CD'S quality is better than ipod?

[heeha94112]

Does anyone notices that the quality of music on a cd player is better than ipod?

[seoulfully]

that's because mp3s lose quality in transfers. it's not a lossless format (or it is a lossless format, i just got home from a night out and i forget which is which) but to make a long story short, mp3s are not cd quality. so yes, cd players should have better quality than the ipod

[MarlboroMan]

Correct - mp3 is a lossy format, not a lossless. You always lose a little bit in the compression. It's usually not noticable, however. (unless you rip to mp3, convert to .wav, convert to .ogg, convert to mp3, etc, and then listen to the final product. :) )

[Thesorus]

if you rip as WAV or AIFF it should be as good as a cd player, but you will have less song on your iPod.

[neo]

All:

seoulfully:
that's because mp3s lose quality in transfers.
I'm not quite sure what this means, but mp3s do not lose quality in transfers. It can be copied a theoretically infinite number of times with no loss of data. It's quality is solely a function of the encoding settings.

MarlboroMan:
You always lose a little bit in the compression. It's usually not noticable, however.
Actually, it may be noticable or not, depending on a lot of things, with the (more or less) top two being encoding bitrate and playback conditions (hardware quality (Conrad Johnson vs. Sanyo), environment (loud vs. quiet), hearing acuity).

Thesorus:
if you rip as WAV or AIFF it should be as good as a cd player, but you will have less song on your iPod.
Yes, it will definitely be better, but about 10 times bigger file sizes. If you really need high quality files, encode your mp3s at 256 kps. The files will be maybe twice the "normal" size, but they will sound great.

[SouthsideIrish]

Originally posted by neo

Yes, it will definitely be better, but about 10 times bigger file sizes. If you really need high quality files, encode your mp3s at 256 kps. The files will be maybe twice the "normal" size, but they will sound great.

It won't be better, it'll be the same as a CD.

Some people can here a difference between mp3's and CD's and it won't matter at what bitrate they encode them in, because they will always sound like crap to them, so the only alternative for these folks is to go out and get the biggest HD mp3 player on the market and use wav's.

Bill McNair

[Thesorus]

not better than CD, but better than any mp3 (or other lossy) schemes.

[anthraxx]

It could also be in his head. Some people will always say they can hear the difference until they try a blind listening test with the exact same equipment. Personally I can't hear the difference between an mp3 encoded at APS and the CD wav file.

But I also abused my ears as a youngin' going to metal concerts. :)

[SouthsideIrish]

Depends on the type of music you listen too. Most of the people I am talking about listen to classical, opera and jazz. Also, depends on the listening conditions as well.

Bill McNair

[i_wolf]

Ignoring the file medium its very important to look at hardware medium as well. I mean my ipod sounds better playing a 128k mp3 file than my bro's 1997 discman (cheap taiwan no name import). The audio dac's etc.. are far superior.
Now comparing an ipod on a high quality file it should sound as good if not better than a high quality cd player.
Let me explain what i mean before i get flamed! when i say sound better, its SNR and frequency reponse will probably be much better and general sound hardware will be better. But its accuracy will not be as good as the cd (i.e. it would be a perfect recreation of the "data" on the cd). I think the question that should be asked is, how accurate to cd quality will the mp3 on ipod be compared to cd original. Because sound quality i have some 256 and 192 mp3's that sound better than the original cd in my 5 year old sony discman! It sounds better to me , signal is clearer, no distortion, no hissing etc... and good high's and low's. Now ask me how accurate it is to the cd original, and well its near as #### it.

[i_wolf]

Ignoring the file medium its very important to look at hardware medium as well. I mean my ipod sounds better playing a 128k mp3 file than my bro's 1997 discman (cheap taiwan no name import). The audio dac's etc.. are far superior.
Now comparing an ipod on a high quality file it should sound as good if not better than a high quality cd player.
Let me explain what i mean before i get flamed! when i say sound better, its SNR and frequency reponse will probably be much better and general sound hardware will be better. Playing back a raw WAV file and comparing to a cd proves this. But its accuracy when using a lossy file format will not be as good as the cd (i.e. it would not be a perfect recreation of the "data" on the cd). I think the question that should be asked is, how accurate to cd quality will the mp3 on ipod be compared to cd original. Because sound quality i have some 256 and 192 mp3's that sound better than the original cd in my 5 year old sony discman! It sounds better to me , signal is clearer, no distortion, no hissing etc... and good high's and low's. Now ask me how accurate it is to the cd original, and well its near as #### it.

[anthraxx]

Originally posted by SouthsideIrish
Depends on the type of music you listen too. Most of the people I am talking about listen to classical, opera and jazz. Also, depends on the listening conditions as well.

Of course I should have written my post better and not made it a blanket statement. Some people are VERY sensitive to the sounds and will pick up the differences. Especially people who work "in the business".

But I'm refering to the average joe no matter what type of music their into.

Here's a simple test I've tried at home. Make an APS (--alt-preset standard) mp3 file. Also rip the same song as a pure wav. Put both those tunes on the iPod. Have someone else play the songs for you and don't look at the screen. Have them change the order and play the tracks totally randomly. Can you really tell the difference? How many times did you call out the wav? How many times were you right? It's a great test.

Me personally, I can't tell difference yet. I say yet because there will be one track eventually that doesn't like APS. It's murphy's law. ;)

[jjclub]

Originally posted by anthraxx
It could also be in his head. Some people will always say they can hear the difference until they try a blind listening test with the exact same equipment. Personally I can't hear the difference between an mp3 encoded at APS and the CD wav file.

But I also abused my ears as a youngin' going to metal concerts. :)
I totally agree with you, they will not say anything about sound quality unless you told them that is MP3.

[KeaneE04]

i_wolf: A highly encoded mp3 on the ipod will destroy any portable CD player for sound (made up until about 6 mo ago i believe, and then only the high end sony's). This is due to the fact that these players use compression to save on battery life, and also to use skip protection. I believe i read somewhere that the portable Advantex (cheap as hell) CD player encoded into a 128bit mp3 like file, while the highest end sony's at the time encoded at 224bitrate. Now, this is prolly much higher as this study was about a year ago, but the board i was on screamed bloody murder about finding this out.

On a side note, all my ripped mp3's on my ipod are at 320bitrate, but mostly because i got 20gig's and not nearly enough music. (even at that bitrate ive only filled 2gigs). I CANNOT hear the difference between that and a CD player.

I did test the 320 bitrate extreme on lame at one time against a WAV on my computer. After encoding, i opened them into a wav viewer program (a program that shows all the ups and downs on each channel, some proprietary stuff they have at school), isolated it to quatible channels (those within hearing range), and they were absolutely the same (repeated on 3 different songs in 3 genres). When i added the next 2 channels on each side, i saw some distortion, and as i went farther away from the hearable range, the mp3 didnt have the channel at all, but the wav did.

During this test, i played each channel individually (even the out of range ones), and could not tell the difference. all the out of range one's didnt register (in a soundstage setting, with speakers that cost more than my house!) to my ears, and all the ones in range were identical.

Next time i get a chance, im going to test 192bitrate or 224bitrate and see what they are like. Although i think there are freeware programs to do what i did, so you can test it out for yourself.

[heeha94112]

I am using musicmatch, can anyone tell me how to convert a mp3 file from 128 Birtrate to 320? or to AAC file. If there's a specfic program that does the work, can u send me the download link?

[M@rK]

converting mp3 bitrate from 128 to 320 wont do anything for your quality, just waste space. You'd need to re-rip a CD but this time in 320... or re-download :)

[i_wolf]

I can't remember where i read this but i honestly read that the frequency range on an mp3 file is more like 20 Hz - 17KHz. where as proper cd's are 20 - 20. I could be very wrong, but what i was reading is that the mp3 file format will cut anything above 17 KHz before it starts!
Anyone know if aac gives you the full frequency range???

[jjclub]

Originally posted by heeha94112
I am using musicmatch, can anyone tell me how to convert a mp3 file from 128 Birtrate to 320? or to AAC file. If there's a specfic program that does the work, can u send me the download link?

If your MP3 file is 128KBps, then it is the maximum sound quality that you can get, you can't re-encode it as 320KBps for higher quality.

It is just like computer pictures, say for example, you have a 640*480 picture (original size) and you try to make it as 1024*768 or even bigger, it won't help on quality it is just magnified. Same thing happens to your MP3, the max bit rate is 128KBps, you can not simply re-encode it to higher bit rate to get the higher quality of sound.

The only thing you can do is to get the original CD to re-rip CD audios to 320KBps. MP3 is a result of compression and it will have losses compare to the original source. You must get the SOURCE (CD) whenever you want to change it to higer quality. But you don't need to if you need lower quality.

[anthraxx]

Originally posted by heeha94112
I am using musicmatch, can anyone tell me how to convert a mp3 file from 128 Birtrate to 320? or to AAC file. If there's a specfic program that does the work, can u send me the download link?

Short answer, don't do it. You'll just be wasting your time.

To get better quality than the 128kbps mp3s you should re-rip from the original CD. You won't gain ANYTHING by transcoding from 128 to a higher bit rate (if it's even possible) or different format.

[BaCeK]

It is necessary to separate flies from cutlets
The essence in that that on quality of a sound influences all.
If to take qualitative headphones that MP3 even 320 it is audible unequivocally, but at the majority of owners iPOD headphones of average quality in them flaws MP3 simply it is not audible.
Except for that at comparison WAV and MP3 it is possible to not hear a difference if quality of reproduction ?????? (iPOD) low.
Therefore it is not correct to compare WAV and MP3 listening both that and another on iPOD. Is correct to compare a sound from stationary CD Pleer and iPOD.If equally qualitative that already after that it is necessary to listen to their sounding MP3.
Except for that CD should be qualitative, you are surprised as is much sold poor written CD after I have bought qualitative headphones it became very audible...
MP3 At once it is defined(determined) on ci-ci-ci on high frequencies, against a clean transparency at CD and on grating on the ears sound "s" at executors.

Who TESTED - as far as the battery at iPOD if to listen only WAV suffices?

[bpod]

you can't...


you encoded your MP3 file at 128Kbps...in other words you threw out everything but 128Kbps...

consequently there is no way to add back 192 Kbps to "upsample" to a 320bps MP3

you cant upsample, but you can downsample....

ie if you encode everything at 320Kbps and later decide you can't hear the difference between 192 Kbps file and a 320 you can downsample the 320 to 192...just throw out more data

[zop]

If you mean, is there a program that will take a 128 bit MP3 and turn it into a 320 bit MP3, the answer is Not really.

Let me see if I can explain.

In order to compress a piece of music into a 128 bit MP3, entire chunks of information are thrown out. In order to have a 320 bit MP3, you need some of that information... but unless you have the original, uncompressed music, there's no program that can recreate it. It might be able to make that 128 bit file into a 320 bit file, and it would be much bigger. But it wouldn't SOUND any different.

As for AAC, at the moment, it is a Mac-only format... I'm assuming you have windows since you're in this forum.

z

[neo]

i_wolf:

Regarding frequency range issues:

1. It is HIGHLY unlikely that you can hear anything over 17 kHz.

2. MP3 encoding takes advantage of the fact that you can not hear anything over 17kHz (or probably more like 12-15kHz) by dropping more data in that frequency range than it does between maybe 750 and 5000 Hz. The study of the human perception of sound is called psychoacoustics. Check out the following:

http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=mp3+psychoacoustics

It comes back with some good information.

n