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Why 24-bit/192kHz music files make no sense - and may be bad for you!
40hz:
I think I recall reading somewhere that, if you ripped your music from CDs, then it was a rip of sampled music, where the loss from sampling was inaudible/undetectable by the human ear.
That is, the analogue copy is apparently the only copy that could actually contain all the music and thus be the closet approach to the original sound.
-IainB (March 09, 2012, 05:01 PM)
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That is correct. But with MP3s there are different ways to handle what gets lost. Apple uses a variable lossy algorithm which most double-blind studies seem to indicate sound marginally better than those that use fixed lossy approaches. So not all MP3s are equal.
What I should have said was that at least all the music on the source being ripped (as opposed to the real world analog source) was actually there.
Depending on the playback device I'll sometimes deliberately lower the audio quality of a re-encoding to match the playback capabilities of the device itself.
I may be kidding myself, but on lesser fidelity playback devices, having music matched more closely to the actual playback capabilities seems to my ears (or my imagination ;D) to sound clearer and "fuller" than a file whose fidelity broadly exceeds them.
But there's a very good chance I'm fooling myself about that too. ;)
40hz:
@iphigenie - If you do in fact decide you absolutely must re-encode 500 CDs, I can give you the name of an excellent psychologist I know. She specializes in the treatment of OCD.
;D
-40hz (March 09, 2012, 08:55 AM)
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But does she specialize in re-encoding CD's? :D
-TaoPhoenix (March 09, 2012, 05:26 PM)
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That would be a match made in heaven if she does! ;D
iphigenie:
That sort of tedium would be makework akin to sharpening a mountain of pencils. :D
-IainB (March 09, 2012, 05:13 AM)
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(see attachment in previous post)
@iphigenie - If you do in fact decide you absolutely must re-encode 500 CDs, I can give you the name of an excellent psychologist I know. She specializes in the treatment of OCD.
;D
-40hz (March 09, 2012, 08:55 AM)
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LOL
I know a pair of kids who love sharpening pencils and would happily go around and do dozens and dozens, perhaps I can convince them they want to swap CDs every 5 minutes for 3 days... Nah.
THe problem with digital files is that they need to be managed - tagged, arranged, backed up, and, well, played. Else they are just waste of space. I waste far too much time managing my media as it is. (I see the attraction of Spotify -if it had the diversity and had international tunes, not just one market, that is- as you just don't manage anything anymore...)
Re-encoding would be a slow, on the side thing - some kind of have-a-box-of-CDs-around and swap CD now and then while the program encodes.
Another issue here which brings us back to software features: I am not aware that any piece of software allows you to say "re-encode this cd" (i.e. encode this CD and save the files over this CD's older files, keeping the tags). Re-inheriting all the badly tagged crap from CDDB, and re-inheriting the waste-of-space songs I deleted from many, and having 100% duplicates... just not worth it.
xtabber:
A FLAC file is a good as the CD from which it was ripped. No better, no worse. CD data is 16 bit/44.1 kHz (Redbook), so the actual sound is never going to be better than that. That said, the sound you hear from the CD will often sound more natural if it is mastered at higher bit and sample rates, which is why I sometimes buy re-mastered CDs of music I already own.
SACDs definitely have better sound than regular CDs, but you’ll only hear those improvements on a high quality surround sound system. SACD tracks can’t be ripped to a digital format for listening on music players, but since headphones are inherently binaural and have limited dynamic range, a Redbook track from the same master as the SACD track is just as good for that purpose.
I mostly listen to music on an MP3 player these days, but I have thousands of CDs - about 2/3 Classical and 1/3 Jazz - accumulated over more than 30 years, and I’ve probably given away nearly as many over that time. When I buy a new CD, I rip it to FLAC and then convert it to MP3 for listening. Most of the older CDs only get ripped when I want to listen to a specific one. The FLAC files get archived onto DVDs for storage (about 10-12 CDs to a DVD). The MP3 files stay on a hard drive. I keep everything organized by using one folder for each CD or multi-CD set.
I use Easy CD-DA Extractor for both ripping and converting. The final product of my own rips is HQ VBR (EZCDDA uses the latest LAME encoder), but I have MP3s obtained from other sources which can vary from 128kbs to 320kbs. Given the same source, higher bitrates sound better, but in my experience, the quality of the original source is more important than the bitrate. MP3 encoders also vary in quality – LAME has improved greatly over the years, but I have been surprised at how well music encoded some 7 years ago with the Mediasource software bundled with my first Creative player still sounds today. Variable bit rates save space over constant bit rates and don't seem to affect the sound quality on any player I've owned.
The most reliable online CD database today is Musicbrainz, but the quality of data retrieved is still variable. I use Mp3Tag to edit tags. Among other things, it lets me export and import tags to and from text files. I often find it faster to export a lot of tags and edit them in a text editor, then re-import them. That also makes it easy to re-use tags from one rip to another of the same material, or copy them from other versions of the same works (particularly useful for classical music).
IainB:
@xtabber: What you wrote is interesting. Thanks.
I use Mp3Tag to edit tags. Among other things, it lets me export and import tags to and from text files. I often find it faster to export a lot of tags and edit them in a text editor, then re-import them. That also makes it easy to re-use tags from one rip to another of the same material, or copy them from other versions of the same works (particularly useful for classical music).
-xtabber (March 10, 2012, 12:58 PM)
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I use DrTag. I had tried Mp3Tag a few years back, found it wanting and so discarded it, but after what you wrote I am trialling it again. It looks like it may have been considerably improved.
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