The Age Old Question...
haha maybe those seemingly crap-quality records are utterly thought through and meant to sound like that? From what interviews I've seen with Jeff he could very well be that kind of a guy, thinking in three or four tiers at a time but still ending up right where he started. He is one weird genius to be sure
My thoughts:
192k = minimum for playing out if it's a classic
320k (non VBR) = preferred for playing out
WAV/Vinyl = the same/best
192 is lacking in bass, and the highs are definitely more tinny. A proper 320k MP3 sounds pretty awesome right next to a wav or an original vinyl/CD master.
We've done comparisons on my Genelecs—which are pretty damn revealing—both sober and not, and no one can ever tell the difference.
I grew up with an audiophile father who taught me everything I know about sound and gear, and I've been blessed with an incredible sense of sound and good ears from a young age.
The bottom line for me, as an absolute sound geek who's spent his whole life upgrading gear on a continual basis, built his own speakers and subwoofers (crossovers and all), spends more time arranging sound treatment and bass traps (the best investment one could ever make for your studio, trust me)... I have a really tough time telling the difference between a proper 320k MP3 and a wav/vinyl played through a CDJ/1200 on my system. Yes, you can tell on some tracks, no doubt. But properly mastered ones are very difficult to discern.
192k = minimum for playing out if it's a classic
320k (non VBR) = preferred for playing out
WAV/Vinyl = the same/best
192 is lacking in bass, and the highs are definitely more tinny. A proper 320k MP3 sounds pretty awesome right next to a wav or an original vinyl/CD master.
We've done comparisons on my Genelecs—which are pretty damn revealing—both sober and not, and no one can ever tell the difference.
I grew up with an audiophile father who taught me everything I know about sound and gear, and I've been blessed with an incredible sense of sound and good ears from a young age.
The bottom line for me, as an absolute sound geek who's spent his whole life upgrading gear on a continual basis, built his own speakers and subwoofers (crossovers and all), spends more time arranging sound treatment and bass traps (the best investment one could ever make for your studio, trust me)... I have a really tough time telling the difference between a proper 320k MP3 and a wav/vinyl played through a CDJ/1200 on my system. Yes, you can tell on some tracks, no doubt. But properly mastered ones are very difficult to discern.
Don't believe any post in this thread that says something like "192 has muffled bass", "128 makes kittens cry", etc. The fact of the matter is, every encoder chooses how to fill those 192 bits differently, and they do so based on the whole sonic palette of the individual song, so there's no hard-and-fast rules like this. Period.
If you want to go with MP3, I personally think VBR, done with the right parameters and a high-quality encoder like lame, is the way to go. Why? 320 kb of data just isn't necessary all the time. Why fill up the extra space? Also, some really smart people are using some really smart psychoacoustics in developing the VBR encoders. I do a lot of encoding, and I've never made a VBR mp3 that didn't sound good as a 320k.
I really hope more people get into FLAC though. It's lossless, it's supported by a decent number of programs, the file size usually isn't much more than a 320k mp3, and you can tag the files nicely.
If you want to go with MP3, I personally think VBR, done with the right parameters and a high-quality encoder like lame, is the way to go. Why? 320 kb of data just isn't necessary all the time. Why fill up the extra space? Also, some really smart people are using some really smart psychoacoustics in developing the VBR encoders. I do a lot of encoding, and I've never made a VBR mp3 that didn't sound good as a 320k.
I really hope more people get into FLAC though. It's lossless, it's supported by a decent number of programs, the file size usually isn't much more than a 320k mp3, and you can tag the files nicely.
Bass traps - those foam type things u put under the monitors, right? Do they absorb the vibration? I was thinking of getting those, for the neighbors sake as well as the sound'sJackNine wrote:My thoughts:
192k = minimum for playing out if it's a classic
320k (non VBR) = preferred for playing out
WAV/Vinyl = the same/best
192 is lacking in bass, and the highs are definitely more tinny. A proper 320k MP3 sounds pretty awesome right next to a wav or an original vinyl/CD master.
We've done comparisons on my Genelecs—which are pretty damn revealing—both sober and not, and no one can ever tell the difference.
I grew up with an audiophile father who taught me everything I know about sound and gear, and I've been blessed with an incredible sense of sound and good ears from a young age.
The bottom line for me, as an absolute sound geek who's spent his whole life upgrading gear on a continual basis, built his own speakers and subwoofers (crossovers and all), spends more time arranging sound treatment and bass traps (the best investment one could ever make for your studio, trust me)... I have a really tough time telling the difference between a proper 320k MP3 and a wav/vinyl played through a CDJ/1200 on my system. Yes, you can tell on some tracks, no doubt. But properly mastered ones are very difficult to discern.
Another thing, and I think I've stated it before, this cut-off thing of "I wouldnt play anything under 192 or whatever". IMO u putting too much emphasis on the wrong things. If ur rippin sh!t up, I really dont give a sh!t and will likely not notice what encoding ur MP3's are in or . Flipside being, If ur up there jerking the crossfader back and forth and have no flow whatsoever then I willl notice every little thing
I dont know, maybe I'm just not as serious a DJ as some of the cats posting here, but I think that a person that REALLY hears the music would agree with me as would a few "serious" DJs
That all I got
no MiniKat, thats not a bass trap, its only for absorbing the vibration from the speaker, but it dont help the acoustic (apart from the vibrations)
a bass trap is something like that
http://www.vicoustic.com/imgsprodutos/G ... coteco.JPG
you install it in the corners of the room. because if a bass drone thats because the acoustic in a room is shitty - and a bass trap should solve such a problem. droning happens if the sonic is reflected from walls, without loosing much of its power. then you hear the sound not only once by the time it came out of the speaker, you hear it multiple times, everytime the sonic bounce of a wall and go again to your ear.
A Basstrap absorb much of the power and so you could hear theoreticly a very clear, defined bass.
but in some locations there are natural bass traps, like for example a big bed in a corner of the room. Generally rooms with much furniture have better acoustics.
a bass trap is something like that
http://www.vicoustic.com/imgsprodutos/G ... coteco.JPG
you install it in the corners of the room. because if a bass drone thats because the acoustic in a room is shitty - and a bass trap should solve such a problem. droning happens if the sonic is reflected from walls, without loosing much of its power. then you hear the sound not only once by the time it came out of the speaker, you hear it multiple times, everytime the sonic bounce of a wall and go again to your ear.
A Basstrap absorb much of the power and so you could hear theoreticly a very clear, defined bass.
but in some locations there are natural bass traps, like for example a big bed in a corner of the room. Generally rooms with much furniture have better acoustics.
"Variable BitRate encoding is designed for size & quality optimalization. Where there is silence in the music, it is less "demanding" in terms of its encodability, it makes sense to drop the bit rate, simply because there's not much there to encode, and the wasted space is overkill."
I would hope that people (especially on this board) would desire just as much sound quality in the "less demanding" parts of a track.
Also, considering how cheap 500GB+ HDs and DVDR discs are these days, I don't know why anyone would bother with any lossy compression when recording/archiving audio.
I would hope that people (especially on this board) would desire just as much sound quality in the "less demanding" parts of a track.
Also, considering how cheap 500GB+ HDs and DVDR discs are these days, I don't know why anyone would bother with any lossy compression when recording/archiving audio.
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Dragonsand
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