (FhG) v4.4] encoded PC decoded Mac
256 Kbit/s Joint Stereo [MusicMatch (FhG) v4.4] encoded PC decoded Mac
all on cdrs and played in a Recording Studio.
Conclusions:
90% of the 128 Kbit material was picked out
MP3@256 was rated to have the same music quality as cd
If you find MP3@256 to be of inferior quality compared to the original cd, you're very likely to be doing something wrong with the test (correct decoder, no objective double blind testing, DSP filters distorting the process, ...)
The threshold of mp3 transparency lies somewhere between 128kbit/s and 256kbit/s, depending on the kind of music and your hearing and equipment.
Knowing the facts of mp3, you could, if space is not really an issue use: cbr (constant bit rate) 256kbit/s by Lame or some Fraunhofer encoders
Remarks: Guaranteed perfect(x) transparent encoding, but guaranteed overkill on most parts of the music.
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The classic trade-off between space and quality for mp3-archival quality is: cbr 192kbit/s by any Fraunhofer encoder (audioactive, radium codec, mp3enc, ...)
Remarks: Decent sound quality, but not perfect so no archival quality. Clearly audible encoding artifacts on some music when using hq headphones.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAME brings us the first (and still only) optimally tweaked (unlike Fraunhofer) VBR mp3 encoder that does not mess up
Why VBR (Variable Bit Rate)?
VBR seems like a no-brainer. Near the beginning and ending of a song (assuming it starts and ends softly), where the volume is lower, and the music is less "demanding" in terms of its encodability, it makes sense to drop the bit rate, simply because there's not much there to encode, and the wasted space is overkill. In the middle of the song, where it may be more complicated, the idea of giving the encoder the option of "bumping up" the rate on a frame-by-frame basis is great! You may end up with a file that's the same overall size as a 170kbps CBR, but that uses frames as low as 32 on the really dead parts, and as high as 320 on the really tough parts. The bitrate is dynamically adapting to keep the quality constant. To know that the whole file isn't bloated where it isn't necessary, is a real bonus
In conclusion..
USE 'LAME' encoding......with this, you can get guaranteed CD quality MP3's.......and honestly.....noone will be able to tell the difference........I could post up 2 versions of my latest mix.....one around 40MB and one around 4 Mb, and you would not be able to tell the difference.....
Lame itself is a command line program, with a miriad of different front ends...........there is a load of information about this all over the web....but by far the best resource for this is... www.r3mix.net
Have fun
Nick
----------------------------------------------------------------
Right...where to begin.....
If you rip a CD to WAV, the bit rate will be 1411Kbps.....therefore anything lower than this is not CD quality and will have a loss in data.
MusicMatch and other programs use 3rd party encoding software to reduce the size of the file by reducing the number of bits. Typically 128 Kbps is bad, and 256 kbps (using musicmatch) is almost indistinguishable from CD quality.
quotes from www.r3mix.net
In february 2000 c't magazin organised a blind listening test. 300 Audiophiles were involved, finalists tested 17 1-min clips from different artists (classic and pop):
original CD recording
128 Kbit/s Joint Stereo [MusicMatch (FhG) v4.4] encoded PC decoded Mac
256 Kbit/s Joint Stereo [MusicMatch (FhG) v4.4] encoded PC decoded Mac
all on cdrs and played in a Recording Studio.
Conclusions:
90% of the 128 Kbit material was picked out
MP3@256 was rated to have the same music quality as cd
If you find MP3@256 to be of inferior quality compared to the original cd, you're very likely to be doing something wrong with the test (correct decoder, no objective double blind testing, DSP filters distorting the process, ...)
The threshold of mp3 transparency lies somewhere between 128kbit/s and 256kbit/s, depending on the kind of music and your hearing and equipment.
Knowing the facts of mp3, you could, if space is not really an issue use: cbr (constant bit rate) 256kbit/s by Lame or some Fraunhofer encoders
Remarks: Guaranteed perfect(x) transparent encoding, but guaranteed overkill on most parts of the music.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The classic trade-off between space and quality for mp3-archival quality is: cbr 192kbit/s by any Fraunhofer encoder (audioactive, radium codec, mp3enc, ...)
Remarks: Decent sound quality, but not perfect so no archival quality. Clearly audible encoding artifacts on some music when using hq headphones.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAME brings us the first (and still only) optimally tweaked (unlike Fraunhofer) VBR mp3 encoder that does not mess up
Why VBR (Variable Bit Rate)?
VBR seems like a no-brainer. Near the beginning and ending of a song (assuming it starts and ends softly), where the volume is lower, and the music is less "demanding" in terms of its encodability, it makes sense to drop the bit rate, simply because there's not much there to encode, and the wasted space is overkill. In the middle of the song, where it may be more complicated, the idea of giving the encoder the option of "bumping up" the rate on a frame-by-frame basis is great! You may end up with a file that's the same overall size as a 170kbps CBR, but that uses frames as low as 32 on the really dead parts, and as high as 320 on the really tough parts. The bitrate is dynamically adapting to keep the quality constant. To know that the whole file isn't bloated where it isn't necessary, is a real bonus
In conclusion..
USE 'LAME' encoding......with this, you can get guaranteed CD quality MP3's.......and honestly.....noone will be able to tell the difference........I could post up 2 versions of my latest mix.....one around 40MB and one around 4 Mb, and you would not be able to tell the difference.....
Lame itself is a command line program, with a miriad of different front ends...........there is a load of information about this all over the web....but by far the best resource for this is... www.r3mix.net
Have fun
Nick
30 percent!!!... crap...! you got me beat by a good 26 percent or so...
.......
