I'd like to know what CD player you're using for comparison.

I'm sure it sounds okay, but MP3 can't touch CD in a fair fight.

It's impossible unless the CD player is utter crap. MP3s still are lossy even at a high rate. Check out lossless compressions rates- try 800-1100kbs! 320 is not going to compare.

I'm with Erik. The only way this is possible is if the CD player is really bad, or there is some coloration introduced by the encoding process that you like. What would happen if you encoded something in a lossless format such as apple lossless, flac, wave, aiff? Have you tried that? Playing something off a hard drive could reduce jitter for a slight improvement, but this couldn't overcome the MASSIVE lose in sound quality caused by turning it into an 320 mp3 .

JA Liked it!

RG

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JA Liked it!

RG

Yeah! I guess it WOULD sound OK played through a near $100k system! That's a lot of effort to make that file sound CD quality.

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JA Liked it!

RG

Yeah! I guess it WOULD sound OK played through a near $100k system! That's a lot of effort to make that file sound CD quality.

Yep, cut the price of the system in half with equipment from the same manufacturers and play a real CD. There is a really good chance that the 1/2 priced system wins out. As Ivor's Linn LP12 demonstrated many years ago, the source is the most important thing in the world. Damage done to the signal AT the source CANNOT be corrected AFTER in components downstream FROM the source!

MP3 files are for those more interested in QUANTITY rather than QUALITY. I'll take a really great Steak over a case of Sliders from White Castle any day.

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Yes true

Off course if you use a wave on a sub hard disk with a quality external dac you get more than any cd player
This means that a cd player looses more info than a mp3 when it read in real time the music

Not really. I have a high quality DAC and my CD player sounds much better still. And I use loss-less compression too. There are other issues with hard drive playback that can degrade- USB is not a good transfer as it introduces a lot of jitter etc. We recently did a lot of A/B comparisons with a friend's system, and basically, loss-less is the only way to go for one, and then many other factors affect how the DAC works. Plus each DAC is different too. The main thing is, MP3s throw out musical information. Period. Can't get back what's gone.

I have no beef with digital playback or computer based playback, but MP3s are a dead issue as far as high quality sound. That being said, they all still take a back seat to my turntable!

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That being said, they all still take a back seat to my turntable!

Ditto, as soon as my Black Pearl arrives! (could be today)

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Yep, cut the price of the system in half with equipment from the same manufacturers and play a real CD. There is a really good chance that the 1/2 priced system wins out. As Ivor's Linn LP12 demonstrated many years ago, the source is the most important thing in the world. Damage done to the signal AT the source CANNOT be corrected AFTER in components downstream FROM the source!

Seems to me by your example, and similar statements by others, IF this damage was so atrocious it would/should easily be detected on a 100K plus system, particularly by the ah

My experience is that a well transcoded MP3 at 320Kb can indeed sound quite good given the right music. However, on other music the MP3 format really reveals its weaknesses, even at 320Kb.

I assume that for the demo the best possible sounding MP3s were chosen. I bet they did indeed sound good standing alone.

Yet, the original CD of each of these recordings would sound even better. I bet Mr. Atkinson would have been able to pick the lossless from the lossy if given the chance.

Certainly 320 MP3s sound OK especially at background levels while having a conversation but it doesn't stand up to critical listening on even a mid-fi system. At least not to my ears. Storage is so cheap these days I'm not sure why this is even a discussion anymore.

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Storage is so cheap these days I'm not sure why this is even a discussion anymore.

Storage is still limited on many portable players. That and most P2P music stealing is of MP3s; people are not ripping CDs to lossless to share on-line.

While storage on portables can be limiting it's easy enough to move things onto and off of portables to give variety. As for the quality of downloads I wish the major on-line services, such as iTunes would embrace lossless. As for illegal downloads I could care less what goes on there, quality wise.

No argument here. However, it's just easy to understand the proliferation and popularity of MP3's.

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When MP3(320kb/s) give you colors alterations is due at use it on a cd/dvd player or with a low quality dac or off course low quality record.

Incorrect. A 320kbs MP3 is missing the data which would allow it to sound as good as a CD of the same recording.

Of course, a bad DAC will make an MP3 sound even worse.

Especially using optical. Optical sucks.

At least cheaply implemented optical.

As well-designed optical works wonders in telecommunications and other high--band width applications I have always wondered how optical would do if better implemented in audio equipment.

Elk-

There was another optical digital interface that's not seen much today called ST-type optical. It it was developed by AT&T for the telecommunications industry and used glass instead of plastic in most cables. That was supposed to be much better than toslink, some even felt it better than coaxial. Toslink's bandwidth is about 6MHz, whereas ST-type is between 50MHz and 150 MHz. Completely off topic but I thought you might find it interesting.

I remember these. For example, the Genesis Digital Lens had both an ST-Type input and output.

Are not these still used in telecommunications and at least some data networks?

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And I'm telling you that if an MP3 is not enthusiasming you there are only 2 reasons,one or both:

-A bad recording
-A not enough good DAC

And... one last reason: it's been degraded BECAUSE it's an MP3! It never was made for high fidelity sound reproduction- it's the lossy audio portion of MPEG video and DVDs. With Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs they are doing away with MP3 audio and moving back to lossless or uncompressed sound streams. The best DAC around can't get data where there is none. An MP3, even at 320kbs is serving up FAR less data than a CD or lossless file. That was the whole point really- make it small for dial up modems and slow Internet speeds (among other things).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3

Or, you know, the fact that it's MISSING musical information.

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MP3
MP3 is NOT suitable for highest soundreproduction and highend applications. Even at lowest compression rates where just 10% of storing space (compared to the original WAV file) is saved, results in smaller sound stages with less depth. Here are room- and transientinformations left out during compression/reduction losses.

I wonder if you'll find this interesting, soundberry. I found it on the same AQVOX page you cited in another thread.

This seems like a ridiculous comparison to me. Sort of like comparing the cake to the oven it was baked in.

The real question is whether an mp3 can/does sound identical to a wav file. In ONLY one case an mp3 is identical to a wav file: silence. They are identical because nothing more can be removed via the mp3 compression algorithm. In EVERY other case the mp3 file will lack the necessary information to fully reproduce the original wav.

If you can