Encoding guide (lossy/lossless/MP3/FLAC/bitrates/tagging)

[Sigma]

Gone....

[Rek_Aviles]

you're a beast Sigma.. but you can space these out a bit. :lol:

I'll rep you another time.

[Sigma]

I should have been finishing up a track, but I used this as an excuse not to do it. :D

[fueledbymusic]

I had always wondered. If I had a WAV file and converted to 128bit mp3. What part of the sound is sacrificed. Is it the bass or what. Its been always hard ffor me to hear the difference.

What about WMAs? Are wmas wrost sounding than mp3s?

[Sigma]

I had always wondered. If I had a WAV file and converted to 128bit mp3. What part of the sound is sacrificed. Is it the bass or what.
MP3 encoding removes information in a few ways, but the 2 main ways are: -

1. Chopping off the high frequencies above a certain level.
2. Chopping out sounds that are on top of other sounds which would normally be masked.

So here's an example of 1. This is a record recorded to WAV: -

http://i.imgur.com/id8Is.jpg

As you can see, the high frequencies continue on well above the 20 KHz range.

Here's the same song, but encoded to 128 Kbps CBR MP3: -

http://i.imgur.com/w8B1C.jpg

So, the high frequencies are basically chopped off at 16 KHz so everything above that is gone.

The lower you go with the bitrate of MP3, the more of the high frequencies are cut off as well as the other information that's stripped out.


Its been always hard ffor me to hear the difference.
It depends on a few things. The bitrate of the MP3. How old you are, as your hearing deteriorates with age, particularly when it comes to high frequencies. How good your hearing is for your age. What equipment you're using to listen. Also, you can sometimes teach people how to tell the difference by telling them what to listen for, that's assuming that a difference is noticeable in the first place.


What about WMAs? Are wmas wrost sounding than mp3s?
The only tests I've seen are old ones and the results were that MP3 was marginally better at a given bitrate. How things stack up with the latest version of each codec, I don't know. One advantage with WMA is that there is a Professional version that allows bitrates up to 768 Kbps (compared to MP3s standard maximum of 320 Kbps) and there's also WMA Lossless.

[Manu]

mp3 is teh evil. The highs sizzles while the bass gets soul less and choppy :P


Unfortunately we are more or less doomed to use it for the time being, so good guide indeed.


TL;DR for noobs: maximise the numbers to get better sound quality.

[fueledbymusic]

It depends on a few things. The bitrate of the MP3. How old you are, as your hearing deteriorates with age, particularly when it comes to high frequencies. How good your hearing is for your age. What equipment you're using to listen. Also, you can sometimes teach people how to tell the difference by telling them what to listen for, that's assuming that a difference is noticeable in the first place.


The only tests I've seen are old ones and the results were that MP3 was marginally better at a given bitrate. How things stack up with the latest version of each codec, I don't know. One advantage with WMA is that there is a Professional version that allows bitrates up to 768 Kbps (compared to MP3s standard maximum of 320 Kbps) and there's also WMA Lossless.

Oh! So it depends ha! How old I am! :lol: I couldn't help to laugh at that one! I dont know why, that was the funniest thing I heard in a in long time! Cause its true! I'm getting old!

Well anyway. Now about the chopping the sounds on top of other sounds. What would be an example. Like the voices would be slightly cut off or something?


Oh BTW. Your post was the best explaination EVER! Thanks +1

[Sigma]

Now about the chopping the sounds on top of other sounds. What would be an example. Like the voices would be slightly cut off or something?
No, I don't mean in that respect.

Let's say that you have 8 sounds playing at the same time and I say to you "can you pick out each individual sound?". If you could pick out all of the individual sounds apart from number 7, we could, in theory, remove number 7 entirely and it wouldn't make any difference to what you hear. That's kind of how it works, but put in an extremely simplistic way.

If you want a more in-depth explanation, have a read here: -

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/10/the-audiofile-understanding-mp3-compression.ars

[djAj90]

With faster cpu's and ram, as well as harddrive space being cheaper as well as USB 3.0 being out now,wouldn't it be better to just leave a song in .wav format for the best quality?

[ampnation]

With faster cpu's and ram, as well as harddrive space being cheaper as well as USB 3.0 being out now,wouldn't it be better to just leave a song in .wav format for the best quality?

Unless I am mistaken, wavs don't have tagging so since you get the same quality, tagging, and some compression, FLAC is a better choice assuming your system supports it. But yeah, the cost of lossless vs lossy is becoming negligible with 2 TB externals selling for $150ish. I gathered all my externals and found I had 7 ranging from 320GB to 1TB.

Sent from my ADR6350 using Tapatalk 2

[djAj90]

What is the best quality flac before it becomes pointless unless you have a million dollar speaker system, is 1.4MB/s really all you need ? With 1.4Mb/s flac you can fill a 1TB harddrive with around 1500 hours of music.

[Sigma]

With faster cpu's and ram, as well as harddrive space being cheaper as well as USB 3.0 being out now,wouldn't it be better to just leave a song in .wav format for the best quality?
No, because FLAC is lossless so you don't lose any quality by converting a WAV file to FLAC. If your DJ gear supports FLAC, there's little sense in using WAV.

[KLH]

You would think that FLAC would simply take over. It's open source and easily licensed... unlike MP3. It even supports faster sampling rates and bit depths for future proofing.

For some reason, FLAC is simply harder to find tracks in.

-KLH

[ampnation]

You would think that FLAC would simply take over. It's open source and easily licensed... unlike MP3. It even supports faster sampling rates and bit depths for future proofing.

For some reason, FLAC is simply harder to find tracks in.

-KLH

Follow the money. The percentage of consumers who care about FLACs features are small by comparison. mp3 has a major momentum/compatibility advantage. The main advantage to users of FLAC vs buying a CD is cost (wasted tracks) and being able to shop at home. For record companies they would prefer you waste your money on them. That leaves customer service as their primary motivation to offer tracks in FLAC.

Sent from my ADR6350 using Tapatalk 2

[ampnation]

I was just ripping and tagging some mp3s using Media Monkey and mp3tag and found a nice feature.
With other tools that pull ID3 info when you rip, there are times when you blindly choose one of two or more files and even when there is just one, it might not be how you like it.
With mp3tag I found you can import from Amazon. I had to go to Amazon to get the filename exactly like they had it, but it was brilliant.