to MP3 or not to MP3?

[David]

I've noticed that many on this forum regularly complain about the lacking sound quality of mp3s. Now, my assumption is that all of you have better ears than I, but I'm still interested in hearing your arguments and explanations of this. I'm a musician and I listen to music all the time, still I can't really hear much difference between a mp3 and a cd, at least not at bitrates above 128-160 (would you dismiss even 320kbit/s?). I haven't done any blindfold-test though - I guess I should, to see if I could spot the difference.

[mudd]

it seems to me we've covered this ground pretty thoroughly before, but what it tends to come down to is that yes, some people can hear the difference between mp3s of various bit rates and uncompressed data. other people can't.

personally i can spot a 160 kbps from a mile away, heard differences is (lame-encoded) 192s on occasion, and haven't really seen through a 256. but i don't listen at high volumes or on particularly good speakers, and i don't have professional ears.

m

[jon abbey]

it depends on the kind of music to an extent also. I find MP3s particularly lacking for EAI, but for hip-hop, which I listen to a lot of also, they're generally pretty acceptable.

[Dan Warburton]

The Arthur Russell track you linked to on your blog sounds just fine to me, Jon.

[jon abbey]

yeah, that sounds good, but I have no lossless version to compare it to.

the real eye-opener for me was actually the Barcelona Solo disc by John Tilbury on Rossbin, which is solo acoustic piano (for anyone who doesn't know). I was so eager to hear it that while I was waiting for my CD copy to show up, I got someone to send me MP3s, which I gave a handful of listens to. then when the CD came and I checked that out, I realized that the sound was different enough that my opinions about the record were decidedly different, and to a large extent, I'd wasted my time with the previous listens (IMO). so, since then no MP3s of EAI or classical music for me, unless there's no other alternative.

[Damon_Smith]

I find it good enough for most things. To me the difference is less objectional than the difference between cd and vinyl, music always looses something when it gets recorded anyway. Music I really love with a lot of detail I still like the cd to be around.
I a/b'ed with R/S on Erstwhile. I heard a slight difference between the cd and a high quality mp3, but the best listening experience I had with it for was with the mp3 on my ipod.

Part of it for me is that I often have the time and mental focus to listen at points where I only have my ipod. At those times I'd rather have the full ipod than the extra digital bits.
I think we are just a few years away from them working out either compression or reliable digital storage so it won't be an issue for long.

[Silky Johnson]

The first time I really noticed was on "Pick Up The Phone" by the Notwist off of "Neon Golden", which I downloaded before buying the album. I guess it was either 128 or 192, but the difference in the CD was pretty significant, with all sorts of nice stuff going on in the background.

I'm currently ripping all my CDs, in preparation for moving to a smaller place (they're going to have to go into storage) and on a couple of my favourites, I tried a 320kbps mp3 and then a FLAC. I've got a decent soundcard and decent speakers, but I couldn't really tell the difference. For the pretty large difference in size between the two formats, I went for 320. In the future, when larger hard drives are cheaper and it's quicker to rip CDs, I'll no doubt go through them all again and do them in FLAC, but not til I have a much better sound system.

[Joda]

I won't listen to any experimental music in mp3 format. It really seems pointless, unless it's for auditioning purposes. An 80 gig Ipod should be able to hold a fair bit of music in higher quality formats. Pop music seems fine as mp3s though.

[mono tony]

in my experience playing an ipod into the stereo, I've found that many tracks (generally higher quality mp3's) lack the depth and dimension they have when i play the same thing on a cd thru a stereo. i wonder if it's because of the limitations of the ipod, or because of the mp3. the ipod sounds alright on headphones though

[jon abbey]

i wonder if it's because of the limitations of the ipod, or because of the mp3.

you could test it pretty easily by ripping a few things both ways. I think it's probably both, but mostly the MP3s.

[p_ano]

oh jeez.. not this topic again..

a 160kpbs or 192kpbs MP3 pains my ears, but i really can't tell a difference at 320kpbs. however, MP3 is still lossy, which is lame (pardon the pun), and makes no sense with the abundance of hard drive space and bandwidth. FLAC is a good alternative.

[hatta]

The main issue with mp3 is that it is a lossy algorithm that was designed to present the highest fidelity for a very particular set of data: namely pop music. Pop music is almost always within a very specific dynamic range and doesn't vary from that. The mp3 algorithm baselines that range and then ignores data outside of it. So anything that really uses a wide dynamic range mp3 is going to throw away too much data. With pop music an mp3 at 128kbps often sounds really good (though a bit higher rate is certainly better). Orchestral music is always poorly served by mp3 and I for one never rip anything but lossless for that. At 256kbps or greater, especially if you use VBR, you definitely are preserving a lot more data and for most musics it can be sufficient. So as people have noted above you should select your bitrate on the material.

An interesting test is to use the Apple Lossless Encoder which is always VBR and then look at the bit rate it compresses to. That gives you some info on how susceptible to compression a track is. The bit rate that a lossless encoder uses is the minimum amount of data that the original waveform can be recreated from. So sometimes for something like a Malfatti track with a lot of silence and use of sounds with limited dynamic range they'll compress down to mp3 level bitrates. Alternatively something that uses a lot of static (which is essentially random data) will barely compress below the CD bitrate.

[David]

so how many of you have done blindfoldtests? and passed them?

[jon abbey]

so how many of you have done blindfoldtests? and passed them?

why are you taking this tone? do whatever the hell you want for yourself, no one cares, but no one's lying to you here or trying to trick you. MP3s simply aren't adequate for some kinds of music, and Robert hatta just explained to you very straightforwardly why. if your playback system is lousy or you have tinnitus, these are obviously factors also.

[Jesse]

The Arthur Russell track you linked to on your blog sounds just fine to me, Jon.

Jon, send me your blog site.

[Chromosome]

Washline gave a link to this informative site in the audiophilia thread. The title of the article is "MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD."

[Dohol]

I've never given this subject much thought. I could never tell much difference between mp3 and lossless, but I've been handicapped by exactly what Jon described...A shitty playback system and tinnitus. Since I've recently upgraded my system for the first time in ten years or so ( yard sale stuff, but a definite upgrade ) and my tinnitus has been quiescent, I've done some investigating..

The difference is quite noticeable. A lot of subtle ( and not so subtle ) stuff gets left behind when it's converted to mp3. Even to my somewhat poor ears the difference is very, very noticeable. I've been doing an A/B comparison between some mp3 files and their original sources, and even with my poor, non-professional ears, I'd be happy to do a blindfold test.

Damn....I hadn't realized how much I've missed..

[David]

why are you taking this tone?

well, because of this kind of uninformative elitist remarks:

I won't listen to any experimental music in mp3 format. It really seems pointless, unless it's for auditioning purposes

and

oh jeez.. not this topic again..

a 160kpbs or 192kpbs MP3 pains my ears

don't read the thread then!

[skrobek]

so how many of you have done blindfoldtests? and passed them?

why are you taking this tone? do whatever the hell you want for yourself, no one cares, but no one's lying to you here or trying to trick you. MP3s simply aren't adequate for some kinds of music, and Robert hatta just explained to you very straightforwardly why. if your playback system is lousy or you have tinnitus, these are obviously factors also.

Wow, have you been mastering tracks with Nakamura again Jon ? You know it's bad for your health

seriously, there is one undeniable problem with MP3: some frequencies will be lost. It's not a problem with mainstream music which producers consider those frequencies extreme and generally filter their prods to get rid of those anyway, but it certainly is a problem for any music working with those extreme frquencies and especially minute changes in those.

Any musician who has uploaded his tracks on portable MP3 devices to test the mastering will have notice that: some parts completely disappear with the MP3, everything above 14000 Hz is seriously distorted for instance...

But anyway, without being all audiophiles, most listeners of these musics like a good sound + have agood knowledge of computer formats and conversions. Most, if not all netlabels (I have been investigating in this area recently) have high-quality MP3s and/or ogg vorbis files.

I'm sure the lo-fi people will develop a "MP3 aesthetic", if it's not already done, where musicians will play awith an MP3 sound, just like bands like Sebadoh had a "4-track" sound...

[Damon_Smith]

Mp3s are great for people like me who want to be aware of a lot of music, due to both cost and storage. If I want more of an audiophile experience I will put on a cd or lp or just play the bass myself like people did in the old days when they wanted to hear music.
I have good morning, good night (one of the masterpieces in the erst catalog, IMO) ripped to high quality mp3 and it still gets my ears vibrating like the cd does.
I will be really, really happy when the storage of lossless formats are easier, but mp3s are just fine for my basic music consumption until then.