mp3, Are less bits really worse?

[kexodusc]

Yeah, it's a pity that we can't download lossless. As a mainly classical listener, I'm usually interested in downloading an entire CD. I absolutely refuse to pay as much for 192kbps downloads as I would for the physical CD.

$1.30 per "song" for higher-rez (but still very lossy) format is a scam perpetrated by the music distributors given the relative cost of distributing a physical CD. Consumers need to stop being such suckers. A valid cost per song is probably about 15 or 20 cents. To boot, at that rate piracy would be neglible or relatively so.

It's coming, slowly. I was able to download the Gov't Mule Show I attended on the band's website in FLAC, about 3 days after, for only $15 cdn. A near 3 hr show to boot...the quality was far beyond what I've come to expect from most "live performance" cd's...they feed their shows into their soundboard with the recordings in mind.

FLAC and APE lossless are proliferating in the illegal realm too. I'm not advocating that, but it shows more people are using lossless than ever. Think more people are catching on that 128k sucks and there's better options available. Downloading speed remains the bottleneck.

[Woochifer]

What brought about my submission to mp3 was I got tired of listening to FM while riding the bus. I tried portable satelite radio but it failed miserably. The thought of carrying a CD player and discs really didn't appeal to me. Hence, let's take a stab at mp3 and see how bad it really is. In portable use it's tolerable. It would be better if I had a megabit storage and larger files. I'd love to do that but I can't see well enough to navigate the menus. A friend of mine told me about a program called Rockbox that gives speech to the menus but it only works with certain players. I'm not all that great with computers I'm afraid of laying out the money for the specific player and not being able to get the program to work. So for now it's the simple shuffle with no menus and small storage. We all have our crosses to bare

Even the iPod shuffle nowadays comes with up to 2GB of storage and costs only $69. You can cram a lot of music into that space -- well over 200 songs encoded at 192k. Unless you're using isolating over-the-ear headphones, the ambient noise on a bus will render any loss of audio detail negligible. The leap from 128k to 192k (especially using VBR on the latter) is impressive, and the audio quality is very comparable to the source under most listening conditions while on the go.

Why lossy compressed? To save storage space, ya dummy. OK fine, but where's the problem with space? It's only a problem is you want to store your entire "song" collection on a 2GB Nano. For that matter I'm content storing a mere week's worth of lossless on my 4GB mini.

Apart from cramming your wimpy portable player, it is a waste of time to rip CD to anything but a lossless format. In the first place, rips are faster to lossless than to a more compressed format. Secondly, storage space is cheap today. My daughter just bought a 320GB external drive for C$80 plus tax. I have my entire classical collection, 600 CDs, stored on a 250GB external that cost me $100 a couple of months ago, and backed up on a second, 320GB external that I paid $150 a year ago. This is dirt cheap in audiophile terms of reference.

For me, storage space is an issue, both on my computer and on my iPod. Certain albums are what I regard as "permanent" occupants on my iPod playlist -- the SFS Mahler symphonies, the Miles Davis boxed sets for In A Silent Way, B*tches Brew, Jack Johnson, and The Cellar Door Sessions, everything I have from Pat Metheny, and a few others. Those albums alone occupy close to half the available space on my iPod, even encoded at 192k. If I rip everything in a lossless format, then I'd have to downconvert anything I sync to the iPod in order to keep the albums I want and still have space available for new items. It's just more extra steps that I'm too lazy to take.

On my computer, I have a 500 GB hard drive and a 500 GB external drive for Time Machine backups, but the disc space disappears in a hurry because I use the computer for editing digital video. MiniDV video consumes about 250MB for every minute of footage, and with our infant in front of the camera on a very regular basis, that adds up in a hurry! Since my ripped audio files are only used while I'm sitting at the computer or for transfer to my iPod, I figure I'm fine with 192k.

[pixelthis]

Yeah, it's a pity that we can't download lossless. As a mainly classical listener, I'm usually interested in downloading an entire CD. I absolutely refuse to pay as much for 192kbps downloads as I would for the physical CD.

$1.30 per "song" for higher-rez (but still very lossy) format is a scam perpetrated by the music distributors given the relative cost of distributing a physical CD. Consumers need to stop being such suckers. A valid cost per song is probably about 15 or 20 cents. To boot, at that rate piracy would be neglible or relatively so.

ACTUALLY, you can "download" lossless , and its free.
A newsgroup service is about 8 bucks a month for 10 gigs.
There are binary groups for ape and flac files.
I have 25 gigs of mostly jazz and classic rock that I downloaded.
I have downloaded complete albums, complete with cover art in RAR files.
Like most all flac the sound in indistingushiable from WAV.
Being into jazz I mostly go to jazz groups, but in the flac group I saw several classical
collections, as well as in the ape section.
And while newsgroups have the rep of being the "red light" district of the net, truth is I have had problems only a few times (once I downloaded a "mpeg" file, but it popped up as an exe, and I reacted quickly but not quickly enough, things went downhill very fast from there)
But that was years ago and was fixable. HAVEN'T had any trouble in a long time.
A bit of trouble but well worth messing with as most readers will assemble files for you.
And if not winrar is relatively easy to use.
A nice thing about newsgroups is the unique things you can get, like a 300 MB file of a
four minute video, the picture and audio was amazing, really.
But you need broadband , really, I used to DL mp3 on a dialup, but it took forever

[Feanor]

ACTUALLY, you can "download" lossless , and its free.

Perhaps I'll check it out. Free is not necessary, but I would like to see fairly price rather than gouge.

There are a few source for lossless, and even hi-rez, classical downloads but the selection is so limited as to be irrelevant.

[Mr Peabody]

Kex you are the man. After talking with you I went into WMP and set it to VBR and the bit range 40-320. I charged my mp3 player last night, this morning when I turned it on and thought either I miraculously received a vast improvement in hearing or my mp3 player upgraded these songs on it's own. The sound quality was vastly improved. I didn't realize my player would change without manually resyncing. I haven't plugged it back in to see how much change there was in remaining space. Some aspects of the sound is better than originally but the bass is a little lacking in low end detail. The midbass is detailed probably more so than originally, the low end is just not as controlled sounding. I really do suspect the firmware upgrade was either a change or completely different encoder though. Overall, now is the best sound so far. Thanks to everyone for the help.

[Feanor]

...
For me, storage space is an issue, both on my computer and on my iPod. Certain albums are what I regard as "permanent" occupants on my iPod playlist -- the SFS Mahler symphonies, ... If I rip everything in a lossless format, then I'd have to downconvert anything I sync to the iPod in order to keep the albums I want and still have space available for new items. It's just more extra steps that I'm too lazy to take.

On my computer, I have a 500 GB hard drive and a 500 GB external drive for Time Machine backups, but the disc space disappears in a hurry because I use the computer for editing digital video. MiniDV video consumes about 250MB for every minute of footage, and with our infant in front of the camera on a very regular basis, that adds up in a hurry! Since my ripped audio files are only used while I'm sitting at the computer or for transfer to my iPod, I figure I'm fine with 192k.

I will concede that if you only listen on the portable, there is a reasonable argument for lower bit rates given you won't hear much difference on typical ear buds or 'phones. Dowloading lossless I have to "manage" my content carefully on my 4GB Mini pretty; (I can't self-impose the need to have all of Mahler's symphonies permanently installed). Of course iPod capacities are getting huge.

On the other hand my ripped content is primarily for listening on my main system. So I'll stick with my point that ripping at less than lossless is a waste of time. I got in an argument with a guy on a classical music forum who insisted the "99% of people cannot tell the difference between 320kbps and CD". Well maybe, maybe not, but with lossess, (ALAC), you end up with variable bit rates that are typically 400-500kps: that isn't all that much more than 320kbps.

[kexodusc]

I will concede that if you only listen on the portable, there is a reasonable argument for lower bit rates given you won't hear much difference on typical ear buds or 'phones. Dowloading lossless I have to "manage" my content carefully on my 4GB Mini pretty; (I can't self-impose the need to have all of Mahler's symphonies permanently installed). Of course iPod capacities are getting huge.

On the other hand my ripped content is primarily for listening on my main system. So I'll stick with my point that ripping at less than lossless is a waste of time. I got in an argument with a guy on a classical music forum who insisted the "99% of people cannot tell the difference between 320kbps and CD". Well maybe, maybe not, but with lossess, (ALAC), you end up with variable bit rates that are typically 400-500kps: that isn't all that much more than 320kbps.

400-500? Best I get with ALAC is 500-600 and most of my jazz/rock stuff is in the 750-850 range. Some of my jazz recordings are 900-1100.

Weird, just looking quickly, my classical music seems to turn into lower bitrates while jazz and rock demand higher bitrates, wonder why?

Anyway, even 600 is quite a bit more data than mp3 320 kbps. Nonetheless, I would tend to agree with the guy on the classical music forum that for the most part 320 is pretty hard to distinguish from the original track. But there are still times when I notice soundstage and imaging just seems....off. Could be me, but harmonics can seem "wrong" too. I don't hear the dreaded swishy noise in the high end though. I'm not versed enough in the technicalities of encoding to know what is lost at 320 kbps, but I do know in theory it is supposed to be the redundant and masked information that we don't hear anyway. For the most part it's really good.

For portable music - I can see no benefit to using lossless on the device. Imaging and soundstage are the areas I hear most improved (or preserved?) using lossless - those are rendered irrelevant to a large extend using headphones anyway.

[kexodusc]

Kex you are the man. After talking with you I went into WMP and set it to VBR and the bit range 40-320. I charged my mp3 player last night, this morning when I turned it on and thought either I miraculously received a vast improvement in hearing or my mp3 player upgraded these songs on it's own. The sound quality was vastly improved. I didn't realize my player would change without manually resyncing. I haven't plugged it back in to see how much change there was in remaining space. Some aspects of the sound is better than originally but the bass is a little lacking in low end detail. The midbass is detailed probably more so than originally, the low end is just not as controlled sounding. I really do suspect the firmware upgrade was either a change or completely different encoder though. Overall, now is the best sound so far. Thanks to everyone for the help.

Cool, glad we could help.

For even better results, I would suggest dabbling with other programs. Real Player and dbpoweramp are decent, for the discriminating audiophile using Windows on their PC, I'd recommend EAC - it is very meticulous in ripping the original .wav file - and does a much better job than say iTunes, WMP, and other more common programs. You can then use the latest Lame encoder to make the best possible mp3's.

EAC recovered more than a few totally scratched and useless CD's for me - one took about 11 hrs to read and restore perfectly! It ain't always fast, but well worth it.

I'm not sure if Grip is available on windows, it's probably the best ripping program I've used period! It's the king in the Linux community.

[Feanor]

400-500? Best I get with ALAC is 500-600 and most of my jazz/rock stuff is in the 750-850 range. Some of my jazz recordings are 900-1100.

Weird, just looking quickly, my classical music seems to turn into lower bitrates while jazz and rock demand higher bitrates, wonder why?

...

I shot my mouth before double checking the facts. Your range is more accurate.

Bit rates are hugely variable in ALAC. I have an example at 261kbps, (John Cage, Prelude for Meditation, (piano)), and one at 1107kbps, (Freddie Hubbard, Ready for Freddie: Birdlike), which is virtually uncompressed.

Yes, my jazz files tend to have higher bit rates too. Perhaps this is counter intuitive but not doubt there is an explanation. One think I've noticed: all the highest bit jazz files have cymbals and most brass. That cymbals would demand a high bit rate isn't amazing.

[kexodusc]

I shot my mouth before double checking the facts. Your range is more accurate.

Bit rates are hugely variable in ALAC. I have an example at 261kbps, (John Cage, Prelude for Meditation, (piano)), and one at 1107kbps, (Freddie Hubbard, Ready for Freddie: Birdlike), which is virtually uncompressed.

Yes, my jazz files tend to have higher bit rates too. Perhaps this is counter intuitive but not doubt there is an explanation. One think I've noticed: all the highest bit jazz files have cymbals and most brass. That cymbals would demand a high bit rate isn't amazing.

Same with FLAC -

You had me excited - I thought maybe I could find a setting to reduce file size (which would correspond with the lower bitrates).

I haven't used ALAC in a while, I know a good FLAC encoder let's you adjust settings for file size, which does further reduce the bitrate a bit, but it takes a lot longer to rip. There's no loss in quality of course, just a bit more space saving, but the I don't find the 10-15% footprint difference worth the the time it takes. Maybe if I had a bleeding edge super computer...

[E-Stat]

...who insisted the "99% of people cannot tell the difference between 320kbps and CD".

99% of all such claims have been proven false.

Before I bought a larger drive, I ripped quite a bit of my CD library to 320 k MP3 largely for listening on my computer system. He really cannot detect the missing dynamics, resolution and top end smoothness? Ok!

rw

[E-Stat]

but the I don't find the 10-15% footprint difference worth the the time it takes. Maybe if I had a bleeding edge super computer...

Based on the low cost of storage today, I don't bother either. Terabyte drives go for as little as $220. My time is more valuable. I am in the process of going back and ripping everything to full WAV. That I do for two reasons: facilitates re-burning CDRs I use on the garage and car players and allows me to listen on my computer system as well.

My portable system is a Treo Palm phone with Shure E3c buds and a 4 GB SD card I paid $35 for around Thanksgiving. While that stored only a couple hundred songs, such is sufficient for my purposes. If I wanted to double that capacity, I could buy a new 8 GB card for the same amount today on E-Bay!

rw