MP3 Quality
Sat, Oct 30 2010, 8:40PM
#2
RE: MP3 Quality RE: MP3 Quality
Might I suggest that all of you download a 15 day trial of Sonnox's Oxford Dynamics Native Plugin. If you like what it does it costs 180 Euros.
Here is my preferred setting for most music, including classical:
Load: Sony Buss
Access Compress On Plus In
Limiter no access
Warmth In
Soft 0 db or Soft 5 db
Dither or no Dither - depending if you're downsampling. Your choice.
The other knobs and settings I leave just as they are.
When I open the wave file in CD Wave Editor it indicates 99%, no clipping.
I compress the resulting wavefile into mp3 Pro at 96.
Some of you might be pleasantly surprised with the result. I was.
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I agree with TedR -- I would be absolutely astonished if there is a single person on this planet who could tell 320k MP3 from CD quality under formal test conditions (this presumes using a decent encoder for the MP3s).
I have always regarded my hearing as pretty good. And I do rip all my CDs to FLAC, because, well, why not? Space is cheap these days. And FLAC offers gapless playback natively, which is essential for classical music (if you want to complain about MP3 playback, then gapless playback, or the lack of it on most players and most encoders, is a more interesting and valid topic).
And I do make lossy copies for my portable player, but OGG rather than MP3 (again, OGG has native gapless playback, but dependant on the portable player).
As regards MP3 quality, for my ears, VBR averaging 192k (using the most recent version of the LAME encoder) is indistinguishable from lossless files. This is using network streaming to a good domestic hifi setup. I could probably find highly complex music samples that might reveal the limits of MP3 playback at ~192k VBR, but I'd really have to search for them. For the vast majority of music, it's fine. There are limits to the value of any test conducted with a £60 portable player and £30 headphones.