Lots of people make decisions about the quality of MP3's they're happy with (in terms of bitrate) based upon an irrational sense of more is always better. And whilst more bits can be better, if you can't hear it (through it being out of your hearing range or you just "not" hearing it) then it's totally pointless to always opt for encodes beyond your best quality tolerance. Now people can ABX test for themselves but most of the time we don't bother and just trust a gut sense of our bitrate tolerance.
Now, we can't embed MP3's into the forum and streaming sites will generally give you a file size, so i've had to work out a method to create a test to cover 5 different bitrates that's accessible to everyone (which knowing my luck people will ignore and this will fail to serve any purpose...)
I've created a two and a half minute track of 5 samples encoded at different rates (ripped from CD to lossless PCM with EAC and then converted to MP3 with SoX). Listen to the clip (going back if necessary....each one starts after 29 seconds so if you just use 30 second jumps to skip between them you can compare your choices) and decide on an order of best to worst.
Ignore the wrapping...the tags are borked to preserve the different encodes.
Obviously listening hardware will determine how accurate you are so try to use your best headphones/speakers too. And it's two and a half minutes...just be aware that it'd be great if you didn't just stick in random answers. And please don't try to cheat...it's not a test of your "mad listening skills".
Grab the track here (it's not anything awful...)
http://www.mediafire.com/?h0bozv5ts2ajvuz
Listen, (Don't Cheat it's pointless...) then post your conclusions. Best at the top down to worst...e.g
Third clip (Best)
Fifth
First
Fourth
Second(Worst)
IF THAT'S TOO HARD JUST TELL US WHICH ONES YOU WOULD ACCEPT AND WHICH YOU'D REJECT!
Also stick in what bitrate you generally opt for in your MP3's!
When interest dies (please be later rather than sooner) i'll let you know exactly what bitrates were used.
Edit - Also i'll repeat myself.....please don't try to cheat...it serves no purpose and if anything you're cheating yourself.....
Now, we can't embed MP3's into the forum and streaming sites will generally give you a file size, so i've had to work out a method to create a test to cover 5 different bitrates that's accessible to everyone (which knowing my luck people will ignore and this will fail to serve any purpose...)
I've created a two and a half minute track of 5 samples encoded at different rates (ripped from CD to lossless PCM with EAC and then converted to MP3 with SoX). Listen to the clip (going back if necessary....each one starts after 29 seconds so if you just use 30 second jumps to skip between them you can compare your choices) and decide on an order of best to worst.
Ignore the wrapping...the tags are borked to preserve the different encodes.
Obviously listening hardware will determine how accurate you are so try to use your best headphones/speakers too. And it's two and a half minutes...just be aware that it'd be great if you didn't just stick in random answers. And please don't try to cheat...it's not a test of your "mad listening skills".
Grab the track here (it's not anything awful...)
http://www.mediafire.com/?h0bozv5ts2ajvuz
Listen, (Don't Cheat it's pointless...) then post your conclusions. Best at the top down to worst...e.g
Third clip (Best)
Fifth
First
Fourth
Second(Worst)
IF THAT'S TOO HARD JUST TELL US WHICH ONES YOU WOULD ACCEPT AND WHICH YOU'D REJECT!
Also stick in what bitrate you generally opt for in your MP3's!
When interest dies (please be later rather than sooner) i'll let you know exactly what bitrates were used.
Edit - Also i'll repeat myself.....please don't try to cheat...it serves no purpose and if anything you're cheating yourself.....