mp3's #@$!@#$

[paymontana]

anyone else have this problem. First you down load them (leaglly of course). Then you listen on your media player. Sounds great. Then you burn them onto disc. Then you play them on your system. WTF. They are jumbled, cut off or just plain awful sounding. It has to be my computer or software rigt? But then why do some come out perfect? Surely w/ all its infinite wisdom this forum can answer and solve this problem.

CJ

[F1nut]

Simple, buy the cd's.

[VR3]

I experience none of these problems you encountered ------ however

I do not download songs. I take peoples bought CD's and copy them over again to see if I like it. If I really like it (ALOT) ---- then I will buy it later.

Anyways, even with downloaded Mp3's --- they should turn out however they did when you downloaded them. All I can tell is -- when you search for a song, get the biggest file size, and atleast 128 quality. Best I can tell ya.

Good luck and listen to the real CDs. Borrow them froms friends, family. Etc!

[Airplay355]

i dont download music unless the bitrate is atleast 192, these still dont sound great on my system but its free so i guess ya cant have everything.

[Shizelbs]

Two questions first. What speakers do you use for your computer rig? What bitrate of MP3 are you listening to?

[ChrisDurano]

Originally posted by F1nut
Simple, buy the cd's.

I have to agree with F1. We spend so much money on speakers, wires, amps, receivers, etc., what's a few more bucks for original cd's?

[rs159]

Hmm

Try converting them to PCM in a program external to the burner software?

What is "media player" ?....wmp, an mp3 device? ..just..what?

I'm sure there's an easy solution to this.

Off topic...mp3 sucks. .wmp sounds a tiny bit better, but has that drm crap. .ogg is best if you have a choice (but can't be played on mp3 players, obviously)

[Airplay355]

if i were you, and you have the connection speed to do it, just download the larger 192 kbps files. they sound fine unless you are blasting music, but for moderate levels of listening they sound fine.

btw- some of us need to save the money we dont spend on CDs so we can spend it on audio equipment haahaa

[Steve@3dai]

Originally posted by rs159
Off topic...mp3 sucks. .wmp sounds a tiny bit better, but has that drm crap. .ogg is best if you have a choice (but can't be played on mp3 players, obviously)

MP3 is fine, it's all in the encoder. I encode some complex music and it comes out quite well actually. Don't use the Real encoder, or the Music Match encoder, those encoders cut off a lot of the highs and focus on the midrange.

.ogg is the linux of the audio world, can't quite get hold ;)

[Loud & Clear]

Are we talking about burning actual mp3s or the wav files they're expanded to when creating a music CD as opposed to a data CD?

[Airplay355]

either way the quality is the same, taking a compressed mp3 and expanding it to a wav does not correct the quality issues, neither does encding an mp3 with a lower bitrate to a higher one. you an downgrade but no upgrading. anything lower then 192 will sound like garbage on a nice system, and even that bitrate doesnt sound great. i will always prefer the sound of CDs but i like the price on mp3s....free

sonys atrac format seems nice, however i've never tried it on my system, anyone used that before? its most comonly used for minidiscs.

[PolkThug]

Sounds like you are trying to burn too fast. Try a slower speed like 8x's. Also, get a good brand of CDR's that are rated for a fast speed. Don't use anything less than a 192 mp3.

Regards,
PolkThug

[Loud & Clear]

Originally posted by Airplay355
either way the quality is the same, taking a compressed mp3 and expanding it to a wav does not correct the quality issues, neither does encding an mp3 with a lower bitrate to a higher one. you an downgrade but no upgrading. anything lower then 192 will sound like garbage on a nice system, and even that bitrate doesnt sound great. i will always prefer the sound of CDs but i like the price on mp3s....free

sonys atrac format seems nice, however i've never tried it on my system, anyone used that before? its most comonly used for minidiscs.

So is the only point in expanding them for playback compatibility (most CD players recognize wavs)? I've made what I consider to be identical sounding burned disks from mp3s that I've previously ripped to my hard drive and then expanded and burned.

Fwiw, I use DBPower Amp Music Converter for ripping and wav/mp3 conversions. It's free and I love it.

I also rip at a constant 192Kb and in stereo, not joint stereo.

[pixiedave]

lossy compression sucks, you can not take a wav file (or cd track) remove up to 80% of the highs and lows take that 20% of the original wav convert it to a wav then burn to disc. Its gonna sound like crap. 192 320bits doesnt matter you are removing a considerable portion of the music. I rip AAC for my ipod at 320, and play those through my laptop in my system, and while "ok" its still not graet sounding. ogg garbage i suggest ripping wavs to shn or flac, a non lossless compression. therefore when you extract the shn or flac to wav you get 100 percent of the music. The encoder used makes no difference, it is math> how do we rmove info from this file so we can make a a small file. Its dumb. The mere discussion of mp3 on this forum is a bit silly.

[Steve@3dai]

Originally posted by pixiedave
The encoder used makes no difference, it is math> how do we rmove info from this file so we can make a a small file. Its dumb. The mere discussion of mp3 on this forum is a bit silly.

The encoder makes a big difference actually, I see that's you done EXHAUSTIVE research on this subject, it shows. I've done personal comparisions between encoders (mp3 and others) and found Lame to be the "truest" out there. I've also worked with FLAC and Monkey Audio, which is also a lossless compression scheme. I've also worked with AAC compression when you had to build it yourself. So yes, I've listened to a lot of compressed music.

The mere thought of *NOT* discussing viable compression algorithms is silly.

Oh, and Dolby Digital/AC-3/DTS is all lossy compressed :cool:

[pixiedave]

Oh, and Dolby Digital/AC-3/DTS is all lossy compressed :cool: [/B][/QUOTE]

Did not know this Thanks

[Airplay355]

yes the only reason to expand an mp3 to a wav would be playback compatability. what im saying though is that taking a 3mb 128 bitrate mp3 and expanding it to a 40 mb wav does not change the sound. its like blowing up a picture, the picture is bigger but the amount of pixels are the same. some people seem to think that expanding their mp3 files to higher bitrate files or larger file formats will up the quality and its not true.

mp3's do suck, ill admit it, but they arent that bad that i must buy the CD. when you say identically sounding discs, what do they sound identical to? and are you playing them on your hT or 2 channel rig or just ur comp speakers. ( assuming ur comp speakers r crap) sometimes you cant hear the difference because of the speaker, not because the quality is the same. the difference between 128 and 192 on my computer speakers is much less then the difference on my stereo. thats why i dont download 128 bitrate mp3s.

[Loud & Clear]

Originally posted by Airplay355
When you say identically sounding discs, what do they sound identical to?

The original CD that I ripped to mp3 (Lame) at 192Kb (constant) in stereo, then later burned onto an 80 minute memorex 'music' CDR using Adaptec v4.02E. I burn at the slowest possible speed. I play the disks in my home theater system, and on my two channel system (which I've broken down for now), cars, friend's stereo systems. To my ears they sound just like the disks, but maybe I can't hear so well. But this practice is pretty controlled, there's no bits flying, willy-nilly, all over the Intranet.

[POLKOHOLIC]

I live in Pakistan--Cost of CD: $1.10

I dont really care if its fake.

By the way...

Original Quality DVD(with REAL menu's and DTS/Dolby Digital Sound) is only Rs.130 which is equal to about $1.50--and i usually get them before they are released in the US Market. The A/V quality on these DVD;s is exactly the same as you would purchase from BestBuy, CC, Walmart etc...

Oh yes...i just moved here from the US 6 Months ago. You hear that Mr. Matthew Polk--youve got a Polkie in Pakistan!!!

Back to the topic...if i feel the need to rip a cd onto my harddrive..I use windows media player 9. This allows me to use the Windows Media Audio Lossless Codec(Bitrate is 800-1000+ VBR)

[POLKOHOLIC]

Look:

[Steve@3dai]

Originally posted by POLKOHOLIC
Back to the topic...if i feel the need to rip a cd onto my harddrive..I use windows media player 9. This allows me to use the Windows Media Audio Lossless Codec(Bitrate is 800-1000+ VBR)

But then you can't listen to them on any players (I don't think).

I think you'll be suprised at the quality of the mp3s I make. I might post one ;)

[dcarlson]

A little highjack...

Hey Steve.... Just to let you know, that Beta Band has been in my rotation for quite a while. I still can't thank you enough on that.

[Airplay355]

not true, many mp3 players, cd players and dvd players allow you do play windows media encoded cources, just like mp3 cds. however the drawback is that wma is a larger file which takes up more hard drive space, and takes up more space on a cd, so you wont have as many songs on a cd with wma as mp3.

mp3's that have a 192 bitrate sound perfectly fine until you turn them up very loud. i download mp3s that only have this bitrate or higher. however they still arent as good as cds.

[VR3]

Yes, Windows Media player files CAN be burnt on a CD-RW, CD-R.

You have to use Windows Media player though. It converts them (dosn't take long and does not lose any quality) and then burns it. This is how I do it, but I dont quite use that large of bit rate because of the file size. lol. Anyways, there are many ways to get around MP3. Ryan (RS156?) had a program that actually *fixed* or resampled the MP3 and made it sound better, maybe he'll see this.

Airplay,
WMA does NOT burn on a disc unless you make them a file disc. Convert them, then burn them. If you do it through Windows Media player you dont lose quality and it still sounds awesome and uses no more space than normal.