Question about Music Ripping - Quality

s_k · 12-29-2010, 06:34 AM

Can I just mention that there's indeed a lot of people who can't hear the difference between a 192kbps mp3 (and up) and an uncompressed file.
But there certainly are people who can hear the difference. I know well... Lots of them. Most of my friends can, actually, hear the difference.
I keep reading everywhere (not just on the internet, also in magazines and on tv) that ripping higher than 192kbps is non-sense because 'you won't be able to hear the difference anyway'. Drives me mad. I know there's a lot of people who don't care about sound quality, but the only way to develop your ears to hear the difference, is by upgrading your equpiment bit by bit (you can't do it in one go, unfortunately

). And since you have to start by the source, I hate reading that 192kbps is sufficient.
Eitherway, I use MP3, nog flac. Space issue. But when I want to enjoy music, I just play a record. Works for me

Guybrush · 12-30-2010, 03:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by s_k

Can I just mention that there's indeed a lot of people who can't hear the difference between a 192kbps mp3 (and up) and an uncompressed file.
But there certainly are people who can hear the difference. I know well... Lots of them. Most of my friends can, actually, hear the difference.
I keep reading everywhere (not just on the internet, also in magazines and on tv) that ripping higher than 192kbps is non-sense because 'you won't be able to hear the difference anyway'. Drives me mad. I know there's a lot of people who don't care about sound quality, but the only way to develop your ears to hear the difference, is by upgrading your equpiment bit by bit (you can't do it in one go, unfortunately

). And since you have to start by the source, I hate reading that 192kbps is sufficient.
Eitherway, I use MP3, nog flac. Space issue. But when I want to enjoy music, I just play a record. Works for me

I'm with Noise on this one. Worth mentioning also is that you should not just be able to tell a difference when you test yourself. You should also be able to correctly identify the higher quality clip from the lower quality one. People are not good at this, but they like to believe they are.

I had a thread for testing this. I was very scientific about it and was hoping to get a lot of people doing it, but I think in the end less than 10 actually did the test and answered my little questionnaire. I asked people to rank some sound clips by quality (from 128 to 320) and I believe a lot of people started, but then noticed they could not separate them and so didn't bother with the ranking in the thread.

From those who did answer, though too few for serious analysis, there was little indication that people can confidently tell the difference from ~160+ kbps and up. There are lots of other tests out there that tell exactly the same story, but people just don't like to hear it, I suspect because they like the idea that they have better hearing than the rest of mankind.

You have to test yourself with a blind test when you do this. Just try it! I can tell 128 kbps apart from higher qualities, but a bit higher BRs and I can't anymore. I don't mind admitting it

12-29-2010, 06:34 AM	#1 (permalink)
s_k Music Addict Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Netherlands Posts: 2,206	Can I just mention that there's indeed a lot of people who can't hear the difference between a 192kbps mp3 (and up) and an uncompressed file. But there certainly are people who can hear the difference. I know well... Lots of them. Most of my friends can, actually, hear the difference. I keep reading everywhere (not just on the internet, also in magazines and on tv) that ripping higher than 192kbps is non-sense because 'you won't be able to hear the difference anyway'. Drives me mad. I know there's a lot of people who don't care about sound quality, but the only way to develop your ears to hear the difference, is by upgrading your equpiment bit by bit (you can't do it in one go, unfortunately ). And since you have to start by the source, I hate reading that 192kbps is sufficient. Eitherway, I use MP3, nog flac. Space issue. But when I want to enjoy music, I just play a record. Works for me __________________ Have some music recommendations!