[Nightfly]

Originally Posted by pcspecialist

at 128 the subs begin to suffer noticeably so it doesn't matter how bad your hearing is, your body will begin to notice a difference.

by subs do you mean Bass? ........

[jazzy639]

I order mine at MPEG-4 Extreme so higher than 192Kbps but lower than 256Kbps

I mainly listen through my hi fi separates system

[pcspecialist]

Originally Posted by Nightfly

by subs do you mean Bass? ........

subs/sub frequency, 80Hz and below (or at least where a crossover in a decent system is set for the subwoofer) - the stuff you feel as much if not more than you hear. At best, it turns to mush with lower bitrates which is why I never purchased music from the big download sites that charged $0.99 for crummy 128 bitrate.

For me, it has always been the sub-frequencies that I first and most clearly notice the differences in when comparing bitrates though it doesn't take much effort to hear deterioration in the upper frequencies when using a bitrate of 128 and lower.

In a medium/large venue with a subwoofer pumping out an average of 500 watts RMS or more an MP3 using a bitrate of 128 really makes a system sound like garbage yet you can cut back on the subs and the MP3 sounds pretty decent though lacking in punch/crunch.

Deterioration in higher frequencies can usually be compensated for with a BBE Sonic Maximizer (or similar enhancer) which will do a decent job recovering that cymbal sizzle/sparkling female voice/etc... but no such luck with subs.

did I mention I do an occasional live mix for a few bands? I play canned music between sets and hate it when a band member hands me a pen drive with a poorly encoded MP3 to play - so much money invested in sound equipment only tho have some crummy MP3 make it sound like crud.

oh, and what do bands think about services like allTunes you may ask? The ones I've dealt with love them - they say as long as you pay to hear them live it makes little difference to them but I suspect should the music they sell via CD Baby show up on allTunes they may not appreciate it as they actually do get most of the sale price of their music sold on CD Baby.

[viracocha]

Originally Posted by jazzy639

I order mine at MPEG-4 Extreme so higher than 192Kbps but lower than 256Kbps

I mainly listen through my hi fi separates system

Do you have the time to listen to music, jazzy639?

[Patience]

Originally Posted by viracocha

Do you have the time to listen to music, jazzy639?

Maybe there's a whole jazz band! 639 musicians?

[Nightfly]

Originally Posted by pcspecialist

subs/sub frequency, 80Hz and below (or at least where a crossover in a decent system is set for the subwoofer) - the stuff you feel as much if not more than you hear. At best, it turns to mush with lower bitrates which is why I never purchased music from the big download sites that charged $0.99 for crummy 128 bitrate.

For me, it has always been the sub-frequencies that I first and most clearly notice the differences in when comparing bitrates though it doesn't take much effort to hear deterioration in the upper frequencies when using a bitrate of 128 and lower.

In a medium/large venue with a subwoofer pumping out an average of 500 watts RMS or more an MP3 using a bitrate of 128 really makes a system sound like garbage yet you can cut back on the subs and the MP3 sounds pretty decent though lacking in punch/crunch.

Deterioration in higher frequencies can usually be compensated for with a BBE Sonic Maximizer (or similar enhancer) which will do a decent job recovering that cymbal sizzle/sparkling female voice/etc... but no such luck with subs.

did I mention I do an occasional live mix for a few bands? I play canned music between sets and hate it when a band member hands me a pen drive with a poorly encoded MP3 to play - so much money invested in sound equipment only tho have some crummy MP3 make it sound like crud.

oh, and what do bands think about services like allTunes you may ask? The ones I've dealt with love them - they say as long as you pay to hear them live it makes little difference to them but I suspect should the music they sell via CD Baby show up on allTunes they may not appreciate it as they actually do get most of the sale price of their music sold on CD Baby.

There is not much "sub" on my mp3 player and my PC and other portable devices but I admit there is more at 256vbr which is my favorite.
192 vbr of a good source recording will do when it is the only thing available.

We are on 2 different levels..you are a audiophile,I am not.(I used to be)
BUT we both love music and know what sounds good to us.

But I agree, all things considered, including your needed space,
is higher, is better.

Thanks for that great answer : )

[Cozworth806]

MAybe in this context I am blessed with very unsensitive hearing, as it takes an awful lot for me to really notice the difference between an high and low MP3, and have got WMA files in double figures that I consider passable.

You audiophiles have got it bad and I pity you.

[Nightfly]

Originally Posted by Cozworth806

MAybe in this context I am blessed with very unsensitive hearing, as it takes an awful lot for me to really notice the difference between an high and low MP3, and have got WMA files in double figures that I consider passable.

You audiophiles have got it bad and I pity you.

I first started with wma and they sound fine on players that I can
play them on.I have a 1000 or more wma files that I have to convert to mp3 one day, only because my mp3 player doesn't recognize them.

But it's all good.......

[RedSmurf]

One advice: don't be skimpy on bitrate. The capacity of hard disks and music players is getting bigger each day anyway. Some predictions say that all music in the world can fit on a single music player within a few decades.

I also tried to encode everything at the lowest bitrate possible when I started making my music collection years ago. But I found myself gradually increasing the bitrate because I always discovered songs for which I noticed distortion, and this got worse when I upgraded to better speakers and headphones.
I'm now still weeding out lower bitrate songs to replace them with higher bitrates, which is a lot of effort that I could have avoided. Moreover, for some songs I don't have the CD quality sources anymore, so I'm stuck with the jangling breaking-glass-littered MP3's.

If you really need to stuff a lot of music on a small device and don't care much about the quality, you can transcode high-bitrate songs to temporary lower bitrate versions. The inverse is of course impossible.

[rolly]

Thanks for that great post RedSmurf.
I could of said all those same things myself.
It was like you could read my mind!