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RandalFlagg
Stranger

Registered: 06/15/02
Posts: 15,608
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Music encoders
#7439945 - 09/22/07 10:13 AM (16 years, 4 months ago) |
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I am using Itunes to rip all of my CD's and my music encoder is MPEG-1 Layer 3 at 320 kbps. I figured that 320 kbps would be of much higher quality than normal since most MP3's are burned at 128 kbps. People say they can't tell the difference between MP3's and CD quality but I can if you run those signals through a good amp and good speakers. The MP3's sound like they are coming out of a crappy boombox in an empty room when compared to the more full CD sound.
That being said, I saw the other encoders (Apple lossless encoder, AIFF, WAV, etc..). Since I have a 80 gig Ipod I have a shitload of room and thus I can burn my stuff at super high quality. Should I use a different encoder to get higher quality? Or is MP3 at 320 kbps good enough?
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OJK
Stranger


Registered: 06/08/03
Posts: 10,629
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320kbps as a constant bitrate is a waste of space - you're assigning that number of bits to _everything_: to silence, to low-volume parts, to areas that could be assigned a much smaller number of bits and still sound good.
Use LAME at -V0. It's VBR, meaning the variable bitrate - areas of silence are given less bits, saving space. It's the defacto standard of private music sharing sites, it'll sound great through any consumer-level audio equipment you care to name, and it'll be indistinguishable from CDA to everyone apart from die-hard audiophiles and robots.
Something like Code:
lame -V0 -h -b 192 --vbr-new input.wav output.mp3 will sound pretty great.
If you want lossless compression, use FLAC, but that won't play on your iPod.
I wouldn't bother using Apple Lossless unless you're willing to sell your soul to steve jobs (i.e. commit to using Apple mp3 players for the forseeable future).
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RandalFlagg
Stranger

Registered: 06/15/02
Posts: 15,608
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Re: Music encoders [Re: OJK]
#7439991 - 09/22/07 10:29 AM (16 years, 4 months ago) |
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I actually have VBR (highest quality) enabled. And, as I said I'm not concerned about the amount of space I'm taking up because I have so much. I am concerned about sound quality.
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RandalFlagg
Stranger

Registered: 06/15/02
Posts: 15,608
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Re: Music encoders [Re: OJK]
#7440036 - 09/22/07 10:44 AM (16 years, 4 months ago) |
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Oh, another thing. I've been reading in spots how the Itunes MP3 encoder blows and how LAME is of much higher quality. But, I would hate to have to command line enter all of my shit (I have almost 200 CD's). I like how Itunes is very convenient (you just throw the CD in and it does everything for you).
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OJK
Stranger


Registered: 06/08/03
Posts: 10,629
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There are lots of front-end GUIs for LAME that make it more itunes-like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME#Microsoft_Windows
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RandalFlagg
Stranger

Registered: 06/15/02
Posts: 15,608
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Re: Music encoders [Re: OJK]
#7440235 - 09/22/07 11:45 AM (16 years, 4 months ago) |
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Is the sound difference that much between Itunes and Lame? And given how major of a company Apple is why didn't they just make their MP3 encoder halfway decent?
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OJK
Stranger


Registered: 06/08/03
Posts: 10,629
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Given how major a company Microsoft is why does WMA suck such hairy balls?
Why does x264 rock so hard when it's written by a bunch of volounteers?
Why does VLC kick so much more ass than Quicktime? Why is SongBird so much better than iTunes?
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero



Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
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Re: Music encoders [Re: OJK]
#7446737 - 09/24/07 06:42 AM (16 years, 4 months ago) |
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For the stuff I care about, I encode it using FLAC, a (free) lossless audio codec. Unfortunately, iTunes (and iPods) do not know how to play this format. For iTunes/iPods, I use Apple's AAC in an mp4 container at the highest (variable) bitrate supported.
The VLC player can play FLAC encoded files.
> Why does VLC kick so much more ass than Quicktime?
To be fair, it doesn't. Kind of like saying "why does a saw kick so much more ass than a four-axis CNC mill". They are two very different things. The quicktime player is a tiny, itty bitty part of quicktime.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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OJK
Stranger


Registered: 06/08/03
Posts: 10,629
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Re: Music encoders [Re: Seuss]
#7447156 - 09/24/07 10:05 AM (16 years, 4 months ago) |
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> The quicktime player is a tiny, itty bitty part of quicktime.
But it's a tiny, itty bitty part of quicktime that for a long time wouldn't let you play video files in fullscreen mode without paying Apple an additional $29.95 right?
What makes up Quicktime, aside from the player? I guess it implements h.264 encoding, but there's an open source implementation that's extremely good.
Forgive me, but I just don't know what else Quicktime can do, my only experience of it has been the player on a Windows platform - and like all software that Apple releases on Windows, it's just remarkably bad.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero



Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 2 months, 20 days
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Re: Music encoders [Re: OJK]
#7447235 - 09/24/07 10:45 AM (16 years, 4 months ago) |
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> What makes up Quicktime, aside from the player?
It is a massive framework for everything video, from transcode support to low level media asset management and pretty much anything in between. From Apple:
Quote:
QuickTime is Apple's multiplatform, industry-standard, multimedia software architecture that provides tremendous development advantages on Mac OS X. Developers can now take advantage of QTKit—the modernized object-oriented programming interface—to easily create QuickTime-savvy Cocoa-based Mac OS X applications. QuickTime enables you to manipulate, enhance, and store video, sound, animation, graphics, text, music, and even 360-degree virtual reality. And since QuickTime also provides file format converters for more than 250 common image, video, and audio file formats, you can support and convert new file formats within your application quickly and easily.
With standards deep in its core, QuickTime supports most major file formats for images, including BMP, GIF, JPEG, Photoshop, PNG, and TIFF, and many major file formats for video, including .mov, .mp4, 3GPP, 3GPP2, AVI, AVR, DV, Flash, M-JPEG, MPEG-1, and H.263. You can use QuickTime to author professional-quality, ISO-compliant MPEG-4 audio and video files. For web streaming, QuickTime includes support for HTTP as well as RTP (Real-Time Transport Protocol) and RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol).
QuickTime supports 3GPP and 3GPP2 the new worldwide standards for third-generation cellular telephony. As a result, 3G wireless developers and content providers can use QuickTime to author, play back, and deliver 3G-compliant files, extending the reach of rich multimedia to a new generation of handheld wireless devices.
QuickTime features a state-of-the-art video codec—H.264—which delivers outstanding quality at very low data rates. Part of the MPEG-4 standard, this codec delivers next generation video quality across a wide range of use scenarios from HD video to 3G mobile devices.
QuickTime supports AAC Audio, the new standard in professional audio compression. It provides more efficient compression than older formats such as MP3, yet delivers quality rivaling that of uncompressed CD audio. The QuickTime AAC codec builds on state-of-the-art signal processing technology from Dolby Laboratories, and brings true variable bit rate (VBR) encoding to QuickTime.
Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers, and it's available exclusively on Mac OS X. Tuned for use with high-definition source, Pixlet allows digital film frames to play back in real time on any G4 Macintosh (running at 1.0 GHz or faster) or any G5 Macintosh.
Through the QuickTime plug-in, QuickTime's digital video streaming capability is extended to all popular web browsers, including Safari, Firefox, Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer and America Online. The plug-in supports more than thirty different media types and makes it possible to view a great variety of Internet media. QuickTime also features other advanced web streaming capabilities, such as movie "hot spots" and automatic web page launching.
The QuickTime SDKs for Mac OS X and Windows include interfaces, libraries, and tools that help you build and deliver QuickTime-savvy applications and components.
Apple's cutting-edge digital media software provides a fully standards-based environment for creating, playing, and delivering video, audio, and images on both Mac OS X and Windows as well as standards-compliant devices such as 3GP enabled mobile phones. With QuickTime, your programs can deliver the best possible multimedia user experience by providing professional-quality recording and playback.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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automan
blasted chipmunk


Registered: 09/18/03
Posts: 8,272
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Re: Music encoders [Re: Seuss]
#7448514 - 09/24/07 05:53 PM (16 years, 4 months ago) |
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you can play flac as well as ogg and many other formats on an ipod, you just need to change to firmware over to Rockbox
-------------------- No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical. ~ Niels Bohr
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iateshaggy
i haxor 360s



Registered: 05/20/05
Posts: 4,707
Loc: 612 Warf Avenue, next to....
Last seen: 1 month, 9 days
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Re: Music encoders [Re: automan]
#7449215 - 09/24/07 08:45 PM (16 years, 4 months ago) |
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for anyone interested, here is the cream of the crop of cd ripping. this link is actually the guide for setting up the program but it is very thorough. it will point u in the direction of setting lame, flac, ape and ogg and how to properly set them to rip in secure mode and automatically properly tag your rip from online databases. best of all is this shit's free. the ripper is eac.
best way to rip cd's
-------------------- You are a filipina sex goddess who wants to fuck me until I fall asleep, so then you can tickle my balls and see if the legend of my diamond filled nutsuck is true. I am a white man from costa rica, who smells like lime jello.
I can flash/jtag/repair 360's, pm for details.
Edited by iateshaggy (09/26/07 04:25 PM)
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slackophage
Misanthropist



Registered: 11/16/06
Posts: 1,112
Loc: Seattleish
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If space isn't a concern, FLAC is the way to go.
Otherwise, just encode a few songs each at 128/256/320kbps. Listen to the bitrates and figure out what's "good enough".
For me, 256kbps is good enough for desktop speakers, 128kbps is good enough for mp3 players (fits more songs, not quality-wise), and the home stereo gets FLAC, CDs, vinyl, or DVD.
FTR, DVDs are great for home stereos, I just picked up the Pink Floyd: Pulse 2-DVD set and was stoked to see a 640kbps/48-bit audio 5.1 audio track available.
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iateshaggy
i haxor 360s



Registered: 05/20/05
Posts: 4,707
Loc: 612 Warf Avenue, next to....
Last seen: 1 month, 9 days
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correction, flac w/ log is the way to go. the top of them should look something like this.
EAC extraction logfile from 9. July 2007, 0:16 for CD Fuel / Sunburn
Used drive : CD-RW DX-ECDRW100 Adapter: 2 ID: 0 Read mode : Secure with NO C2, accurate stream, disable cache Read offset correction : 6 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Used output format : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\flac.exe (User Defined Encoder) 320 kBit/s Additional command line options : -8 -A tukey(0.25) -A gauss(0.1875) -b 4096 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s --sector-align
Other options : Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
-------------------- You are a filipina sex goddess who wants to fuck me until I fall asleep, so then you can tickle my balls and see if the legend of my diamond filled nutsuck is true. I am a white man from costa rica, who smells like lime jello.
I can flash/jtag/repair 360's, pm for details.
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