This compression thing

Don't want to put words in his mouth but I think Paul's thang is lossless compression - e.g. Monkey Audio. Gives you about 2:1 compression with no loss in quality whatsoever. That's only about 700-odd kbps I think. Too bad you can't use such formats with iTunes (AFAIK?)

Dunc

 

Hi Dunky.

Well I don't know about these specific formats however the LAME encoder is now in my itunes programme via an applescript.

I will try this out and eat my words if jobs a goodn'

 

Wow the LAME encoder was really bad.

Not only did it sound awful but there was some loud cracking distortion in there for good measure!

I think I'll stick with the 33khz WAV, this seems the best of the lot so far.

 

Musicians of my acquaintance who know about this kind of stuff always seem to tell me that AIFF is better than WAV, if that's any use to you.

WAV sounds fine to me.

-- Ian

 

Yes Ian, I might try the ratios on that as well.


Lets put it this way I have plenty of CDs to experiment with.

 

Gary, interesting stuff. I've literally just got my Carillon home and using Soundscape converters I have had a different experience. Although this is based on a quick one hour listen there is bugger all difference between AIFF and AAC. Of course I will continue to listen and will post an update, extended listening is generally best. Bottom line though is that this really does give CD a really, really, good run for its money. My Carillon is easily as good as if not better than £1000-1500 CDPs that I have heard (although to be fair the soundcard did cost £800 - but it does do a lot more than a CDP!). Dominic

 

guys,
gary is using very high quality pre and power amplification. this is probably revealing the imperfections glossed over by lesser kit usually associated with computer audio. if gary's software could support a lossles compresion scheme i'd be very interested in hearing how this sounds.
cheers


julian

 

I'm about to get into this compression lark in my car. I have just fitted a Panasonic CD Radio which can play MP3 and WMA discs. It supports up to 320 kbps MP3 and 192 kbps WMA. I shall have to experiment with both formats. I suspect that either will probably sound just fine for use while driving.

This will give me around 5 hours of music on one CD. That means I can make any of the car journeys I normally make throughout the year without having to change the CD. Excellent. And it reads out the track names too. Cool!



http://www.mcs-direct.co.uk/acatalog/MP321.html

 

With some of the LAME beta releases there are apparently audiable bugs, these guys are constantly pushing the encoder technology and tuning. The hydrigenaudio recommendation is for LAME 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard, which is very well tested and well regarded.

https://www.audio-forums.com/as-rediect/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3577#post47763

I'm not sure if this binary is directly useable on the mac though.

The resuling variable-bitrate MP3's are between 178- 235Kbps, and it seems to be really well tuned to use just the right amount of datarate to be really clean, even in the treble.

I'd seriously consider this before ripping cd's for days, twice!

regards,
Rob.

 

I'd check whether it can use VBR (variable bit rate. I know it's not the same thing, but I enjoy my home player's ability to play mp3s (Marantz DV8400) but it doesn't play vbr files. Since I was silly enough to encode many of my favorite tracks using vbr with realplayer some while back, this is slightly inconvenient. I have to check every file I burn is constant bit rate, otherwise I get 'unreadable ' error. If I had been shopping with mp3 capabilty in mind I would have been annoyed about this. I don't know whether other players handle vbr. Secondly, of course, the discs have to be single session and finalised.

 

Yes, the Panasonic will play VBR MP3s but Panasonic recommends in the manual that they be avoided in preference for MP3 @ 192 kbps fixed and above or WMA @ 128 kbps fixed and above.

I think it said that it supports multiple sessions but it definitely said that the discs must be finalised and it recommended using 'disc-at-once' writing for maximum compatibility.

I'm going to use the maximum bitrate anyway and I'm in the habit of using disc-at-once and low writing speeds.

 

Hmmmm! A question. The manual said that the discs must be finalised, but the player supports CD-RW. Surely finalisation doesn't apply to CD-RW - or does it? Can a CD-RW be 'finalised'? Can a CD-RW still be erased or reformatted after it has been 'finalised' ?

 

Yes it can and it needs to be finalised in order to be used in an audio CD player. The finalization process writes a TOC (table of contents) to the disc which the audio CD player needs to read to find out whats on the disk and where it is.

After you've finalised a CD-RW you can still, if you desire, unfinalise it to enable more tracks to be added or erase it completely.

HTH

 

I think only recently has variable-bitrate MP3 encoding become the preferred quality choice.

I think for most MP3 Encoders CBR 192Kbps or 256Kbps are the high-end options for best quality MP3's, and there were no better options a few years ago.

I've noticed more and more things report VBR MP3 support now. Although as usual, it might not be great support in practice.

I'm hope the NETGEAR MP101 I've got on order supports VBR! That reminds me, I'll start a new topic.

regards,
Rob.

 

I've been a bit quiet of late. I normally use MPC which is a lossy compression, said to be far better than MP3. However, MPC is only compatible with 3 players that I know of, and I think its possible that the Mac mightnt even have that codec.

Gary, fair enough. You tried it, and its not for you. FWIW, most my MP3's are dance music and I might not be able to tell, but they sound alright to me to be fair, so to be honest, lifes too short for me to worry about it anymore.

Still good luck with it.

 

No need for the defeatist attitude Paul, I would like a solution, perhaps you have one.

The only cavet is it needs to work out of itunes, becaise I need itunes in order for the cataloging to work.

FWIW I have a lot of electronica on CD as well, its this that exhibits some of the worse bass bloom.

 

Well, I'd like to offer you a solution Gary, but you have a Mac, which makes it very difficult for me to suggest anything, since I have no experience of that platform.

I personally use EAC, but I dont think thats available for the Mac. This offers secure ripping, which is said to be the most accurate around. Perhaps you could investigate this, but, if as you say, the uncompressed formats have no problems, then the ripping aint the problem.

MP3 was never designed to be that accurate, but apparently the LAME 3.90 codec was the best. I used to use alt - preset - extreme, but like I say I dont use it any more. I have no experience of AAC, but isnt that just a further developed MP3 format? OGG Vorbis and Musepack are the best lossy codecs, but perhaps investigate FLAC and Monkey's Audio, as these are lossless and should save you around 30 - 40% over the compressed files, and there should be no difference.

I'm sorry if I appear defeatist, but really, I hear little difference (if any) between the well encoded stuff and the original, and to be honest, as a result, its not something that prays on my mind much nowadays. Ultimately though, I would say it was fair to assume, if you are after ULTIMATE quality, then lossless / uncompressed probably is the only way. However, I'd urge you to try some ABX software on the Mac.

 

Julian, I do not know if you were thinking of my system with this comment; my Carillon/Soundscape (PC) is connected to my Nuvista M3/SF Amator IIs - certainly not lesser kit and very revealing.

After more listening yesterday and today my conclusions having tried various combinations of soundcard (read DAC) and compression / non-compression settings, are that to my ears there is more of a difference if you upgrade the soundcard (or DAC) than what compression setting you use. I find it very, very difficult to differentiate between different compression/non-compression settings ie guess which compression is being used by listening 'blind'.

I have found the same in my system in the Boxster (£4ks worth). I have a Nakamichi MD player that plays MDs that I have recorded in analogue from my Wadia (sounds better then recording digitally). In an a/b demo at my car hifi dealer the Nak MD sounds better than the original CD played on an equivilent price (£600) Nak CDP - markedly so - and I will now not go CDP in the car because it will be a downgrade.

Just my tuppence worth.

Dominic

 

dominic,
in the past the claim has been made that compression doesn't effect the audiable quality of a piece of music. i've not found this to be the case and was just offering the possiblity that gary is running an aproximately 10k amp / speaker combo would be a tad more revealing than a set of pc speakers or rotel / b&w 601's that are usually used when this statement rears it's ugly head.

you got a boxster for 4k? where? i'd love to know.... i too use minidisk in my rover (1k) however it sounds shite when i can hear it over the diesel rattle of my engine.
cheers


julian

 

FWIW, while I am sure the expensive kit is more revealing (thats to be expected), the differences usually are not at the scale at whats claimed. To top it off, the vast majority of music listeners dont really intensely listen out for, or indeed, care about the tiny changes that result.

However, it does seem to be an affliction with owners of expensive hifi kit that they intensely concentrate and pick faults with what they are hearing all of the time, and even convinve themselves they are hearing things they may actually be imagining, due to the knowledge they are listening to a compressed format / cheap box / whatever. I agree, if you are reading this, and you fit into this category, then I'll put it in simple terms: Dont bother with compression.

And since you obviously arent poor, then buy a nice raid setup and put it in a different room.

However, I speak as a person who really couldnt care less about it any more