CD vs MP3 sound quality

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

At least under the $1k price point...

Vinyl > CD > MP3 //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

But since a vehicle is about the worst environment for critical listening anyway...

 

[Beat_Dominator 5,000+ posts]

My Maybach is a great environment for critical listening //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/fyi.gif.9f1f679348da7204ce960cfc74bca8e0.gif

 

[vipervin 10+ year member]

its interesting how vinyl still ownz all other forms of media in terms of SQ

 

[spoonraker 10+ year member]

If you use a huge bitrate to encode the MP3 it will be just as good of quality as the original CD. Problem is it'll be like 23Mb for each song lol.

Most people use about 192Kbps bitrate, 320 or greater is what will give you comparable sound quality.

 

[reneeb7363 10+ year member]

Wikepedia:

MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, aka: MP3, is a digital audio compression format designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent audio, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. It uses psychoacoustic models to discard components less audible to human hearing, and recording the remaining information in an efficient manner.

So You ARE definately losing a negotiable amount of the original recording and thusly, if you are concerned about SQL of your music, stay away from MP3.

Think of it like a Jpeg picture-- it still looks like the original picture to your eyes, but, on an encoded/compressed level, parts of the picture were removed to save memory.

this link may help explain the difference in formats CD (= WAV) vs. MP3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

CDs are technically compressed as well. If you understand the theory behind digital audio encoding you will see why there are losses involved in a CD as well.

Files ripped from another format can be of widely varying quality. The compression codec and the bitrate will have a huge impact on the audio quality of the file. I'm not an expert on the different codecs but some are definitely better than others.

 

[Cris 10+ year member]

I generally find nothing sounds best than an original cd in my car. Then again, I have more SQ-oriented equipment that can take advantage of good recordings. There is no question.. Mp3's sound worse than CD's, but i can carry 9,000 in my ipod. It's a tradeoff.

 

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

If you understand the theory behind digital audio encoding you will see why there are losses involved in a CD as well.

Yup //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

Analog > all, although 7.5 IPS tape gets a little unwieldy //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

So does several hundred CDs compared to an iPod as mentioned above.

 

[Lowjacker 10+ year member]

reel to reel FTW!!!!!

 

[Chevyaudio 5,000+ posts]

Turntable in the batcave Jim?