I’ve never gotten into MP3s since the compression reduces the sound quality.
Is that still a valid assumption? As far as I know, there’s no reason in theory that an MP3 has to be compressed to the point of loss of sound quality.
Are contemporary commercial MP3s compressed and, if so, are they compressed to the point of noticeably reduced quality?
I never found much audible difference between a CD and MP3 once the MP3 was encoded at 196Kbps. Many commerical MP3s are encoded at 320kbps or higher. All MP3s are compressed, hence the small file size.
A lot of music retailers will give you the files in .FLAC or similar uncompressed formats if you wish but I honestly think it’s much of a muchness between a standard CD and a high Kbps MP3.
Okay, so they do make them with a high enough Kbps. That’s basically what I was wondering.
Yes 320 Kbps is adequate quality.
Here’s an interesting article from 2009.
Whippersnappers prefer MP3 sound quality over CD sound quality
Whippersnappers is not my term, that’s in the article title. So none of you whippersnappers better get angry at me for the use of that term. And get off my lawn!
By the way, I grew up with the pops and crackles of vinyl records and consider CDs to be a vast improvement.
Adequate? Does that mean equivalent to CD quality or just… adequate?
Equivalent to CD quality in the sense that most people can’t tell the difference, probably including yourself. But you won’t get an MP3 that is CD quality 100% as some data is lost, hence I mentioned the FLAC lossless format in my first reply as an alternative.
Nit pick:
FLAC is a lossless compression format. The data is still compressed, however.
Oops, thanks for ze correction!
I suggest you try an A/B test with a recording you know well, using a CD with excellent mastering and then an MP3 made from that CD, on a system with good speakers.
Personally I would never use any lossy format for storing main or only versions of music recordings, which in turns means that I won’t buy MP3s to acquire them. They may be acceptable for listening to in the car, or on a portable player with dinky earbuds, where the system or the environment limits you anyway.
Part of this may be that music recorded these days is already compressed as hell - in terms of audio production, not file size. That is, the audio tracks have had their dynamic ranges limited using software, often to the point that you’re getting significant digital distortion even in a pristine “lossless” version, thanks to all the clipping. You can see this effect if you compare the waveforms of modern recordings with anything from the 90s or before - whereas older recordings will show a great deal of dynamic range, the waveforms of modern recordings often look like a fat, unwavering band.
Kids growing up listening to modern songs now think of this over-compressed sound as “normal,” to the point where anything produced before around 2000 actually sounds sort of thin/weak to them - even though those records are technically superior in terms of dynamic range and balance. Their ears are trained to favor a constant loudness and the harsh background crackle as beats attempt to blast through the upper limit of the song’s dynamic range.
MP3 and other forms of audio filesize compression tend to “flatten” out the sound of audio files even more, and add a certain amount of digital distortion of their own. Hence, kids who have now grown up listening to overcompressed audio may find the “sound” of MP3s more in tune with the style of production they’re used to.
As someone who came of age just before this current trend of dynamic range compression, I find the whole thing sort of depressing. But maybe if I’d been born five years later, I’d be wondering what the big deal was.
Yep. When I said “CD with excellent mastering,” I certainly meant one with full dynamic range. For some albums originally released before the “loudness wars” and remastered since, the older CD version may actually be better.
Some years back, Ian Anderson (of Jethro Tull) was doing a radio interview here in Seattle promoting a remaster-reissue of their stuff. A bit of the interview went something like…
<after listening to Locomotive Breath remastered>
DJ: “Wow, that was great. That sounds really amazing compared to the original, doesn’t it?”
Ian: “Well, it’s certainly louder”
I’ve worked with signal processing and signal compression, and I want to emphasize a few things that were addressed but I’m not sure how well. First, and foremost, just because something is compressed doesn’t mean that there is any data loss. For instance, text is highly compressible by virtue of the fact that ascii representation is 8-bits, but only a small amount is generally used, so you can take advantage of that to maintain all of the information in less space.
As mentioned, there are lossless compression formats for sound, but they generally don’t result in a whole lot of compression. Instead, MP3s rely on two main things, one of which is frequency removal. This is actually not a big deal because generally the only frequencies that are flat out removed are ones that are to high or too low for most humans to detect and, even if they aren’t they’re probably unintentional and drowned out anyway so you won’t miss them. The other part is frequency quantization and this is really where the quality comes in. Basically, the higher the bit rate, the finer the resolution of the quantization.
Invariably, any level of quantization results in some information loss and, thus, sound quality loss, but at a certain point it becomes indistinguishable. Afterall, pixels in an image are essentially the visual equivalent (without getting into image compression techniques) and while higher resolution is better, there gets to be a point where it stops being worth it.
So, there will be some people who will say you need certain bit-rates to get near CD quality, but frankly, it all depends upon your equipment and purpose. I can tell the difference between some fairly high bit-rates, but in general, I find that since I’m listening to the MP3s in my car or at the gym, and without the original as comparison, I just don’t care that the sound quality isn’t perfect, especially since my music collection is extensive and storage space is a major concern. In cases where I want high quality, I always have the CD (I refuse to songs as MP3s) and I can use that or specifically re-rip it for that purpose.
I think a lot of it depends on spearkers. My mp3s sound great on my headphones, but even at 320 they don’t sound as good on the stereo
