dang... i guess I've been used to mediocreness for so long. Most of the stuff I have is at 128buit mp3. I encode at 192 from my cds and happy with that [quote] <hr></blockquote>
Ogg Vorbis has a nice sliding scale to select the quality, up to 10 (about 400 kbps), so you can pick something around 6 for everyday stuff. The Mp3 format is showing its age.
I agree that classical music really suffers in mp3. Has anyone out there played with AAC yet? Vorbis has the obvious advantage of being open source vs. the other formats.
ZO - Not really. Your ears are the final judge. So if 128 kbps MP3 sounds good to you from your PC speakres - no need for you to up the encoding rating or change the codec or buy the most $$$ equipment out there just because others says they are better!
And yes, Matsu, I would not call myself an 'audiophile' either. I have a decent audio system that I like and thinks sounds pretty good but nothing beats a live (acoustical) performance.
<strong>Audiophiles are a silly bunch, even the best playback system/listening room and recording method they can devise doesn't come close to re-creating a live acoustic performance. They all insist that it can (so they can go out and spend tens of thousands of dollars on little odd shaped boxes) but the second you hear a live performance you know even the best system you ever listened too doesn't sound like it.
Save the money, buy a decent system and use the extra on lots of concert tickets.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree However, They don't let you listen to live opera performances with a score. I have some analysis that are in the score that i like to track while i'm listening. Unfortunately, i wasn't blessed with photographic memory.
Besides, listening in a symphony hall with a score is kinda waste of money. I was at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion when Zuben Mehta was conducting Le sacre du printemp, i was there for all three performances. I was lucky enough to have orchestra seats (horrible acoustic, but enough light to read my score), anywho, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't . when in orchestra seats, the sound is crappy, but you can see the score, when you're in the good seats, there aren't enough lights to see the score
so, I guess in my attempt to jump from opera to opera withthe click of a mouse, i have to get some more FW drives and save my CD's as AIFF files <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
Bit-rate doesn't even necessarily mean "quality" when encoding an MP3. It's a trade off. If you have a piece of sound that can be compressed to take up 1.5 MB of hard drive and use up 10% of your processor to play it back, it may also be able to compressit so it uses up 1MB of space and uses up 15% of your processor to play it back.
The bit rate is how many bits are being fed to the processor from the hard drive. Higher bit rate, bigger filesize. Higher compression makes the bitrate go down and the filesize go down, but cpu usage go up without necessarily having a loss of quality. It just means the processor has to do more calculations to compress and uncompress the sound becuse it is being compressed further.
Of course, you can also get small filesize and low cpu usage by having lower quality...
Anyway, I find that Maximum Quality VBR MP3s done in iTunes are pretty good. At least, as good as I'll notice on my laptop's speakers.
Comments
I agree that classical music really suffers in mp3. Has anyone out there played with AAC yet? Vorbis has the obvious advantage of being open source vs. the other formats.
And yes, Matsu, I would not call myself an 'audiophile' either. I have a decent audio system that I like and thinks sounds pretty good but nothing beats a live (acoustical) performance.
<strong>Audiophiles are a silly bunch, even the best playback system/listening room and recording method they can devise doesn't come close to re-creating a live acoustic performance. They all insist that it can (so they can go out and spend tens of thousands of dollars on little odd shaped boxes) but the second you hear a live performance you know even the best system you ever listened too doesn't sound like it.
Save the money, buy a decent system and use the extra on lots of concert tickets.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree
Besides, listening in a symphony hall with a score is kinda waste of money. I was at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion when Zuben Mehta was conducting Le sacre du printemp, i was there for all three performances. I was lucky enough to have orchestra seats (horrible acoustic, but enough light to read my score), anywho, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't . when in orchestra seats, the sound is crappy, but you can see the score, when you're in the good seats, there aren't enough lights to see the score
<img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
so, I guess in my attempt to jump from opera to opera withthe click of a mouse, i have to get some more FW drives and save my CD's as AIFF files <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
The bit rate is how many bits are being fed to the processor from the hard drive. Higher bit rate, bigger filesize. Higher compression makes the bitrate go down and the filesize go down, but cpu usage go up without necessarily having a loss of quality. It just means the processor has to do more calculations to compress and uncompress the sound becuse it is being compressed further.
Of course, you can also get small filesize and low cpu usage by having lower quality...
Anyway, I find that Maximum Quality VBR MP3s done in iTunes are pretty good. At least, as good as I'll notice on my laptop's speakers.