Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: KappaWing on February 10, 2007, 04:31:12 pm
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Assume its played on a high-quality stereo.
Which one is the best quality/size value?
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I vote for 192. I personally cant tell the difference from that on up (usually, some songs are obvious) but I can tell a 128 when I hear it :/
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Yeah... I can hear a very slight difference on most songs, but I either go 192 or lossless.
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192 or higher. 192 is my preferred.
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192 for me as well. It used to be 128 but I suddenly realised I could tell the difference. I can't past 192 so that affords me the best file size to quality compromise.
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I have no idea what that means, so I just put the biggest number :)
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It depends a lot on the source audio. 128 is more than enough for some files (recordings of FM music from DOS games) while others still exhibit popping at 320 (lossless FS2 master files). I use oggs these days anyway, which generally sound slightly better.
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I use 192 kbps. I've never noticed a difference in bit rates, and anything higher than 192 just takes up too much space.
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320.
I can indeed tell the difference between that and anything else.
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320. That, or WMA Lossless. I tend to crank the volume up on my cheapo headphones and I can tell a difference when there's too much bass and not enough bitrate... such is trance techno... or whatever you call it :doubt:
:)
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Freeyeow! In this day and age, there's no excuse not to be using a variable bit rate encoder. I mean, I don't use .mp3 anymore unless I absolutely have to, but if I must I demand VBR. That's the only way to get rid of the swishy sound .mp3 always imparts to rapid high-freq percussion without ridiculous bitrates (like 256 kbps or higher, sheesh, thankyou, no).
Better still to just use .ogg. There are a number of good portable players that support it out of the box. For those that don't, there's the Rockbox mod. I've found an .ogg with an average bitrate of around 130 to 140 kbps is more than good enough to fool my ears.
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"-V 3 --vbr-new" in LAME makes good enough job, IMO.
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i use 192. i dont care much for quality considering the music i listen to, gotta keep it kvlt you know :D
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i use 192. i dont care much for quality considering the music i listen to, gotta keep it kvlt you know :D
56 kbps.... now THAT is kvlt!
Not like you can tell the difference in a Burzum song anyway. :p
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192 - but I always buy CDs for HiFi use, anyways.
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i use 192. i dont care much for quality considering the music i listen to, gotta keep it kvlt you know :D
56 kbps.... now THAT is kvlt!
Not like you can tell the difference in a Burzum song anyway. :p
the noise must be perserved for prosperity :D
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I use 128 for most stuff, and reserve 192 for my really nice CDs, especially choral music.
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I use 128kb/s when I want to make my ears bleed.
I use 192kb/s for decent (but not great) quality for the benefit of storage.
I use 256kb/s most of the time, it's a good sweet spot between quality and file size.
I use 320kb/s for the highest fidelity and depth for compressed music.
I use 384kb/s for archiving purposes when FLAC isn't available.
I use FLAC for everything else.
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VBR0 ;7
I use Audiograbber (http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/download.html) + LAME (http://lame.sourceforge.net/index.php) to rip my CDs for storage.
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I'm really surprised at how many people here seem to still be using constant bit-rate compression schemes. Those were outmoded over five years ago. Even if you do have the hard-drive space to spare for huge music files, high (average) bit-rate files stand to benefit from a variable scheme that allows them to put the bits where they are needed most. LAME does this very well, but so many people don't even seem to know the feature is there or that it really is worth using.
Again, I think everyone should just use Vorbis, but what else is new...
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Of course VBRs, what the hell is up with CBR people here? :wtf:
Ogg is nice too, or FLAC if you happen to be insane.
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well i rarely rip my own music anyway. so when i do i just use my old time familiar cbr. l ilke vbr, but it doesnt give me beans for end file size statistics.
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well i rarely rip my own music anyway. so when i do i just use my old time familiar cbr. l ilke vbr, but it doesnt give me beans for end file size statistics.
Try using something other than VBR0? (6?)
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Based on all the reports I've read...with blind surveys of listeners. People, even those with above average hearing, can't tell the difference between 192kHz and 256kHz. So thus 192kHz is just perfect for me. Most sound systems, like iPods and other MP3 players can't deal with it anyways. I would, on the other hand, use the higher bit rate if you wanted to convert that file to something else later...but then I'd ask why you didn't just save it in uncompressed WAV and convert later.
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I use 128kb/s when I want to make my ears bleed.
I use 192kb/s for decent (but not great) quality for the benefit of storage.
I use 256kb/s most of the time, it's a good sweet spot between quality and file size.
I use 320kb/s for the highest fidelity and depth for compressed music.
I use 384kb/s for archiving purposes when FLAC isn't available.
I use FLAC for everything else.
Sex. That's exactly what I do.
.flac is musical sex.
You know it is. Most of my Stuff on my iPod is .flac, the rest is usually 320 for friends to listen too. Only reason I use 320 or lower on my iPod is if I can't find a better torrent.
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I think anything beyond 192 kbps is just placebo, no matter how good your hearing is.
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Based on all the reports I've read...with blind surveys of listeners. People, even those with above average hearing, can't tell the difference between 192kHz and 256kHz. So thus 192kHz is just perfect for me. Most sound systems, like iPods and other MP3 players can't deal with it anyways. I would, on the other hand, use the higher bit rate if you wanted to convert that file to something else later...but then I'd ask why you didn't just save it in uncompressed WAV and convert later.
This thread is not referring to the sampling frequency, which is almost always 44khz or 48khz. It's about the kilobits per second (or presumably the average kb/sec, in a VBR file).
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I think anything beyond 192 kbps is just placebo, no matter how good your hearing is.
You'd be wrong. As I and several other people on this thread have already stated, we can hear the difference, and I'll add that with .mp3's, the difference is a particularly annoying one. Some formats out there have aural artifacts or distortion that one can perceive but more or less ignore. [personal opinion] Loss of stereo separation isn't really a show-stopper for me, but that swishy noise some .mp3's exhibit is one of the most annoying aural artifacts of any format out there. [/personal opinion] Those artifacts don't go away even at 256 kbps on some songs. It just isn't something .mp3 is good at.
As noted (several times) VBR goes leaps and bounds towards fixing this, regardless of your format and regardless of your average bit-rate.
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Eh, alot of what you can hear depends on your speakers... If you have crappy speakers, you wouldn't notice the difference between a 128 kbps MP3 and a 320 kbps. With so-so speakers (ie, most people's included system speakers), prolly 192 is about all you can notice. If you have a set of $100 headphones... :)
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Well... $60, but why quibble? :P
Valid point, jr2.
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Based on all the reports I've read...with blind surveys of listeners. People, even those with above average hearing, can't tell the difference between 192kHz and 256kHz. So thus 192kHz is just perfect for me. Most sound systems, like iPods and other MP3 players can't deal with it anyways. I would, on the other hand, use the higher bit rate if you wanted to convert that file to something else later...but then I'd ask why you didn't just save it in uncompressed WAV and convert later.
This thread is not referring to the sampling frequency, which is almost always 44khz or 48khz. It's about the kilobits per second (or presumably the average kb/sec, in a VBR file).
Oopps...wrong units. The idea is the same.
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Well, you may be right about what you said there (some audio pros use 192khz and I think DVD Audio does too), but there most certainly is a difference between 192kb/s and 256kb/s. :p
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*hears people digging in their pockets for extra change to buy better speakers/headphones* :drevil:
*starts to laugh* :lol:
... :nervous:
*runs* :shaking:
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*hears people digging in their pockets for extra change to buy better speakers/headphones* :drevil:
*starts to laugh* :lol:
... :nervous:
*runs* :shaking:
I am teh Broke after I bought my Dream Theater DVDs/Albums.
Next Paycheck. =/ (Already have 40 dollar ones, they are the Apple In Ear Headphones, other ones were giving me a headache from being to big.)
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Since I move my music files around a lot (to my phone, my laptop, friends computers, etc...) I stick with good ol' compatible .mp3s at a bitrate of 192.
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Put a test .mp3 with VBR in your collection, see if you can find a system that doesn't support it.
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You know it is. Most of my Stuff on my iPod is .flac, the rest is usually 320 for friends to listen too. Only reason I use 320 or lower on my iPod is if I can't find a better torrent.
That's possible?
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Generally 128kbps or higher is okay for me. If it's a bootleg I plan to burn to CD then I'll almost always search for .flac and only settle for .mp3s of any quality as a last resort.
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Put a test .mp3 with VBR in your collection, see if you can find a system that doesn't support it.
How does one get VBR format?
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@ Agent_Koopa: Yes, if you use a modified firmware such as Rockbox. iPods in general have a good deal of processing power, so they can be used to decode just about any format out there as long as you tell it how.
@ Ulala: LAME mp3 encoder can do that, and does it far better than any other mp3 encoder I've tried. Lots of rippers (CDex comes to mind) can be used as front-ends for the encoder so you don't have to worry so much about getting the command line right, but just search around a bit and I'm sure you can find a tutorial. I don't encode in MP3 anymore, so I can't remember the command line options exactly. They may have changed since I switched to Vorbis anyway.
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Good to know, I'll google for exact instructions, thanks. What is VBR file size like?
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God, how I love these threads. Always great for pointing and laughing at the "golden ears" loons. Shouldn't you guys be out shopping for mahogany volume knobs and deionized speaker cables?
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What?
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Ooooooo, mahogany.. pretty... :p
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Good to know, I'll google for exact instructions, thanks. What is VBR file size like?
VBR0 gets 3-4 Megs / song, if I remember right... depends on how complex the song is. :D Try googling audiograbber, it has a LAME interface... then you just have to google LAME, version 3.96, stick lame_enc.dll in your audiograbber directory, open audiograbber, click "MP3"... set the settings, hit "create an MP3 now..." (I think you can also do this from the file menu.)
EDIT: Oh, and, of course, it helps you to be able to tell different sound qualities apart if you aren't half-deaf from having the volume on max. all the time... :p :lol: (Also, cheaper speakers/headphones always distort at these volumes, even some of the more expensive ones aren't at their best under that kind of stress.)
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@ Ulala:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME) Scroll down a bit and it talks about average bit-rate for various VBR "quality" settings. Mileage may vary, yada yada...
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I think anything beyond 192 kbps is just placebo, no matter how good your hearing is.
Depends. To be fair, the comparison of 192 and 256 made earlier is true insofar as it goes for me. Most of the time I cannot tell the difference. I can tell the difference between 192/256 and 320, however.
God, how I love these threads. Always great for pointing and laughing at the "golden ears" loons. Shouldn't you guys be out shopping for mahogany volume knobs and deionized speaker cables?
It's much cheaper to steal them from you. After all, your manifest superiority entails you having bought them at great expense, and the expression on your face is always priceless when you find they are gone.