MP3's really stink

heiney9

txcoastal1 wrote: »

This is just another subject that has been beaten down on all audio forums.
Never goes anywhere and is a subject of opinions....i.e. to each his own

Yep.

And I will never use lossy compression on an audiophile system.

Today, there is no reason for it anyway. If you want to stream music, lossless is a better method and HD space is really cheap as is bandwidth for downloading, so there is no logical argument to use lossy compression for audio.

H9

heiney9

K_M wrote: »

heiney9 wrote: »

The loss of information is what the issue is. Once it's gone (as in thrown out during compression) it can never be gotten back during playback.

Some people find MP3's to be perfectly acceptable. I don't, and never will when it comes to music for my main rig listening. The quality difference is apparent.

For portables or in the car, fine...........but even that makes no sense today as storage space is cheap, so why use lossy compression at all?

H9

Again, too many variables to say for sure what you were hearing.
I would have to hear your system to understand why it came off sounding so poor.

I am inclined to believe (from other more audiophile type forums I frequent) that listeners are hearing widely varying qualities of encoding.

I have seen opinions all over the place from, fantastic to total crap...lol
So not sure all were actually hearing good encoding....and they all had quite decent systems, and their descriptions were all over the place.

As long as you realize yours is just one of those opinions as well.......poor is a relative term. What is poor to me or you or the next guy can mean something different. Let's just say MP3's, in any form, don't sound as good as the original, to me that's poor.

H9

heiney9

Also, 320kbps should be fairly uniform in the codecs. I realize there is more than one way (algorithm) to do the encoding and some are a little better than others. But to say it runs the gammit from total crap to fantastic is nothing but hubris.

There are differences but if the gap is that wide, then there are many other things at work.

All my experiences come from actual rips I did myself, not relying on others. Not a single one has sounded as good as the uncompressed original file.

Anyway.............dead horse beaten to death. If mp3's trip your trigger......rock on, but it sounds like you are trying to convince the rest of us........Today I see no need for MP3 files being in a serious audio rig.

H9

afterburnt

I was talking about the smell

heiney9

Of course, yours are afterburnt. Probably a little pungent!

K_M

heiney9 wrote: »

Also, 320kbps should be fairly uniform in the codecs. I realize there is more than one way (algorithm) to do the encoding and some are a little better than others. But to say it runs the gammit from total crap to fantastic is nothing but hubris.

There are differences but if the gap is that wide, then there are many other things at work.

All my experiences come from actual rips I did myself, not relying on others. Not a single one has sounded as good as the uncompressed original file.

Anyway.............dead horse beaten to death. If mp3's trip your trigger......rock on, but it sounds like you are trying to convince the rest of us........Today I see no need for MP3 files being in a serious audio rig.

H9

I was referring to how people describe MP3. That may be a big part of the variable.

Besides this is Beating a dead horse thing. I was only trying to convince you that to me, they did sound mediocre before, then something changed. Not sure what changed, but now they do sound quite decent to me in all ways!

Honestly I do vinyl and CD mostly and quite by accident encoded Several CDs into 320kbs and was astonished to not be able to tell!
I normally never use MP3...but when I hit the "Info" button on a whim, it came up..."MP3 320kbps"!!!!!!!
I was uttering..>WTF? MP3?

Kind of a "Blind test" scenario where I did not realize I was not listening to lossless, but thought I was.

More astonished than trying to convince anyone!
Conveying excitement about something that I may have been kinda wrong about....lol

K_M

txcoastal1 wrote: »

This is just another subject that has been beaten down on all audio forums.
Never goes anywhere and is a subject of opinions....i.e. to each his own

I think this is true with Most audio discussions.
If anything was a universal truth, we would all be agreeing and owning the same speakers....LOL!

Jazzhead

On my system (which is not the most revealing to begin with) I've always been able to identify MP3's as opposed to Redbook CD. How to describe the difference -it's like some meat has been dissolved away. It's got most of the bones, but less of the meat. And sometimes I hear some artifacts that make me cringe. On the other hand for background music I sometimes stream Pandora (128kbps I think)) via our Smart TV through my upsampling Cambridge 840C and I find that acceptable. It's OK if I am in another room cooking dinner... But I can listen to a tune on Pandora, and them play the identical tune from a Redbook CD and there is a vast improvement in all aspects of sound quality. No comparison. I could tell you blindfolded.

StantonZ

heiney9 wrote: »

And I will never use lossy compression on an audiophile system.

Today, there is no reason for it anyway. If you want to stream music, lossless is a better method and HD space is really cheap as is bandwidth for downloading, so there is no logical argument to use lossy compression for audio.

This is really what it's come down to: with disk space less and less of an issue (even a "small" flash drive is large by historical standards), there really is no need for lossy compression in a audiophile system. Back when I wanted to take my music with me, I had to find a way to compress/reduce the amount of space if I wanted to get more than a few CD's on my iPod/iPhone (and I really couldn't hear the quality difference "on the run"). Now I can play many hours of FLAC files on a USB stick right from my AVR (and I really can tell the difference at home).

steveinaz

While 320kbs is passable, there's NO....let me repeat NO justification for use of it on an audiophile rig. Just like there's no justification to run Walmart bias ply tires on a Corvette. Either buy a Geo metro, or get the right tires.

Or, as we say in the shooting world; if you can't afford the bullets, don't buy the gun.

This isn't the "Emerson clock radio" forum. Nut up or shut up....LOL (I've been dieing to say that for the lomgest).

afterburnt

I want a Birdman Systems Nuke 50 but cant afford the ammo

K_M

http://mp3ornot.com/


Guys, try this test.

Eye opening....and frustrating.
It is amazing to see just how horrible MP3 really sounds.......

I know many are bashing it to no end, but even on my good phones, It was frustrating.....!!!!

heiney9

I don't see what the point is? I don't use or care for MP3's so it really doesn't matter to me at all and I can't listen to a website on my main rig anyway.

H9

K_M

heiney9 wrote: »

I don't see what the point is? I don't use or care for MP3's so it really doesn't matter to me at all and I can't listen to a website on my main rig anyway.

H9

Ooooooookay.............So you are in this thread why again......LMAO???

heiney9

Why are you in this thread? The title says "MP3's suck", I agree..............therefore I'm in the thread. You don't agree......................Ooooooookay.............So you are in this thread why again......LMAO???

H9

K_M

heiney9 wrote: »

Why are you in this thread? The title says "MP3's suck", I agree..............therefore I'm in the thread. You don't agree......................Ooooooookay.............So you are in this thread why again......LMAO???

H9

The thread is just a goof anyways.
Now back to my Rum and Coke!

tonyb

heiney9 wrote: »

I don't see what the point is? I don't use or care for MP3's so it really doesn't matter to me at all and I can't listen to a website on my main rig anyway.

H9

Some do though Brock. Matter of fact, the internet/Bluetooth/ phones/ music services are the main distributions of music today. Which is why MP3 is still so popular. Sure, better quality exists but few choices and will cost more.

Everyone enjoys music, but not everyone enjoys quality reproduced music. Probably because they've never heard it.

....and the only way to hear it is to get off the MP3 wagon.

heiney9

I understand that Tony, they really have no incentive to stream at a higher bitrate. But are people really making their own MP3 recordings and streaming them at home? There is no reason for that.

For the record I rarely stream music from a service at home on the main rig. Occasionally I will pick a radio station to stream over the internet on the Squeeze Touch if I'm cleaning, cooking, working around the house. But even that after awhile begins to annoy me because of the poor quality.

Many times out on the deck we've listened to Spotify or whatever streaming off a phone. Perfectly fine and enjoyable, I understand the need and convenience, but I would never accept that same streaming in the main rig or even the office rig.

Yuck!

tonyb

I hear ya man, do the same thing. Stream for background music or casual listening MP3'S is just fine, but holds no water on the main rig.

I think that's where the contention is, when some want to start building a system of improved quality thinking it will make the MP3's sound better.

But....it sounded good on my crap system....right ?

That's when we throw out the standard cliché's....garbage in-garbage out, everything matters, etc, and throw them through a loop.

As we keep repeating, MP3's has it's place, but that's not on a decent rig when quality reproduction is the goal.

jeremymarcinko

There was a time a couldn't hear the difference, and in most cases I still can't. In my main system though, the difference is obvious. However, in my den system, which is much better than average, it is still very difficult to hear a difference.

txcoastal1

@jeremymarcinko
Exactly,
my desktop rig or my HT setup is not nearly revealing as my Usher or Dynaudio, sometimes is a good thing.

Usher or Dynaudio rigs will pick MP3 and/or poor recordings apart.

K_M

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steveinaz

If you can find the video on youtube, sound engineers take an MP3 encoded song, then "null" out the original material with the uncompressed master; then they playback the HASH that is left over from the MP3 compression artifacts. Watch that video once, and you'll never utter "MP3" again.

steveinaz

I'm trying to find the right video....

recoveryone

K_M wrote: »

http://mp3ornot.com/


Guys, try this test.

Eye opening....and frustrating.
It is amazing to see just how horrible MP3 really sounds.......

I know many are bashing it to no end, but even on my good phones, It was frustrating.....!!!!

I nailed it first time through, but that's with knowing what to listen for (the Piano part is what gives it away).

Now what is the optimal format? for my age I would go back to Reel to Reel, but it lost out to 8-track, cassette and Vinyl mainly to access and ease of use. If someone had a Reel to Reel you knew they had been in the military, as the normal American did not see the need/care for optimal sound quality. Does this sound familiar?

As audio geeks (like us) we may aspire to achieve the best quality that our wallets will allow, but to make broad statements about other formats as useless is narrow minded. Case in point, would you sale off stock in Apple back when the IPod was introduced because they were using a compressed format. If you say yes, then you would be the one banging their head against the wall thinking about the money you lost out on.

I feel its best to say Mp3 is not for me/my system and move on. Besides most of the real issues with recordings starts with the Exes telling Artist and sound engineers how they what the music to sound.

K_M

steveinaz wrote: »

If you can find the video on youtube, sound engineers take an MP3 encoded song, then "null" out the original material with the uncompressed master; then they playback the HASH that is left over from the MP3 compression artifacts. Watch that video once, and you'll never utter "MP3" again.

Yes, we all get that there will be some slight loss with MP3
I normally use Lossless.

I think the difference is blown out of proportion though.

On other audiophile sites we frequent, they had a link to a site where you had to choose between MP3 and lossless and do it several times, and many posted results.

Very few were able to do better than guessing at which was which.
So while there is a lot of talk about MP3 sucking, when one is not sure which is which, I think the difference in suckingness changes quite a bit

It is fun to bash stuff, same goes with Bose....lol

heiney9

It's not blown out of proportion. I can tell everytime on my main rig.

K_M

heiney9 wrote: »

It's not blown out of proportion. I can tell everytime on my main rig.

Not to argue, but you are also aware what is playing...correct?

I tried playing a few selections for an audiophile friend of ours, told him one was Lossless, one was MP3 256kbps and one was 320kbps.
As we played each one, he agreed the 256 sounded mediocre, and the 320 was also not up to par, but for sure better than the 256.

After he listened a few times and agreed the MP3 suffered sound wise, we told him the truth.

All selections were lossless all along, none were MP3.
He thought he knew what was playing and even though all were lossless, he still "heard" some as being MP3.

mhardy6647

steveinaz wrote: »

If you can find the video on youtube, sound engineers take an MP3 encoded song, then "null" out the original material with the uncompressed master; then they playback the HASH that is left over from the MP3 compression artifacts. Watch that video once, and you'll never utter "MP3" again.

This, perhaps?

https://news.virginia.edu/content/lost-and-found-uva-grad-student-discovers-ghosts-mp3
http://theghostinthemp3.com/

K_M

mhardy6647 wrote: »

steveinaz wrote: »

If you can find the video on youtube, sound engineers take an MP3 encoded song, then "null" out the original material with the uncompressed master; then they playback the HASH that is left over from the MP3 compression artifacts. Watch that video once, and you'll never utter "MP3" again.

This, perhaps?

https://news.virginia.edu/content/lost-and-found-uva-grad-student-discovers-ghosts-mp3
http://theghostinthemp3.com/

That is cool, but one big variable missing. What MP3 Bit rate was used?