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Robo
R Series 66Y
Registered: 05/08/07
Posts: 14,861
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Increasing Quality of mp3 files?
#7864068 - 01/11/08 09:21 AM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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songs that have been copied and pasted,moved from ipod to pc, between computers,etc. are fainter sounding than my newer songs.
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maggotz


Registered: 06/24/06
Posts: 7,539
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: Robo]
#7864373 - 01/11/08 10:42 AM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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if an mp3 is encoded at 128kbps and you re-encode it at 320kbps the quality won't increase. i don't think there's much, if anything, you can do.
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Diploid
Cuban



Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: Robo]
#7864495 - 01/11/08 11:16 AM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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are fainter sounding
Does it sound good if you turn the volume up? If so, there are utilities that will recode the file louder without otherwise affecting it.
But, if turning the volume up sounds louder but still crappy, there's not much you can do to improve it. That shouldn't happen, though, unless you've got some settings in iTunes wrong. You might be outputting to a low bitrate suitable for voice recordings but not music.
Poke around in the settings to see if you can find something labeled "MP3 Bitrate" or "MP3 Quality" or something like that and try outputing the file again.
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
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Robo
R Series 66Y
Registered: 05/08/07
Posts: 14,861
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: Diploid]
#7864513 - 01/11/08 11:19 AM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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I was thinking about messing with the equalizer settings for each individual song but that would take way too long, may be what I have to end up doing though.
I was hoping for a program I just dump all my bad sounding songs into and they pop out the other end better quality or something
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SpiritualSnorkel
Registered: 06/18/06
Posts: 1,545
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: Robo]
#7864787 - 01/11/08 12:22 PM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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It sounds like these songs have been trans-coded from one compressed bit-rate to another.
Did you burn these mp3s onto CD and then later rip them to your PC from the disc? This will result in loss of quality and untrue bit rates.
The only quick fix is reacquiring the music.
Edited by SpiritualSnorkel (05/03/08 07:59 PM)
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero



Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: Robo]
#7865081 - 01/11/08 01:36 PM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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Boils down to one of two things...
1) your playback settings (or software) are screwed up 2) your SOL and will need to reacquire anything that sounds like crap
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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maggotz


Registered: 06/24/06
Posts: 7,539
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: Seuss]
#7865126 - 01/11/08 01:47 PM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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SOL?
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Robo
R Series 66Y
Registered: 05/08/07
Posts: 14,861
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: maggotz]
#7865153 - 01/11/08 01:52 PM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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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: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: maggotz]
#7865156 - 01/11/08 01:53 PM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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maggotz


Registered: 06/24/06
Posts: 7,539
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: Robo]
#7865158 - 01/11/08 01:53 PM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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justin340
Rock Star



Registered: 05/02/07
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Last seen: 12 years, 9 months
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: maggotz]
#7865376 - 01/11/08 02:44 PM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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flac files,
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Diploid
Cuban



Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: maggotz]
#7865469 - 01/11/08 03:08 PM (16 years, 21 days ago) |
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Urban Dictionary is your friend. I have yet to look up an obscure reference there that didn't have a definition:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sol
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
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karma35
Stranger
Registered: 09/07/07
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: Robo]
#7881664 - 01/15/08 03:14 AM (16 years, 17 days ago) |
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It doesn't sound like the original poster is talking about transcoding -- it sounds like he's just copying files from one computer to another. If so, then the difference is entirely imaginary.
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HagbardCeline
Student-Teacher-Student-Teacher



Registered: 05/10/03
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Quote:
SpiritualSnorkel said: It sounds like these songs might have been trans-coded from one compressed bit rate to another.
Did you burn these mp3s onto cd and then later on rip them back to your PC from the disc? This will result in loss of quality and untrue bit rates.
There's no quick fix for this except reacquiring the music over again.
Are you sure about this? I have burned MP3's to cd and the sound was measurably better. I had assumed that ripping them back at a higher bit rate would make even a better sounding MP3.
-------------------- I keep it real because I think it is important that a highly esteemed individual such as myself keep it real lest they experience the dreaded spontaneous non-existance of no longer keeping it real. - Hagbard Celine
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Chazzersize
Pokemon Master



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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: HagbardCeline]
#7887245 - 01/16/08 04:51 AM (16 years, 16 days ago) |
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Think about it. You cannot improve upon what ISNT there.
The mp3 will only be able to de-evolve to a lower bitrate. Not the other way around.
It's like when people ask if they can burn all their shitty bit-rated movies onto dvd and wonder why it looks like dog shit.
-------------------- Take off my mask and leave the lies to the liars.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero



Registered: 04/27/01
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: HagbardCeline]
#7887265 - 01/16/08 05:03 AM (16 years, 16 days ago) |
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> [Are you sure that] there is no quick fix for this except reacquiring the music over again.
Yep, assuming that the mp3s were transcoded.
When you make a copy with an analog system, like old cassette tapes, the analog signal is read from the tape and then recorded to a new tape. During this process, noise will enter the system. Noise will come from the tape heads, some from the electrical components, some from external sources, etc. Each time the recording is re-recorded, more noise is introduced. Eventually, after many copies, the original signal is so weak that one cannot hear it over the noise.
Digital media does not suffer from this problem. When you copy a digital encoding, no noise enters the system. Your copy is identical in every aspect to the original. You can make tens of thousands of copies and not lose any quality at all. You can copy to hard drive, to floppy drive, to optical media, to digital tape, and back to hard drive. The copy of the copy of the copy will still be identical to the original.
However, there is a catch. Digital encodings are massive in size. Digital encodings are so massive, that they become unrealistic to use. To overcome this problem, we use lossy compression. Lossy, as in the encoding engine (intentionally) loses information that can never be recovered during the compression. Done correctly, the human ear/eye/brain cannot detect the lost information, but the file can be over 100 times smaller than the original. MPEG, AC3, and JPEG are all forms of lossy compression. (FLAC is a non-lossy audio compression format, for those that care about quality.)
So, what does all of this mean? It means that in the digital world, lowering in quality occurs only at encoding, and never at copy. As long as you are making a bit for bit identical copy, you will not lose any quality compared to the original. However, each time you re-encode using a lossy encoder (such as mp3, ac3, aac, etc), you will lose quality. The more times you re-encode, the worse the quality will become.
Finally, there is no (realistic) way to improve the quality of a lossy compressed file by re-encoding it. You can only make it worse, not better. If you try to re-encode a 128k stream to 384k, you will make things worse, not better. I cannot stress this fact enough; re-encoding (from a lossy format to another lossy format) will always be worse than the original. Once the quality is lost, your only real recourse is to re-encode from the original source.
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HagbardCeline
Student-Teacher-Student-Teacher



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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: Seuss]
#7887983 - 01/16/08 11:59 AM (16 years, 16 days ago) |
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I understand what you're saying about information being lost. What has confused me is it that I can rip mp3's to a CD and they sound way better. I just did search and people are even saying that this will result in lower quality. I'm quite certain that it helped significantly. My car stereo has the ability to play mp3 from a CD. The sound is what I would describe as hollow, not full, and there is typically heavy distortion at the volume I listen to them at, especially on bass. Simply burning these exact same mp3's to a CD in it's native format (I believe that's a .wav, correct?) corrects these problems.
Of course, it takes much more space. Where I may have had 50 songs (I don't remember exactly how many) I might now have 12, so obviously the file is much bigger. I had assumed that because the music was now being resampled at it's original bit rate, that was why it sounded better. I knew perfectly well it had lost information and wasn't as good as original, but it sounded a lot closer than the mp3 it was made from.
Now I had also assumed that taking this wav file and re-encoding it as a higher bit rate mp3 would even help the mp3 but had never tried it. It makes perfect sense to me what you're saying about not being able to recreate information that isn't there. Are you also saying that my ears are deceiving me about the burned CD's? No one here that I seen has directly answered this, but on my search earlier I saw numerous postings saying that doing so would also not help.
-------------------- I keep it real because I think it is important that a highly esteemed individual such as myself keep it real lest they experience the dreaded spontaneous non-existance of no longer keeping it real. - Hagbard Celine
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Diploid
Cuban



Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: HagbardCeline]
#7888207 - 01/16/08 01:12 PM (16 years, 16 days ago) |
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Your CD player may have better DA converters than your MP3 player. Enough so that it makes up for the entropy introduced by the re-coding process.
You can't make a photocopy of a photocopy and end up with something better than the original because errors accumulate as they propagate through each copy.
In this case, you're looking at the original without wearing your glasses, then looking at the copy with your glasses on. The copy is lower quality, but your glasses compensate enough to make it look better than the naked eye original.
That's the only explanation I can think of. Entropy is a bitch.
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
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iateshaggy
i haxor 360s



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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: Diploid]
#7888268 - 01/16/08 01:29 PM (16 years, 16 days ago) |
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if yall want to get some good quality mp3's i suggest this guide. http://www2.firehose.us:81/~jiggafellz/eac/index.html jiGGafellz' Step-by-Step Guide to Secure CD Ripping w/Exact Audio Copy
as far as going mp3->wave->mp3, yes that will result in worse and worse sounding mp3's. u can use the spectral analysis tool in adobe audition to check if a mp3 was transcoded. u just have to compare spectrals to other spectrals of the same bitrate and encoder setting w/ similar music.
-------------------- 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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HagbardCeline
Student-Teacher-Student-Teacher



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Re: Increasing Quality of mp3 files? [Re: Diploid]
#7889840 - 01/16/08 07:27 PM (16 years, 16 days ago) |
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What I was explaining above was using the same CD player. It plays mp3 format from a CD (as a data disc). Just taking those exact mp3 and burning them to another CD as .wav files sounds significantly better.
Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that you had understood I was using a different source (and therefore DA converters) for the different formats.
Ok, I'm going to try and find some blank CDs (not sure I have any) and do this again with some new songs I've just downloaded and have my girlfriend be the judge. I won't tell her anything, just ask her to say which sounds better.
-------------------- I keep it real because I think it is important that a highly esteemed individual such as myself keep it real lest they experience the dreaded spontaneous non-existance of no longer keeping it real. - Hagbard Celine
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