I have ripped CD’s donw to MP3’s and also burned MP3’s onto CD and they sound terrible compared to most other programs. All MP3’s sound sorta wispy at 128kbps. Not in other programs though.
Why is this? I thought MP3 was a set type of compression so everyones MP3’s SHOULD sound the same right?
First off, the standard sampling rate is much higher on CD’s–around 150 kbps, I believe*. So that could affect it. Second, mp3 is a lossy compression format, meaning that if you encode a .wav into an .mp3 and then decode it back into a .wav, the sound quality is not the same as the original. This may have something to do with it. Lastly, I’m not sure that there is only one algorithm for encoding–if there isn’t, that could explain the lion’s share of the difference.
150 sounds about right for CDs, but 128 kbps should be good enough for anyone. I don’t have very discriminating ears, but I think that even at 64 kbps, you’d have better quality than described in the OP.
MP3’s, however, are a lossy compression format. I don’t know much about them, but I don’t believe there’s a given reason that they should all sound alike.
Apparently it’s now using the Xing encoder which is faster but not as accurate.
Do MP3 encoders sound different?
Arstechnica - Nice rundown of Blade, Fraunhofer, LAME, and Xing.
A slight correction. On review I am not sure what encoder the latest version of MusicMatch is using.
By the way, the bit rate of an audio CD is 1,411,200 bits per second, or around 1400 kbps.
Comparing the bitrate of CDs vs MP3s is, err;
::sighs:
Ok this is VASTLY simplified but. . …
CDs: 1984
MP3s: ~1989 I THINK (part of the original MPEG1 standard, actually part of one of the revisions of it, but. . . . heh)
CDs where designed to be very simple to play, the computational requirements to play a CD are minimal
MP3s are rather computationally expensive (especially compared to CDs. 
)
This is like comparing LZW compression to JPEG compression;
please, just don’t!
I think the question has been lost here.
My question was “Why does Musicmatch rip such terrible quality MP3’s?”.
Not “Why dont MP3’s sound as good as CD’s?”
I know MP3 is a compression format and some sound is lost when compression occurs, but MM seems to take the CD audio and shit out the crappiest MP3’s ever ripped.
Why is that?
No idea. You’d probably be better off ripping with better audio software programs. I prefer to use LAME and cd2wav. Compress it down to 256bps (or 196) and you won’t be able to tell the difference.
If you really need an answer you could a) not be selecting the proper audio compression/conversion settings or b) it could be that Musicmatch is just a poorly programmed utility.
Actually, astro did answer your question. Musicmatch uses Xing. Xing sucks. Here’s a link to R3Mix which astro references, but does not link to. It provides detailed technical analyses of the various MP3 encoders and their strengths and weaknesses. Also, the last time I used the program, the shareware version turned out significantly crappier mp3s than the full, paid version.
Personal experience: Haven’t noticed any quality difference with Musicmatch @ 128K–not between it and things ripped w/Soundjam or iTunes, nor between it and CDs, frankly. And I only ever listen to the tunes through headphones.
I’ve always used v. 1.02 for Macintosh (August 2000 release date). Could be different now, or could be a platform difference. I assume you have a Windows PC.
Regardless of Xing’s deficiencies, it all sounds fine to me.
I use MusicMatch and think it’s fine, for ripping or any of its other purposes. However, I do tend to use CDEx for ripping operations.
I know this isn’t much help, but then again it might suggest that the problem isn’t with MusciMatch as such, but some other aspect of your system or the process. Or maybe my ears are just more easily satisfied than yours!
Yes well the difference is that with LAME you won’t even be able to tell that it is an MP3. 
That is why Xing sucks, you can TELL it is Xing. 
I also recommend the LAME encoder, a good prog that uses it is dbPowerAmp at http://www.dbpoweramp.com/
Just out of curosity, wouldn’t it be fairly trivial to replace the encoder that MusicMatch uses with a different one? From what I’ve seen, it usually isn’t too hard on other applications, but I’m not sure how integrated Xing is into MusicMatch…
I have extremely sensitive ears when it comes to telling music samples apart, and I have to say that MusicMatch 3 (yes, a somewhat old version, but it’s legal at least…) typically rips files that 95% of the time are indistinguishable from CD at 128 kb, 99% of the time at 160 kbit, and 100% of the time at 256 kbit.
IMO. I had a couple debates with people in the past on this Board, who assured me that since MP3 was a “standard”, there could not “possibly be any difference between encoders”.
They were wrong.