Dave in Nashville Posted May 14, 2004 Share Posted May 14, 2004 Being the law abiding paranoid person that I am, I stay away from the music file-sharing sites and instead decided to give Walmart a try. I bought a gift card at a local super store and proceeded to download about $40 of music at $0.88 a pop. Over a couple of days, I downloaded a pretty broad selection of music including Mozart, Frank Sinatra, Doobie Brothers, Willie Nelson, Boston Pops, raggae, Alan Jackson, mariachi and so on.... I also downloaded several duplicates of songs that I already had on store-bought cd's so I could see if there was a difference in quality. What I found was that roughly half the downloaded songs lacked the bass and richness that was present in the purchased cd's. Fiddling with the tone controls didn't help much (you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear). I even tried playing the cd in my dvd player, but got the same results.... So much for my experiment.... Have any of you had similar experiences? Dave in Nashville - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mains: '77 LaScalas with ALK crossovers Center & Rear: Rebuilt Hereseys Left & Right: Kg4's Sub: Velodyne 1012 Receiver: Denon AVR 1803 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted May 14, 2004 Share Posted May 14, 2004 mp3 are now where near cd quality unless given a start point of 320kbps. mp3 really lose bass and upper trebel as they compress, they lose bass and upper ends first Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted May 14, 2004 Share Posted May 14, 2004 try also upgrading your mp3 player's decoder using mad plugin at http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/mad-plugin/#install Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
formica Posted May 20, 2004 Share Posted May 20, 2004 Yup... to reduce the file size by ten fold (for 128kbps files), MP3s do significantly compress the audio data, which translates to a loss of quality. It'll always be most apparent when the music contains very dynamic passages (covering a wide frequency range) as this is where the most critical data is lost. The quality differences in 128kbps are audible without even doing an A/B test with a CD... while the higher quality files like the 320kbps mentioned are not readily distinguishable from the CD without doing an A/B comparison. I've been preaching for a long time the MP3 is not a greater threat to the CD in quality than a cheap old Philips cassette was. They are useful for portability, background music, and sampling albums you intend to buy on CD or SACD. Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justin_tx_16 Posted May 20, 2004 Share Posted May 20, 2004 I think it is important to note that only a select online store sells MP3's so all this chatter about MP3's is kind of usless. The only online sites that do MP3's are LiveDownloads (they do MP3/FLAC Lossless), Audio Lunchbox (they do MP3/OGG), eMusic (they do MP3's but they are variable bit rate, so the quality will range from 96-256 depending on the damands of a particular part of the song), and finally Bleep (they also use VBR MP3's). The reason that no one that sells contracted music (Like Sony Music, BMG, etc) will use MP3 is because you cannot restrict rights on it like you can AAC, WMA, RAX and AA. OGG Vorbis and FLAC are great codecs to have a lossless, or close to it, rip from a cd. I have had fantastic results using iTunes' AAC format where 128kbs AAC is equal to or greater than 164-192kbs MP3. I believe that RollingStone.com did an extensive review of file formats and AAC won. Audio Lunchbox does not to VBR MP3's but they rip at 192kbs instead of the standard 128. As far as sites like Wal-Mart.com, Music Rebellion (love them when they were fresh, got 10 CD's for about $15!!!), BuyMusic.com (purchased, or will be by Buy.com), RealRhapsody and Napster all do 128kbs WMA. According to Microsoft.com, a 96kbs WMA equals a 128kbps MP3. So the files from Wal-Mart.com are suposedly greater than quality of 128MP3 which no one really does online anyways. I would say that a 128kbs WMA equals a 164kbs MP3. Just my opinion. Only with my Sennheiser HD-600 do I REALLY notice the difference in my 128AAC's to my 320kbs MP3's or CD's. Also, it is important to know that these sites rip CD's with better equipment than we probably have, or direct from the original digital file. Also, iTunes (at least) works (supposedly) to make the most out of their 128kbs AAC, preventing the bass loss and treble trembling. I have about 140-200 songs from MusicRebellion.com and probably 400 from iTunes! It is kinda a bad habit haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
formica Posted May 20, 2004 Share Posted May 20, 2004 ---------------- On 5/20/2004 9:55:04 AM justin_tx_16 wrote: I think it is important to note that only a select online store sells MP3's ... The reason that no one that sells contracted music (Like Sony Music, BMG, etc) will use MP3 is because you cannot restrict rights on it like you can AAC, WMA, RAX and AA.... ---------------- True, i should have mentionned that... as well as the fact that the formats vary in their quality/compression ratio. ---------------- Only with my Sennheiser HD-600 do I REALLY notice the difference in my 128AAC's to my 320kbs MP3's or CD's. ---------------- I don't have an iPod so i haven't really tried AAC... but some of the other formats have not impressed me when played on my system, although they don't seem as bad in the car (ahhh... the beauty of road noise... ) Have you tried them on a "stereo", or mostly through the PC and headphones? Later... Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justin_tx_16 Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 I have done it through my Heresy's and get a loss of bass but then heresy's are not great at bass. until i get a real subwoofer I am kinda SOL in that department. I do have a nice subwoofer from Klipsch that i Use with my heresy's and it seems to do a decent job. Bass is not really a problem and highs are certainly there. with most songs. If anything gets rough when being played on the heresy's, it is voice and that is very rare. with the hd-600's (which IMHO provide better quality than any speaker I have ever heard) i can hear faults in things i otherwise would not hear a fault in. I now rip all my CD's at 256AAC but I am looking at AIFF Lossless and Apple's Lossless encoder now found in the newest iTunes. I really want to check these guys out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
formica Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 Thanks for the review... I may have to give AAC a try. ---------------- On 5/20/2004 3:01:55 PM formica wrote: I don't have an iPod so i haven't really tried AAC... but some of the other formats ---------------- Oh, and perhaps i should have mentionned that iTunes and the AAC player are both available for PC and MAC users, just in case someone reading the thread may think it's an Apple only thing. Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tweek Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 I'm a real big fan of Apple Lossless codec, its great if you have the space, previosly before there was a stable version of iTunes for Windows I ripped all my CD's in 320Kbps MP3 but now they are all in the Apple Lossless, the sound quality difference is noticable for me. AAC is also very nice, for the size and bitrate it owns MP3 in every way shape and form. but i'll stick to Lossless for CD rips. I havent tried AIFF yet, but i was always sure that was Apples name for their WAV type uncompressed audio codec, maybe i'm wrong Monkey Audio codec was nice too, its a Lossless codec but i stopped using it for it didnt have much compatibility with anything other than Winamp with a plugin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tweek Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 iTunes (for windows anyway) is missing one important feature, hardware audio acceleration, for sound cards like the Audigy 2 or the Revo 7.1 which support hardware acceleration, it can be turned on in Winamp and greatly improves the sound performance, expesually if you like to listen to music while gaming. or doing lots of CPU intensive stuff. correction i think it does have hardware acceleration but just not an option to turn it off or on like in Winamp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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