What is the difference between certain quality of music?

[Ubuntuの刀]

For instance, I have this feature on iTunes to convert high bitrate songs from whatever they are to 128, 192, and 256 kbps. I don't know the sound quality difference between these 3 options, but what I do know is that it's a hell of a lot less memory than the 320 kbps songs I have.

Please, can someone explain this concept to me? Thanks!

 

[Nathan Drake]

Essentially, you're sacrificing sound quality in order to fit more songs. Honestly, you probably won't notice any real difference on cheap $10 or $20 headphones, but on anything that can actually output audio in a fashion that isn't entirely shit, the lower sound quality is fairly obvious. Though, even with cheaper headphones, I can easily notice the difference between a 320 kbps track and a 128 kbps track.

Edit: If you want to know the absolute specifics, you can always Google downsampling in relation to music files.

 

[yusuo]

I prefer to get 320kp/s if I can, to me there's more emphasis on the beats and the small parts of the song, it all sounds separate and well not blended together. Obviously its really hard to explain why I prefer it but to me it does make a difference and i grab the 320kp/s where I can

 

[the_randomizer]

Cymbals are a good way to test this, if they are at a low bitrate, they sound like "mush" or "slurred" in a way, hi's and low's will be more distinguishable I would imagine.

Here's a good place to test formats, bitrates, etc
http://tonerack.com/analysis-of-mp3-vs-aac-which-is-better-quality/


Formats like AAC sound far better at lower rates than MP3s do at the same lower bitrates due to the compression algorithm

 

[Jayro]

I prefer 256kb/s AAC files using the m4a container with the LC-AAC (Low Complexity) profile, over something like MP3. Even 320kb/s MP3's can't compress wooshing sounds and cymbals very well without them sounding slurred and mushy.

 

[the_randomizer]

I prefer 256kb/s AAC files using the m4a container with the LC-AAC (Low Complexity) profile, over something like MP3. Even 320kb/s MP3's can't compress wooshing sounds and cymbals very well without them sounding slurred and mushy.

I hate that sound, it makes me cringe when I hear my roommates listening to poorly compressed music. It doesn't help when I have very sensitive hearing lol AAC is a nice format though

 

[Ubuntuの刀]

hmm... Well I'm converting all of my songs to 192 kbps for spacing purposes on my iPhone. However, that won't stop be from searching for high quality music since I have a computer and an iPod(which glitches out too much so I don't like using it, although it has 120gb+ of free space %_%).

Thanks for all the source material! I will look into it later(or now).
EDIT: Wow I thought that I was gonna have to read alot to understand this concept, but surprising not! I don't hear a sound difference(unfortunately) between 128 kbps or 320 kbps(maybe I'm not listening hard enough?). But still, I have the spacing for it all on my computer, so when I'm home, yall know what quality of music I listen to!(Wow, that sounded so stupid, but whatevs).

More Edits: I wonder if I should get my music in AAC format. It sounds a hell of alot better than mp3, even at low quality.

 

[Jayro]

I agree, it drives me nuts... I only keep iTunes around because it's a fabulous CD ripper for free.

 

[trumpet-205]

AAC at 256 kbps using quality encoder such as QAAC or Nero is generally considered transparent. By that I mean you can't ABX it from lossless rip such as FLAC or WavPack.

If you don't have quality headphone and DAC, 160 kbps will generally be enough.

Personally I rip all of my audio in FLAC first then use QAAC with encoder settings of TVBR -q 118, which will produce variable bitrate with average around 280 kbps.

MP3 is getting very old.

 

[Ubuntuの刀]

AAC at 256 kbps using quality encoder such as QAAC or Nero is generally considered transparent. By that I mean you can't ABX it from lossless rip such as FLAC or WavPack.

If you don't have quality headphone and DAC, 160 kbps will generally be enough.

Personally I rip all of my audio in FLAC first then use QAAC with encoder settings of TVBR -q 118, which will produce variable bitrate with average around 280 kbps.

MP3 is getting very old.

When I was torrenting stuff(Fuck you NSA!) I found some .flac audio files and I didn't know what to do with them, but they were pretty hefty in file size. Guess I gotta get with the program and get AAC music files.

 

[trumpet-205]

When I was torrenting stuff(Fuck you NSA!) I found some .flac audio files and I didn't know what to do with them, but they were pretty hefty in file size. Guess I gotta get with the program and get AAC music files.

FLAC is a compressed lossless audio codec, meaning its audio quality is 1:1 of the source. Its audio quality does not degrade.

AAC and MP3 are lossy audio codec, meaning its audio quality degrades from the source. How much it degrades depends on the bitrate.

 

[the_randomizer]

FLAC is a compressed lossless audio codec, meaning its audio quality is 1:1 of the source. Its audio quality does not degrade.

AAC and MP3 are lossy audio codec, meaning its audio quality degrades from the source. How much it degrades depends on the bitrate.

FLAC is nice but takes up a lot of space, though not as bad as WAV, AAC I believe is or was at one point, supposed to be the successor for MP3.

 

[DinohScene]

I prefer to get 320 kbps MP3's, 265 is still acceptable but I can easily notice the difference on me car stereo.
Anything under 265 just sounds incredibly awful.

I'm stuck to MP3 cause it's pretty much the only format me cars headunit will play ;p
I think AAC would also work...
FLAC obviously won't unfortunately..

 

[the_randomizer]

I prefer to get 320 kbps MP3's, 265 is still acceptable but I can easily notice the difference on me car stereo.
Anything under 265 just sounds incredibly awful.

I'm stuck to MP3 cause it's pretty much the only format me cars headunit will play ;p
I think AAC would also work...
FLAC obviously won't unfortunately..

AAC is better than MP3 in a lot of ways, such as better sound quality at lower bitrates and doesn't have that mushy sound and FLAC is also quite nice, if I ever convert my music into FLAC, I'll need more space for my music player I should do an ABX test one of these days.

 

[DinohScene]

AAC is better than MP3 in a lot of ways, such as better sound quality at lower bitrates and doesn't have that mushy sound and FLAC is also quite nice, if I ever convert my music into FLAC, I'll need more space for my music player I should do an ABX test one of these days.

Eh, far to lazy to convert everything to AAC.
Not only that but yeh, stuck to MP3 cause of cars radio ;p

I hope that in the next 5 years or so, car radios will support FLAC/become cheaper that support FLAC.
Then I got a good reason to store things in FLAC on the USB/SD in me car c:

 

[the_randomizer]

Eh, far to lazy to convert everything to AAC.
Not only that but yeh, stuck to MP3 cause of cars radio ;p

I hope that in the next 5 years or so, car radios will support FLAC/become cheaper that support FLAC.
Then I got a good reason to store things in FLAC on the USB/SD in me car c:

Fair enough AAC is or was at one point, supposed to be the successor to MP3, then there's OGG which is even more compressed than MP3 and sounds horrible to my ears lol. Unless someone has major space constraints, there's no reason to use Ogg Vorbis.

 

[DinohScene]

OGG...
I think it's being used for Minecraft music.
And other games maybe....

Yeh, I'll just stick to MP3 for now.
at 320 kbps, it doesn't sound like shit on me headphones/laptop and car Hifi ;p

 

[trumpet-205]

Fair enough AAC is or was at one point, supposed to be the successor to MP3, then there's OGG which is even more compressed than MP3 and sounds horrible to my ears lol. Unless someone has major space constraints, there's no reason to use Ogg Vorbis.

Both AAC and Vorbis are designed to be successor of MP3. AAC is also designed to be the successor of Dolby Digital (AC3), although industry still calls for AC3.

For Vorbis, the only quality encoder would be aoTuV. All other Vorbis encoders are crappy for my ears. Vorbis has the advantage of being free of patent, that's why some commercial products (such as video games) use them. AAC on the other hand requires licensing right for commercial use.

That being said, Vorbis has poor support for surround sound, and use of codebook made it very inefficient to compress short length audio.

 

[the_randomizer]

Both AAC and Vorbis are designed to be successor of MP3. AAC is also designed to be the successor of Dolby Digital (AC3), although industry still calls for AC3.

For Vorbis, the only quality encoder would be aoTuV. All other Vorbis encoders are crappy for my ears. Vorbis has the advantage of being free of patent, that's why some commercial products (such as video games) use them. AAC on the other hand requires licensing right for commercial use.

That being said, Vorbis has poor support for surround sound, and use of codebook made it very inefficient to compress short length audio.

Not a big fan of Vobis, I never tried the encoder, might give it a whirl, my MP3 player supports a lot of formats, AAC, MP3, FLAC, WMA and a few others, I'll experiment with them and try them on my new car stereo Or my fancy-schmantsy headphones

 

[trumpet-205]

Not a big fan of Vobis, I never tried the encoder, might give it a whirl, my MP3 player supports a lot of formats, AAC, MP3, FLAC, WMA and a few others, I'll experiment with them and try them on my new car stereo

Vorbis is like Theora, open video codec that is supposed to compete with H.263. Both had the potential to be a serious contender, but both got abandoned half way through their life cycle, making them inferior to other competing codecs.

Which is why I pray Opus won't ended up like that too. It is meant to replace AAC.