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Mp3's 128 or 192

TameasDust	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 12:19 PM Is there a measurable difference to the ear when listening to a song recorded as a mp3 at 192kbs over a mp3 recorded at 128kbs? If not why upload a 192kbs mp3?
Apertome	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 12:25 PM Measurable difference? Yes. To the ear? That depends on the ear, and the playback equipment I much prefer 192 in general, I do most of my listening on my studio monitors and there's a world of difference. That said, the choice of encoder can make a huge difference. Using LAME at 128 can sound better than some crappier encoders at 192.
milladrive	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 12:27 PM I know this may sound bizarre, but I do think, if we listen really concentratedly, there is a slight difference between 128 and 192. However, I don't think there's a noticeable difference between 128 and 160, nor 160 and 192. See what I'm sayin'? Still, I tend make 192 my standard. At the same time, for all intent and purposes, and on the grand scale, I happen to think there's not much of a sonic difference between high bitrates and low. In other words, if a file is too big when ripped at a high bitrate, there isn't gonna be a huge loss by ripping it at a lower bitrate to make it smaller. Sample rates, yes, quite noticeable. Bitrates, nah.
milladrive	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 12:28 PM lol, umm, and yeah, what mux said.
TameasDust	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 4:29 PM ok ... so 192 is better and larger ... soooo its 40 min per song downloading ... oh well
robbydadrummer	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 4:38 PM I'm a 192k person myself. It really does depend on the listener's ears and equipment they are using, though. And the encoder... everyone wants to make rips faster and faster, but this makes for worse sounding mp3's! SLOW RIP! It gives the encoding codec sufficient time to properly analyse the frequencies, not to mention that a slower rip from the cd will eliminate 95% of the tracking errors, the most common error in mp3's.
robbydadrummer	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 4:49 PM It should also be noted that about 1/3 of the planet's population have hearing deficiencies over 15kHz. That is why there are a lot of people who claim "they can't hear a difference", because they really can't. It's a much harder argument to tell these people THAT piece of information, though... they tend to get hostile for some reason...
robbydadrummer	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 4:53 PM Hey, anyone got a BITCH-SLAP emoticon???
pog	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 5:30 PM give me 320k with oversampling anyday
robbydadrummer	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 6:55 PM 320k is overkill for the internet, though. You have to be on really good cable/dsl to listen to that streaming... although, I do have streaming 320k mp3's for the short edits on our domain site. I needed to test our new "upgraded" cable here... hehe
Distilled1	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 6:58 PM I've noticed that 192 is SO much better than 128 and I have noticed alot of people with 320+ tunes and they really sound clearer maybe its just that I have a high speed now,, no a 128 copyed to CDR and a 192 to CDR the 192 sounds much better
vozz	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 7:10 PM Only 24.
robbydadrummer	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 7:13 PM But, to be totally honest, the mp3's sound quality can ONLY be as good as the source material. If you are encoding a poorly recorded live track with very little frequency range, it won't matter what bitrate you encode it at.
robbydadrummer	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 7:15 PM Another dial-up user... you have my sympathy. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!) Really need a "sarcasm" emoticon also...
Apertome	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 7:28 PM Good point, Robby, if the production of the original track isn't so hot, you probably won't lose anything by going to 128. In fact, sometimes that can cover up some imperfections, but don't count on it.
nvoise	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 7:51 PM lately i use 256 or 320k i don't care how it sounds i just like to know that some poor bastard had to waste those precious extra moments of his life to hear it.
nvoise	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 7:58 PM no i'm kidding. 128 sounds fine sometimes, but play it side by side with 192 and it will always come in second, so it's really about how much value you place on convenience and how much value you place on clarity. for uploading to this site a lot of people will only listen to the lofi stream anyway, so...
Thaspian	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 8:04 PM Fuck bitrates. **Thasp steps into audiophile rant mode VBR = l33t. Why choose one constant bitrate, when it can be the same filesize, and high bitrate when the song needs it, and a low bitrate when the song doesn't? Other, newer codecs, such as MPC, APE, Wavpack, FLAC, and whatnot don't even work with CBR, and Ogg Vorbis was developed with VBR in mind. Outside AAC and WMA, I don't know of any new formats that use CBR. It's easier this way, since you get the quality you need without a huge filespace. I can't tell the difference from 224k and on, with the few songs I've tested on. 192k is damned close, yet no cigar with a variety of complex songs. I wanna know who started this one bitrate is CD quality rumor, likewise with 192k bein' "perfect". Then, there's also the people who just switch back and forth, knowing which is which, and think they've heard a "difference". This is placeabo. You know which is which, so natrually, you'll have it in your mind that there's a difference. Doin' a blind test(google: ABX), will indeed produce different results. People sayin' VBR isn't stable are either a) Using outdated, or newer garbage hardware/software players b) Using VBR with encoders that do it like garbage(fraunhofer, xing, blade), instead of LAME which has always kicked ass. Although, if you MUST use CBR, I reccommend 160. Most tracks where MP3 will screw up at, are flaws that bitrate won't fix. So if it's to upload here, use 160. Although, I occasionally get slowdown where DM can't handle 128k files, even, and a speedtest'll show my connection's running along at 722k, so I don't know. In conclusion, most indie music, doesn't really need that high a bitrate, since they don't have such hot recording equiptment. Food for thought. If you're really interested in it all, check out hydrogenaudio.org , the site where LAME and other codecs were being developed at - no BS there. Rant over.
Thaspian	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 8:16 PM Oh, and if it interests anyone, there was a test done at the most popular bitrate, 128k, to see what the best MP3 encoder was, blind test, recently. The results are in pretty graphs here http://www.rjamorim.com/test/mp3-128/results.html
Thaspian	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 8:17 PM " id="87346">dammit.. I could've sweared I posted an image there
mtekk	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 8:20 PM nether, VBR is l33t as Thasp said, all the music that i dl is VBR if a VBR source is avalible.
robbydadrummer	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 8:30 PM Yeah, VBR is the best way to go. Unfortunatly, a lot of users don't know how to set it to VBR in their program. And before "one of these people" asks, VBR = Variable BitRate...
robbydadrummer	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 8:32 PM Good grief! iTunes is THAT BAD????? That's a disappointment for Apple.
Thaspian	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 10:10 PM No, you see, they have the best AAC encoder, and the worst MP3 encoder. Take a wild guess why.
robbydadrummer	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 12:39 AM Ahhh... unfortunately, mp3 is so entrenched in society. And you can play it just about everywhere, including DVD players and many portable cd players (which is why I mostly burn mp3 cd's now... no need for audio cd's anymore except for band stuff).
Distilled1	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 12:42 AM well now I will re-encode to VBR
robbydadrummer	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 12:46 AM HAHAHAHAHAAA! Yeah, I will be swapping out my files here tomorrow after I re-encode everything... since this site is one of the few that will accept them.
Thaspian	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 1:37 AM --alt-preset standard for VBR, and --alt-preset standard -Y for a lower bitrate VBR MP3 encoder program is here... http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?s=39b5fe0f671158249c30adcb5b2008a5&act=Attach&type=post&id=177062 The Thasps are invading. :devious: " id="87431">--alt-preset standard for VBR, and --alt-preset standard -Y for a lower bitrate VBR MP3 encoder program is here... http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?s=39b5fe0f671158249c30adcb5b2008a5&act=Attach&type=post&id=177062 The Thasps are invading.
robbydadrummer	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 1:54 AM Nice double-post there... And I thought I'd be too drunk to notice things at this point!
Thaspian	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 2:04 AM .... ADMIN!!! Fixey.
RyanS	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 8:25 AM If you don't care about the file size, go with Lame 320 CBR. I encodes more high frequency than any CBR below 256, and all VBR modes. However, if you care about both file size and quality, go with the VBR modes.
Svensta	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 8:54 AM Fixey-d. I adore VBR myself.
robbydadrummer	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 3:32 PM Ryan, I'd like to see you put a song over 5 minutes encoded at 320k on this site with it's 12 MB limit...
TameasDust	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 9:30 PM if VBR makes the songs a smaller download .. I'm all for it
robbydadrummer	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 10:06 PM File size difference will depend on the intensity of the frequencies in the music. Some of my re-encoded songs didn't change much, while a few dropped 10% in file size.
YaBoyDrew	Date: April 8, 2004 @ 3:44 AM 128 aint that bad, I was thinkin of using them instead 2 conserve sum space. But then i feel stingy (2 tired 2 think of a better word )
pog	Date: April 8, 2004 @ 8:13 AM One of my brothers and myself did a test (he said to me ... is there a difference in output quality), and I said ... you bet. so he played me 3 compressions of the same audio sample in 3 different orders... 128, 192, and 320. The first time we did it, I picked the compressions spot on, 100% correct so he did it again in a different random order. By this stage, I couldn't tell the diff, and I pitched 128 as better than 160. I dunno if my ears were desensitised, of I wasn't concentrating anymore or what, but needless to say I was surprised when i got it wrong. vbr is fine at the listeners end, until you're trying to do collabs with people on the other side of the world. there's sometimes issues. In the same way, if you get a vbr soundtrack to an avi, it can often go out of sync if it's not played back on the same software for example.
robbydadrummer	Date: April 8, 2004 @ 9:17 AM Well, I have since backed off the vbr mp3's on this site. I had a problem with the lo-fi encoding on a couple of them that were fluctuating in the speed/pitch. Actually, I have even dropped down to 96k so I could fit more files on here, and not encounter streaming problems during peak usage time on this site. I have high quality mp3's elsewhere with links to the sites if anyone wants to get better quality files.
Thaspian	Date: April 8, 2004 @ 1:59 PM Sync in AVIs(or ogms) has _nothing_ to do with the bitrate used, but with the program used to sync them. Most of the time when VBR is unstable you're usually either using extremely old software, or Fraunhofer's low quality encoders.
RyanS	Date: April 8, 2004 @ 3:07 PM [ot] Why in the hell am I getting hit with the chinesebsa.org in this thread? Someone hotlink an image from it's server? (217.160.226.87)
Apertome	Date: April 8, 2004 @ 6:08 PM Thaspian, No. VBR has problems with that. Try collabing with VBR mp3s and you'll see what I mean -- timecodes become far less useful. Loops' length becomes off just a bit. And as you know, I use LAME. About chinesebsa.org: I don't see it in the page source anywhere, maybe it was a banner ad or something? If you go to the site it at least appears to be some thing with links to shoes? Odd!
robbydadrummer	Date: April 8, 2004 @ 7:46 PM Uhhhhh, there was that other thread about Chinese laundry. It was something about shoes... coincidence?
pog	Date: April 8, 2004 @ 7:54 PM thasp's pic's the culprit... I went to the sourcepage, and my blockers went nuts
RyanS	Date: April 9, 2004 @ 10:12 AM Mine did too. Kind of ironic that Thasp is so keen on security that he hotlinked an image from something that's potentially bad! anwho, back on topic...
pog	Date: April 9, 2004 @ 8:09 PM It's strange that he got there in the 1st place so you guys are saying if an xvid is encoded under linux, and the sound goes outta sync, it's not the vbr ??
Thaspian	Date: April 11, 2004 @ 1:09 AM How is an _image_ bad? I don't see it. Or maybe I just blocked the cookie.. If you encode the xvid and decode the AC3 to WAV then convert to VBR MP3, it should be perfect if synced correctly. The only problem with VBR MP3 currently, is splitting them and putting them together with pieces of other CBR/VBR files. VBR is fine when used with a file that is not going to be split.
pog	Date: April 11, 2004 @ 8:00 AM Every time I come to this page, peerguardian goes nuts.. about 10 blocks come up every time. Tell that to my 550mhz pIII... vbr encoded xvids go heavily outta sync within the 1st 2 minutes. The only way to get around it is to drop the wave into a new file, and recompress it using a cbr.. usually I div-x it while Im there. Some 22 odd hours later.... perfect video.
Thaspian	Date: April 11, 2004 @ 12:04 PM Peerguardian sucks. Just look at what happens when you whois half of the MPAA and RIAA IPs. All wrong. I don't get why that happens. Whatdaya use to play and sync them?
pog	Date: April 11, 2004 @ 7:37 PM Whats better that peerguardian then ?? I'm using vidomi to play them... virtualdub for wav extraction and recompression.
RyanS	Date: April 12, 2004 @ 12:21 AM "Peerguardian sucks. Just look at what happens when you whois half of the MPAA and RIAA IPs. All wrong." And the all-mighty Thaspie is always right
kyodylee	Date: April 12, 2004 @ 12:31 AM Peerguardian is no longer being actively developed. The Blocklist Manager will continue to update Peerguardian for those running it. But it has essentially been replaced by Protowall. You can get it at Bluetack. http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=722
pog	Date: April 12, 2004 @ 3:57 AM Thasp put me onto pg in the first place... so if the blocklist updates with pg, then how are these guys better ??
Thaspian	Date: April 12, 2004 @ 1:32 PM RyanS, don't take my word for it, do a few whoises yourself with the latest blocklists. They used to update the IPs frequently and be somewhat accurate, but now they're for the most part, wrong. They do have a few 24/7 kazaa scanners on there though, so that may be of use. Yet I feel bad for all the people in the IP ranges that he labels "bad" that aren't going to be able to dl from PG users.
pog	Date: April 12, 2004 @ 7:55 PM kyodylee you rock !! I'm now running protowall, and it's nice n light !
redspectre	Date: August 27, 2004 @ 9:14 AM 128Kbps is definitely the best compromise between quality and size as it occupies just under 1MB per 1 minute of music. Whereas 192 takes up about 1.3MB per minute, which can be quite sizeable.
theharme	Date: August 28, 2004 @ 11:10 PM I couldn't tell the difference between 128 and 192 until I bought a pair of Bose headphones, after that purchase, I only listen to 192, it's noticable in clarity and continuity of quality throughout the range. VBR sounds nice, but it seems like it can't be perfect. From my experience with computer programs that try to do mirical work, you get a lot of error.

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