MP3 Bitrate quality; Does it make a difference?

[Beat_Dominator 5,000+ posts]

Terrible song to do that test with. You need something that challenges an encoder more than that. I can guarantee that a solo violin can be compressed at 64k and sound surprisingly good but a full orchestra would sound like crap.

 

[Immacomputer 10+ year member]

Terrible song to do that test with. You need something that challenges an encoder more than that. I can guarantee that a solo violin can be compressed at 64k and sound surprisingly good but a full orchestra would sound like crap.

I've done it with other songs as well and the main difference happens right where this track focuses (from about 1k to 20k and yes there is full material between there as well as some bass).

I just took an uncompressed version of a song with a solid bass line and then compressed it to 96kb/s. I then took a screen shot of the spectrum of the song to get an idea of how the amplitude of the bass changes.

WAV:

96kb/s:

Noticeable noise creeps in (which is audible at 96k) but the amplitude is the same at -4dB. Again, the difference you guys may have noticed were either in the sources or ripping process.

 

[Immacomputer 10+ year member]

Not in bass amplitude though. There is a large difference in the upper end of the spectrum (especially with going down to 96k) but the main problem is the noise and artifacts that start to rise up.

Oh and the original file was an uncompressed file to start with (.wav). That goes for the one I uploaded as well and I mentioned that in the first post. I would grab some of my CDs and find another track but they got stolen along with my car a while back so basically have nothing but a Celtic woman CD.

 

[Immacomputer 10+ year member]

Those graphs look severely distorted from one another to me.
But yea both ends look ****ed.

There is distortion and you can see it better with this:

That is both spectrums overlapping each other.

EDIT: Sorry, the faded part is NOT one or the other. The opaque portions are where they don't meet. The upper end of the spectrum rolls off while the lower end actually gets boosted in the subsonics.

 

[Immacomputer 10+ year member]

In this case, it GAINED some in the bass region and it didn't weaken it, which is what I was trying to say.

 

[Immacomputer 10+ year member]

Not at the levels you're seeing there. Many of those frequencies are down by 30dB or so. That is a HUGE difference and you're not really going to damage anything with it. It will raise the noise floor in the song though (that nasty hiss and that hiss does have low frequency content in it as well).

And yes, you corrected me, i was looking back and worth and was like wtf.
why did it gain in the upper frequeencies too?

Again, you're noticing an increase in the noise floor. I don't know enough about compressing music files to be able to answer the "why" behind it with much confidence.

 

[darkist240sx 10+ year member]

i actually didnt do too bad. good stuff for a young'n to audio.

 

[W8 a minute 10+ year member]

I can definitely hear a difference in my car when the system was in. In fact there were several times I thought a song sounded crappy and when I checked the bitrate at home on my PC it was 128K or less. I could hear the difference in the sub to mid bass region. Complex passages would seem to be blurred in those regions.

I rip everything on Nero at 192kbps or higher, usually 320kbps. Anything less I got from the internet so what you're saying about quality might be true. I'll have to do my own comparison with a song I'm familiar with in order to really know.

I use Nero for it's simplicity. If there's a better way, using the same bit rates, let me know.

 

[adio 5,000+ posts]

or a lapping difference between 320 and 192kbps and lossless and 192kbps??

 

[luvinthebass 5,000+ posts]

interesting