[Nicko]

Hi All

OK a first post but I want to ask a question. I use MP3 Sparks and Legalsounds. Now, on Sparks all the downloads are the same bitrate - I always choose 192 as it suits my player. However, I notice that legalsounds sometimes has whole albums with a consistent bitrate - sometimes all 192 - sometimes higher. Today I noticed that some of their albums are made up of tracks ranging from 174 right up to 360. My question is, what if any, is the reason for this? Just a point of curiosity really. Although if anyone can recommend a good bitrate changer I can download, I would be grateful

Regards to all

Nicko

[solaris]

Originally Posted by Nicko

Hi All

OK a first post but I want to ask a question. I use MP3 Sparks and Legalsounds. Now, on Sparks all the downloads are the same bitrate - I always choose 192 as it suits my player. However, I notice that legalsounds sometimes has whole albums with a consistent bitrate - sometimes all 192 - sometimes higher. Today I noticed that some of their albums are made up of tracks ranging from 174 right up to 360. My question is, what if any, is the reason for this? Just a point of curiosity really. Although if anyone can recommend a good bitrate changer I can download, I would be grateful

Regards to all

Nicko

Hi Nicko and welcome to the forum

We have threads where the hunt for the perfect bit rate have been discussed many times. Here are two of them:

http://www.aom3.org/forum/allofmp3-c...wnloading.html

http://www.aom3.org/forum/allofmp3-g...192-e-eex.html

Look especially for the posts of a guy named RedSmurf, who knows A LOT about this issue.

[Nicko]

Hi Solaris and thanks for reply

What I was really wondering was why does Legalsounds make up an album of tracks with such wildly varied bitrates. Whenever I've ripped a cd I've always ripped every track at the same rate - this is not important, I'm just mystified and wonder if I'm missing something?

Nicko

[solaris]

Originally Posted by Nicko

Hi Solaris and thanks for reply

What I was really wondering was why does Legalsounds make up an album of tracks with such wildly varied bitrates. Whenever I've ripped a cd I've always ripped every track at the same rate - this is not important, I'm just mystified and wonder if I'm missing something?

Nicko

Hi Nicko.

For a long, long time LegalSounds was the only store that stuck to 192 kbps in constant bit rate - but in March this year they started using variable bit rate like all the other Russian/Ukrainian online music stores primarily do.

MP3Sparks is another matter totally. There you can choose your very own file format and bit rate, so you have hundreds and hundreds of file format/bit rate combinations

[Earl Purple]

The concept of a variable bitrate is that it uses more filespace when it needs to and doesn't do so for less sensitive parts, so if the song is a very simple acoustic ballad it will probably require a lower bitrate than a complex multi-track epic.

Still, I feel uncomfortable if the little number is not at least as high as 180 in spite of these claims.

[rockstarrem]

I personally can't listen to anything under 192 KBPS unless it's an old album that doesn't require it (like an Albert Collins album, old as anything).

[rolly]

Still, I feel uncomfortable if the little number is not at least as high as 180 in spite of these claims.

Me too.
I try to learn with my ears,rather than what I read.
I've messed about with the low bitrates all I'm going to.
If it isn't the bare minimum of 192 constant,I don't want it even for free.

(Read about how good a certain brand of LCD/Plasma television displays the video so well,then go have a look at them too.
If you spend some time really looking for the quality,using your eyes to view the video rather than read a review,I bet you don't choose any of the higher "rated" models either.)

I have watched the input bitrate,stream bitrate,and what is actually being read from the media file with various apps all while listening to a track.
With VBR,during low activity the bitrate goes low as normally would be expected.
Then during an immediate increase of a LOT of activity,the bitrate climbs until it is "normalized",then will stay at the higher rate until the activity decreases again.

What I don't like about this "climb",is that it didn't happen as immediate as the increase in audio activity.
Does that mean I sacrificed a few moments of high quality to save a little disc space?
I have plenty disc space and I don't care.
What I do care a lot more about is the quality of the audio file.
Perhaps there are better VBR ripping software than others?
Could be,but I'll stick with 320kbps,even in silence.

Now,when you get a hold of a 320 file that sounds awful,you can tell almost instantly that someone has re-encoded a low quality file at a higher bitrate,loud and clear!
Now doesn't that get you a little annoyed?

[squash54]

Originally Posted by rolly

Me too.
I try to learn with my ears,rather than what I read.
I've messed about with the low bitrates all I'm going to.
If it isn't the bare minimum of 192 constant,I don't want it even for free.

(Read about how good a certain brand of LCD/Plasma television displays the video so well,then go have a look at them too.
If you spend some time really looking for the quality,using your eyes to view the video rather than read a review,I bet you don't choose any of the higher "rated" models either.)

I have watched the input bitrate,stream bitrate,and what is actually being read from the media file with various apps all while listening to a track.
With VBR,during low activity the bitrate goes low as normally would be expected.
Then during an immediate increase of a LOT of activity,the bitrate climbs until it is "normalized",then will stay at the higher rate until the activity decreases again.

What I don't like about this "climb",is that it didn't happen as immediate as the increase in audio activity.
Does that mean I sacrificed a few moments of high quality to save a little disc space?
I have plenty disc space and I don't care.
What I do care a lot more about is the quality of the audio file.
Perhaps there are better VBR ripping software than others?
Could be,but I'll stick with 320kbps,even in silence.

Now,when you get a hold of a 320 file that sounds awful,you can tell almost instantly that someone has re-encoded a low quality file at a higher bitrate,loud and clear!
Now doesn't that get you a little annoyed?

Good post Rolly.
I am particularly interested in the last part of your post about re-encoding. Do you know if there is any way to tell if the low quality is because of re-encoding or simply because it was a poor recording in the first place. As you know some CD's just sound bad and ripping them to mp3 just makes bad even worse. The reason I ask is that if you knew the track had been re-encoded you might go looking for it somewhere else in the hope of getting a better quality copy, rather than just bin it and move on.

Another of the difficulties with trying to restrict buying to a specified quality is that with some sites bitrate isn't shown in the catalogue. Emusic, for example, has quite a variation - 128, VBR and 320 so don't know what you are getting until after you DL the track. Having said that, I have DL'd stuff from eMusic that was 128 but still sounded very good and, with eMusic, often they are the only store that have what you are after.

With memory and broadband getting cheaper by the minute, my advice is to DL in the highest quality you can afford and store it on an external hardrive (or in my case a NAS). You can always compress stuff you want to cram onto on iPod to 128kbps.

Cheers,

Squash

[Rebel Rebel]

Originally Posted by squash54

With memory and broadband getting cheaper by the minute, my advice is to DL in the highest quality you can afford and store it on an external hardrive (or in my case a NAS). You can always compress stuff you want to cram onto on iPod to 128kbps.

Cheers,

Squash

Yep - that's exactly what I do You can buy a 1TB external drive now for around $300.

Cheers,

[solaris]

Originally Posted by squash54

Good post Rolly.
I am particularly interested in the last part of your post about re-encoding. Do you know if there is any way to tell if the low quality is because of re-encoding or simply because it was a poor recording in the first place. As you know some CD's just sound bad and ripping them to mp3 just makes bad even worse. The reason I ask is that if you knew the track had been re-encoded you might go looking for it somewhere else in the hope of getting a better quality copy, rather than just bin it and move on.

Another of the difficulties with trying to restrict buying to a specified quality is that with some sites bitrate isn't shown in the catalogue. Emusic, for example, has quite a variation - 128, VBR and 320 so don't know what you are getting until after you DL the track. Having said that, I have DL'd stuff from eMusic that was 128 but still sounded very good and, with eMusic, often they are the only store that have what you are after.

With memory and broadband getting cheaper by the minute, my advice is to DL in the highest quality you can afford and store it on an external hardrive (or in my case a NAS). You can always compress stuff you want to cram onto on iPod to 128kbps.

Cheers,

Squash

I think it was RedSmurf who used this little gem to decide whether or not a MP3 file had been tampered with: Bitrate Calculator