Effects of Compression

[djman37 5,000+ posts]

Anyone still think MP3s sound just as good as CDs??

never did.//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

jmac, is that teh adobe audition? I upgraded from cool edit pro.

 

[TomBrooklyn 10+ year member]

Ripped CD's at a high bitrate + good quality CD's and burner = no detectiable difference in home or in car.

Hi CBFryman2,

What bitrate are you using?

Most of my mp3s are at 128mps. I haven't tried any CD/MP3 side by side comparisons yet.

Also wondering, how does mp3 stack up against FM Broadcast?

 

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

Also wondering, how does mp3 stack up against FM Broadcast?

Even 128K MP3 is an improvement over FM.

When you modulate a signal to RF, the bigger the bandwidth, the more power needed to maintain signal strength. So it makes sense to transmit a really small bandwidth...

The left/right information in an FM signal only covers from about 50Hz to 15KHz - it needs to stop there because the pilot carrier for the stereo encoder is a 19KHz tone, and any musical information that high will result in a "chirp" on the receiving end...because your receiver is looking for that steady 19KHz pilot tone to decode the stereo information. So the top end is automatically lopped off. The bottom end isn't there because modulating strong subbass would simply take too much power than it's worth, and since most radio receivers aren't hooked up to subwoofers anyway, who would ever hear it?

It sucks.

 

[Beat_Dominator 5,000+ posts]

AM rox.

 

[gabe8501 10+ year member]

Please forgive my elementary question, I'm an audio noob.

But just to make sure I'm reading this correctly..... from the info originally posted.... it looks like WMA Lossless is the way to go?

And the sound quality diminishes and the # of kbps on an mp3 decreases?

Any helpful info or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[PRIVATEpastry 10+ year member]

Please forgive my elementary question, I'm an audio noob.But just to make sure I'm reading this correctly..... from the info originally posted.... it looks like WMA Lossless is the way to go?

And the sound quality diminishes and the # of kbps on an mp3 decreases?

Any helpful info or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Yes and yes. If you have enough disk space on your computer/MP3 player, then go with lossless.

 

[mnaines 10+ year member]

Can you test the ATRAC3plus format through SonicStage digital music manager and post the test results? I run ATRAC3plus and ATRAC Advanced Lossless, so I am interested in seeing how they stack up to MP3, WMA, and the original source quality. ATRAC3plus and ATRAC Advanced Lossless are both Sony's proprietary formats, and are, from what I understand, supposed to be superior to both MP3 and WMA. According to Sony, ATRAC3plus is to MP3s what CDs were to tapes, so I want to see if that is true. Test the ATRAC Advanced Lossless and ATRAC3plus all the way down to 63.475kbps, which Sony says is the smallest bitrate ATRAC3plus can compress a CD to. The difference between ATRAC Advanced Lossless and WMA Mathematically lossless is ATRAC Advanced Lossless can run as low as 64kbps, while WMA Mathematically Lossless is a minimum of 800kbps. ATRAC Advanced Lossless @ 64kbps makes a file size of 30MB for a 4-minute song, while ATRAC3plus @ 64kbps creates a file size of 1.9MB for a 4-minute song. I have good ears, and it is almost impossible for me to tell the difference between 64kbps ATRAC3plus and the original source CD.

 

[mnaines 10+ year member]

According to Sony, MP3 can compress a CD to 1/10 its normal size (down to 141.1kbps) without losing any of the original source quality, while ATRAC3plus can compress a CD to 1/22 its normal size (63.475kbps) without losing any of the original source quality. I want to know if this is true, or if there is loss at those bitrates.

 

[adam71 5,000+ posts]

Can you test the ATRAC3plus format through SonicStage digital music manager and post the test results? I run ATRAC3plus and ATRAC Advanced Lossless, so I am interested in seeing how they stack up to MP3, WMA, and the original source quality. ATRAC3plus and ATRAC Advanced Lossless are both Sony's proprietary formats, and are, from what I understand, supposed to be superior to both MP3 and WMA. According to Sony, ATRAC3plus is to MP3s what CDs were to tapes, so I want to see if that is true. Test the ATRAC Advanced Lossless and ATRAC3plus all the way down to 63.475kbps, which Sony says is the smallest bitrate ATRAC3plus can compress a CD to. The difference between ATRAC Advanced Lossless and WMA Mathematically lossless is ATRAC Advanced Lossless can run as low as 64kbps, while WMA Mathematically Lossless is a minimum of 800kbps. ATRAC Advanced Lossless @ 64kbps makes a file size of 30MB for a 4-minute song, while ATRAC3plus @ 64kbps creates a file size of 1.9MB for a 4-minute song. I have good ears, and it is almost impossible for me to tell the difference between 64kbps ATRAC3plus and the original source CD.

I like you, you're funny.

You look like Snoopy and that makes me smile.

You have smelly dog farts.

 

[Pyro_By_Nature 5,000+ posts]

In a car, you usually can't too much of a difference.But I can hear a night and day difference in home.

 

[adam71 5,000+ posts]

Personally I think mnaines would eat a pile of shit as long as it had a Sony label on it.

 

[axo409 10+ year member]

that really sucks

 

[axo409 10+ year member]

lets try this again.........that really sucks

 

[MrLaRotta 10+ year member]

hmm. why are there differences between the original and the lossless compression. lossless compression should give exact results, anyone disagreeing should look at the proliferation of ZIP, ARJ, BZIP, ect... files out there.

Hahahaha, do this experiment. Take a 10.0 MB song.mp3, and convert it using winzip. The resulting song.zip is... ta dadadaaaa ... (snare drums...) 9.8 MB!!!

No, the magic of the file compresion doesnt work in the same way with audio

 

[thch 10+ year member]

zip, arj, rar, gz. bz2 are all lossless compression.

take file.wav (10M) and compress to zip. (8M?)

that file.zip (8M) and uncompress to file.wav (10M)

files.wav is unaffected by the compression + decompression combo.

thus, if the "zip audio format" (zaf) were to exist, people would be able to make zip files of their wav audio files and the audio codec would simply unzip the file and play it on demand. when tested, file.wav and file.zaf would sound the same and in fact be the same, having all audio properties the same (as well as any other info in the wav format).

any largely compressed format will be more resilient to further, lossless compression.