Do you like MP3?

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The music thread got me to wondering. I can't stand to listen to MP3 stuff. Even the highest quality sounds like AM radio to me. The AAC encoding we use for putting stuff on our Ipods is tolerable. I can still hear differences but that could be from the earbuds vs. the full size speakers on the stereo. But anything MP3'd just gives me the creeps like someone is dragging their fingernails on the chalkboard.

I think part of your problem with MP3's is the encoder that was used. When I encode, I use CDEx, which uses the LAME encoder, or Stainberg's WaveLab, which uses the Fraunhoffer Codec. I also encode with a 324 bitrate as well, and that takes care of the compression artifacts.

I do feel compelled to state that a lot of stuff that I have is encoded at bitrates ranging from 128 to 192, and some of the stuff that was encoded at 128 sounds much better than other stuff encoded at 128. --I think audio quality is also dependant on the encoder that you use.

i got an i pod

MP3 is good enough I feel. Really don't get the need for AAC and such.....

I have crappy speakers though so it may just be my sound system. :/

I like MP3,they can really differ in quality,some CDs are recorded with screwy EQ (eg,too much treble and not enough bass) or low master volume so it's not always the fault of the CD to conversion process ,I have found that one quite common unfortunately,have a lot of those cds.

Agreed some cd's are junk. Give me quality vinyl any day. But I'm talking about playing a cd on my Teac player through the Kenwood amp out the CerwinVega speakers, vs ripping the same cd to my Mac using highest quality MP3 compression then either playing back from the Mac or burning an MP3 cd and playing it on the Teac. To me, once its been throughthe MP3 process, its no longer tolerable to listen to. But that's just me.

Are you talking about downloaded MP3s? If not, what do you use to encode them? VBR/CBR? Bitrate? What do you think of Ogg Vorbis? As fogman mentioned, the bitrate, encoding scheme and codec are extremely important.

I'm generally pretty anal about sound quality and many MP3s I download are teribble. The highs are usually cut off and harsh, many people use high compression that destroys the dynamic range, and the codec is often chosen poorly (in most cases, whatever comes bundled with their software). There are some excellent sound quality comprisons (here's another) between different codecs and good guides to encoding that you may want to read. I do all my encoding with Ogg, preset 8, and rip with the cdparanoia library (which is available for EAC, which I use when I'm on the windows PC). The forums at hydrogenaudio.org also have way, way more information on this stuff.

Thanks, I'll have to check it out. I haven't really investigated the MP3 process much because it all sounded so crappy it didn't seem worth my time. But lots of other people don't seem to notice the difference so I thought it was just me being oversensitive. For MP3, I've just used Itunes with evrything set to lowest compression and highest quality. Haven't really gotten further into it than that because I discovered the AAC format which still has pretty good compression (about 10:1) but is almost indistinguishable from the original cd. (Although I'm told this depends on what you're listening too, for example I think I remember reading that MP3 was actually very good at speech reproduction).
Anyway, thanks for the info. I'll check it out.

I dislike MP3s because there is a noticeable downgrade in quality, but also i don't like using MP3s in general. I dislike using sound files to listening to music for anything more than a sample or demo - they're big, mutable, corruptable, and too easy lost. Computer files are a pain to manage and store as is, yet do have their pluses. So I prefer to use them for things that benefit from those pluses (like word processing), and forget about anything else. Even then I prefer to have a hard copy, or at least a a back up. With music, if I have a hard copy, I don't see why I need a sound file in addition. The hard copy is enough.

And I just don't get the IPod trend. It's far too gluttonly consumerist for my tastes. Besides, much of the music I like wouldn't be available, or the quality would be too serious compromised.

the people who say they can't tell the difference probably wouldn't know quality audio equipment if it fell on them from above.

AAC is lossless so there is no difference in quality from CD at all. There isn't even unnoticable difference.

Personally, I almost never notice sound quality unless it is extremely bad. The only time I've had a problem with my mp3 player is playing 'Vertigo' by U2, it seems to have a high pitched sound that hurts my ears, but it's fine on the computer with my headphones.

Moved this to the correct forum.

I avoid MP3s whenever possible. Even the best compressor encoding at 320kb/s will degrade the quality of some high frequencies, and on headphones, I can tell the difference between that and a lossless copy. I keep my entire CD collection on my computer in FLAC format (I'm going to need a new hard drive soon ).