Sound quality: CD, MP3 or WMA format?

geralopez

Question about quality sound playing the different audio formats.
* What is the best format to play music in a car audio system without loose quality?
I will try playing all formats (CD, MP3 & WMA) to define the best in my system but I would like to know your opinion.


-GLopez

danger boy

CD is going to be your best quality. because it's been pressed onto a CD from a copy of a master recording.

where by MP3's, WMA's are "dubs" if you will of music from a CD. just like when you would make a copy of a VHS movie.. with each copy you make, the picture looks worse and worse.

although MP3's and other digial audio formats remain in the digital format... it's still a copy that is several layers old.. and each copy gives it lower and lower quality recording.

Listen to a WMA song. then listen to the same song off the CD. you'l notice a difference in sound quality.

LittleCar_w/12s

Yes, CD's are your best quality. But also keep in mind that if you can live with the difference, MP3's are much more compressed and many more songs can be put onto one disk.

MP3's are compressed layer of music, and is designed tocut off those freq's and noise that true wav and cd formats still have.. it makes the music sound less genuine. A LP recorded into MP3 will NOT sound like an LP... but when sent to CD or WAV formats... every piece of inormation is saved. (also WMA is just microsoft's version of an Mpeg layer)

Your choce basically. I prefer cd's for quality, but respect that hundreds of songs go onto a MP3 disk.

geralopez

I'm going to install in my audio system an Alpine HU with a 6 Disk charger (also alpine, go to: http://clubpolk.polkaudio.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15040 for reference).
I want to take full advantage over all features of this HU and charger. I will organize all my music in 5 or 6 CD's in MP3 format and will use the text information that can be assigned for each song and then will put in the trunk into the charger. For best sound quality I'll use the HU to play the original CD's.
My plan is to record all my CD's in MP3 or WMA in my laptop and then to burn in the CD's. I not planning to download from somewhere the songs, I have several songs in MP3 downloaded, but I don't like it, they sound like shi''t.

-GLopez

Systems

cd's are not pressed - they are burned -- literally.

vinyl is pressed - which sucks **** - it used to be to "cut" with a needle, which made it precise and good quality, now its all recycled milk cartains and ****.

the original cd will give you the truest audio quality... whether this is "good" to you is of a subjective nature - u might think the "distorted" mp3 or wma is "better" -- that's opinion... but just true audio reproduction of hte original waveforms ---- that's the original cd.

as far as mp3 versus wma giving better quality -- wma's are a little better copies than mp3's are. not much though.

a wav is probably the closest repro to a cd you'll find, but - they take up as much space as the originals - so why bother, unless you're dubbing a cd.

when playing mp3's and wma's in the car, you're doubly **** yoruself. the compression process of mp3's and wma's is not actually "compressing" anything -- its sampling, the same way digital audio is sampled from analog audio - you can't have DIGITAL audio -- its an oxymoron... so you end up with sampled **** and a chopped up version of something that was once a continuous flowing animal.

anyway -- once you record that over recycled piece of crap and then try to play it, you're player inherently adds junk and distortion because the mp3 codec's inside these head units aren't exactly "intel stock" stuff. -- as if intel was even that great.

wallstreet

Originally posted by danger boy
CD is going to be your best quality. because it's been pressed onto a CD from a copy of a master recording.

This is true.

where by MP3's, WMA's are "dubs" if you will of music from a CD. just like when you would make a copy of a VHS movie.. with each copy you make, the picture looks worse and worse.

This is partially true depending on encoding rate. The most common encode rate is 128kbps. At this rate, the sound artifacts introduced by the codec are easily noticed. At 192kbps, I'm hard pressed to tell a difference. At even higher rates the sound is virtually indistinguishable.

although MP3's and other digial audio formats remain in the digital format... it's still a copy that is several layers old.. and each copy gives it lower and lower quality recording.

This is wrong. Once encoded, it's just a file. You can make a bazillion copies of that file and they'll all be identical.

Listen to a WMA song. then listen to the same song off the CD. you'l notice a difference in sound quality.

Bump up the encode rate until you can't tell. In a car audio environment, 192kbps should be sufficient. WMA claims better sound at lower encode rates. This is up to you to decide. Obviously, the lower the encode rate, the more music you can put on a CD.

geralopez

I'm agree about original CD's, but it is a good idea to have an mid acceptable sound quality, not the best, but at least you have more music and ton's of songs in a small space and one adtional good thing is: no distractions on the way while u're driving.
Of course you can change yours MP3 CD's from your changer and replace for original CD's at any moment, but as I think, you can use your HU to use your originals.

Here are some interesting links about CD's technology:

CD Physical Specification:
http://www.disctronics.co.uk/technology/cdbasics/cd_specs.htm

CD Data Coding:
http://www.disctronics.co.uk/technology/cdbasics/cd_frames.htm

Digital Audio for the Compact Disc:
http://www.disctronics.co.uk/technology/cdaudio/cdaud_intro.htm

CD Audio Copy Protection: Upss!!!
http://www.disctronics.co.uk/technology/cdaudio/cdaud_copyprot.htm

Jstas

Guys, PBD is right, CD's are not "pressed" they literally are burned or etched with a laser. The duping machines for the CD copiers are huge jukeboxes that burn the image of the master copy on to the rest of the CD's. The information is stored on a reflective film which gets etched by the lasers. The film has a membrane over it that allows the laser to etch the film without burning the plastic. Hence the reason un-burned CD-R's look green or blue and burned CD-R's look silver or gold. The plastic is there only to protect the insanely thin film from being damaged and destroying the stored information.

I've seen this process first hand at Sony Music in Pitman, NJ. I actually applied for and was offered a job there maintaining the computer systems that operate the huge CD duplicators.

LittleCar_w/12s

I think the point is:
CD's are direct ANALOG recordings of a peice of sound.. (CDA)
MP3's, etc are a sampling of a analog sound.
CDA are large and take up more space
MP3's are smaller, and can be really small (ie. 64kbps terrible quality) or less-small at 128 or 192kbps

You choose.. better quality or more music. I dont mind MP3s at or above 128... in fact I use a laptop in my car as a HUGE mp3 player sometimes, and the quality is barely noticeable.

Your choice-- have fun

Jstas

No, CD's are a digital recording, hence the need for a Digital/Analog converter.

geralopez

DIGITAL means: 0101010101010101010101010101010101010
Information comes from 101010101010101010.
An D/A converter is required to read and then transform in an analog signal or format (voltage, mAmp, magnetic, etc). The CDA, MP3, WMA or any other format writeen in a CD its a pure digital information. The diference is how are they compressed.
All our HU has a D/A converters, if there are some with a tape-player is is pure Analog to Analog conversion (magnetic to voltage).

Here are another interesting sites about MP3 and digital sound quality:
http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm/techinf/layer3/
http://www.mp3licensing.com/mp3/mp3pro.html http://www.mp3licensing.com/mp3/history.html


-GLopez

LittleCar_w/12s

Ok.. here I have gone off and left you all... and returned with pure, researched information!

Ok We established: CD's -MP3, all digital

Here's the true difference...
(ASSUMING you record your MP3's in 44.1 KHz Stereo)

CD's are recorded at 1408 Kbps
Wav's are also rec'd from cd's at 1408 Kbps
MP3's are rec'd at 128 Kbps (normally)
MP3's at 192 Kbps are usually indistinguishable from cd's on all but the best equipment (studio quality)

A lot of people are telling me that Ogg Vorbis is a much better format for recording into. I will be trying these and will try to tell.

From the above we can deduct that if you record all of your songs into 192Kbps MP3's you will probably not hear any difference.

bigoh33

Actually CD's when they are mastered they Master them at 44khz /16 bits. some artists record on systems that use a higher khz/bit ratio such as 96 khz/24 bits or ProTools the industry standard for most artists at 192 khz. Thats why most recordings today have more oopph to em. But when the product is mastered it reverts back to the 44 khz/16 bit CD standard. they even use converters to do this before getting the masters done.

With that being said an MP3 ripped at 128 kps CBR (constant bitrate) is CD quality and as already stated the higher the bitrate the better the quality. Now with VBR (variable bitrate) is not going to be any good to use unless you plan on streaming from website such as a live internet radio feed or you are rippig cassettes or records into MP3.

Now on the other hand WMA bitrates are half of MP3 bitrates 128 KPS MP3 = 64 KPS Wma and file sizes are halved. sound quality is about the same. WMA just tend to have a little less high end than MP3 using the above comparison.

I hope this helps

Just my 2 cents worth

PEACE & 1!!!!!!!!!!

wallstreet

Originally posted by bigoh33
..snip..

With that being said an MP3 ripped at 128 kps CBR (constant bitrate) is CD quality and as already stated the higher the bitrate the better the quality. Now with VBR (variable bitrate) is not going to be any good to use unless you plan on streaming from website such as a live internet radio feed or you are rippig cassettes or records into MP3.

Nope, that is not correct. MP3 at 128 is not CD quality.

Now on the other hand WMA bitrates are half of MP3 bitrates 128 KPS MP3 = 64 KPS Wma and file sizes are halved. sound quality is about the same. WMA just tend to have a little less high end than MP3 using the above comparison.

A bitrate is a bitrate. 128 <> 64 (read not equal). WMA uses a different CODEC than MP3 and claims better quality at the same bitrate. WMA does produce a smaller file at the same bitrate as MP3, but it's not half the size of MP3 at the same bitrate.

PoweredByDodge

look -- i thinkw e all messed the fkin point here.

how does an mp3 work?

your answer? --- "it's compressed! -- it compresses the wave."

*buzzer* eeeeeeeeeeehhhh wrong.

it SAMPLES the wave, or the cd -- since we'll all just stipulate that a wave file ripped from cd with a program such as 'IsoBurn' is the same as the original cd track (it really it... that's not a quality comparison... its identical).

now... mr mp3 program thingy comes along and says "oh ****... hmm... lets sample this and make it smaller" ... so what you end up with is something like a flip book.

ever make a flip book when you guys were kids? --- where you take like 30 sheets of paper, and draw a cartoon on each one... and each page has the cartoon character slowly moving his arm or doing something.... then when you stack up the sheets and flip the book really really fast, it looks like you're watchign tv or something... it looks like real live motion.

this is how sampling works.... you take snippits of the music data and then flash it in chunks -- 192 / 128 / 96 / whatever... as teh number of slices goes up and the speed at which you flip through them increases... you get a better overall product which resembles more the original cd track.

now... think of it this way -- teh original track is just an infinite sample... even though it is digital, and therefore by default sampled itself, since this already 'not original' track is our standard for judging, we must assume it to be perfect (even though it sure as hell isn't)... so look at it is a true analog recording with infinite pages for flipping and those pages being flipped at an infinite speed.... now you tell me at what number, what setting, what bitrate do you think we can come close to matching "infinite"....

i've been able to tell teh difference between every original and every mp3 i've ripped using only my simple computer speakers and my car stereo system.

and i'm using isoburn to rip the waves and then using the LAME variable bitrate encoder in both 192 constant / 128 constant / 320 variable / 192 variable / and 128 variable bitrates... and even with a 192 constant... i can tell the difference... DISTINCTLY on my home speakers.... annoyingly so in my car.

now this isn't to say that mp3's are bad... but look at it this way... if all i ever did was download the mp3 and lsiten to it -- i'd love it... sounds great... damn fine actually.... but... since i own the original cd... i can compare the two... and when i do that... it makes me wanna piss on the mp3, because the original is so much more pleasing to my ears.

and for a guy who has some hearing loss... i really do enjoy my music.

Jstas

I think we have a winner Johnny!

Tell him what he's won Ed!

NOTHING! ABSOLUTLY NOTHING!

DING!

WOOHOO!


BTW, that's the reason that my MP3's take up 6-12 MB per file. I rip in 320 kbps constant bitrate.

Everyone I have ever swapped MP3s with always says they get the best MP3 rips from me. I can hear the difference too. I try my best to protect my hearing because I can hear details that other people miss. MP3's are nice when I don't want to carry 300+ copies of CD's with me and I can cram my entire collection on 30-40 CDs. For utmost quality though, CD's will win hands down. The only thing better is a master quality analog recording. Good luck finding one of those anymore.

What we should be doing instead of making new media is increasing the power of the D/A converters in the equipment.

geralopez

It is a good idea, let said, if instead use the standard CD's, the HU were able to read DVD's... that's will be better than sampled files like MP3 or WMA. If a CD can storage 700MB and a DVD can storage 4.7 GB that's means 6.7 more capacity. In this way, more high quality tracks in their original format could be played without scarify the quality.

Well it is just an idea...

-GLopez

Steve@3dai

Just go to DVD-Audio, it's 192kHz/24bit sampling rate. Right now, that's as close as you can get to analog, and it sounds really farking good.

You more than likely cannot tell the difference of a well-encoded mp3 file and a CD in your car because of the road noise, engine noise, etc.

Just use a good mp3 encoder like LAME, and you'll be good to go. I use the "extreme" preset and it's hard to distinguish them from my CDs, unless I play them on my home system.

MP3 encoders actually find patterns of digital bits in the file, and replace those patterns with bits that represent that pattern just not as many bits. Then it chops off like 18kHz and up usually, and like 30Hz and down. Depends on the encoder.

PoweredByDodge

c'mon man, don't i even win a cookie or something?