Mixcloud sound quality is terrible!

[baller95]

Anyonne else notice this? I converted my mix to highest quality mp3 (320kbps CBR) and it sounds great everywhere I play it but listening from mixcloud my mixes sound shitty! I use soundclloud aswell and that sounds great (wav files)! But the mp3 and wav don't sound too different when I playback on my iPad and computer so I know it's a mixcloud problem.

[DJ Nada]

Maybe they lower quality to save on bandwidth costs?

[dlove]

have you clicked the volume up? (on the right hand side of the cloudcast link)

[baller95]

It's not thee volume but the actual sound quality is not that good idk if everyone experiences this

[Sigma]

I downloaded the mix you have on Mixcloud and it is indeed 320 Kbps and encoded with FHG, which is a good encoder (although I would still recommend LAME over that), so it doesn't look like they're transcoding to lower bitrates which is what I assumed might have been the case. It must be related to the actual player.

[baller95]

I downloaded the mix you have on Mixcloud and it is indeed 320 Kbps and encoded with FHG, which is a good encoder (although I would still recommend LAME over that), so it doesn't look like they're transcoding to lower bitrates which is what I assumed might have been the case. It must be related to the actual player.

Hmm, thanks for the info sigma!

[Hamza21]

Anyonne else notice this? I converted my mix to highest quality mp3 (320kbps CBR) and it sounds great everywhere I play it but listening from mixcloud my mixes sound shitty! I use soundclloud aswell and that sounds great (wav files)! But the mp3 and wav don't sound too different when I playback on my iPad and computer so I know it's a mixcloud problem.

Mixcloud steams at 128kbs but when using third party site/apps you can download the original file you uploaded not streamed version. Mixcrate same thing as well.

[TCMuc]

Mixcloud steams at 128kbs

This.

Actually, all music streams (incl. soundcloud, youtube, spotify, etc.) are 128kbps.

[Sigma]

Actually, all music streams (incl. soundcloud, youtube, spotify, etc.) are 128kbps.

That's not true man. Here's information on Spotify: -

We use the Ogg Vorbis format for streaming. There are three quality ratings that we use:

q3 (~96 kbps)
q5 (~160 kbps)
q9 (~320 kbps)

Desktop: Streams are q5 quality. Premium subscribers can enable higher bit rate streaming at q9 from the preferences menu.

Mobile: A higher quality q5 is offered, along with a “low bandwidth” option of q3. You can choose separate qualities ratings for streaming and synching in the More tab of your Spotify mobile app.

http://www.spotify.com/uk/help/faq/tech/codec-quality/

With YouTube, it depends. There can be various quality options you can choose when watching a video. If you switch back and forth between the highest and lowest one, you can clearly hear the difference in sound quality, therefore it can't be streaming at 128 Kbps in all cases.

SoundCloud definitely streams at 128 Kbps though.

[TCMuc]

Cool, didn't know that.

Thanks for the info!