MP3: What is the Official Deal??

[Paul McGowan]

I'd love to hear some experienced audiophiles' opinion of MP3's feasability as a real music format. Thoughts?




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[ThomasW]

MP3 has variable levels of compression. But even with the lowest amount of compression, the sound quality is marginal IMO.

For "Walkman" or "Rio" type devices and "pop" music the quality maybe tolerable for the younger generation.

But if you take a MP3 file, convert it to a wave file, burn it on a CD-R, then A/B it with a "standard" CD. The loss of sound quality is obvious.

So for serious audio, the answer is just say no to MP3

That being said, if the ONLY source for the music you want is via a MP3 file, then it's certainly better than nothing




theAudioWorx
Klone-Audio

[JonMarsh]

There are several different codecs for MP3. The "best" ones allow encoding rates (and sound quality) that are roughly comparable to Sony ATRAC (Mini Disc). Now, for appliations in noisy environment, with average playback gear (car stereo's, walkman/discman headphones, etc), that's probably just fine. However, that higher data rate does seriously reduce the playback time availalbe for the smaller flash memory portables. For CDR MP3, the difference wouldn't be as serious.
Me, I'm wondering where my SACD walkman is coming from, not my next MP3 player. Unfortunately, there is no implementation of SACD playback for PC's, and my guess is that it could be 3 - 5 years before we see such a thing, unless Sony kicks it into a higher gear than they have so far. A high res bit format, to achieve more than "marketing bits" (which is all most DVD players have, for instance, when toutint 96 kHz, 24 bit playback, for a variety of reasons), requires a very quiet, well regulated electrical environment. That doesn't exist inside your PC. And that's why Sony SACD players are pretty hulking brutes- takes a lot of independently regulated power supplies to do it right.

Regards,

Jon

[Paul McGowan]

That's very much what I thought and I have been trying to convince some "computer geek" friends of mine to realize this.

Also... since you say the BEST MP3 is roughly equivalent to ATRAC in MD.... does that go for MD too that it's not viable for serious listening?




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[JonMarsh]

That's very much my opinion on that, Paul. Atrac and MP3, as well as the Philips DCC, (also Dolby Digital and DTS) are all "lossy" compression systems that use algorithms based theories of psychoacoustics on masking- that is, what things we supposedly can't hear when in the presence of other, louder signals. So, to keep the bit rate manageable, a fair amount of acoustic signal is literally "thrown away". With a mid fi or lower system, and especially in a noisy environment, that's not really much of a problem. However. for serious listening, it's serious problems. Obviously, there are levels of perception, and levels of resolving power with systems. You can even make a fairly wide band system, that if it has enough internal resonances (enclosure wall, cone breakup, dome breakup, crossover coloration due to non-linear components, etc.), that although many inexperienced listeners may initially say it sounds pretty fair, it will be fatiguing in the long run, and may not have the resolving power to highlight the difference between clean CD playback, and a format such as MP3 or MD. Let's face it, we all have different goals and priorities, and different levels of interest. For a lot of my friends at work, I'm a true lunatic, and a good MD system might meet their needs perfrectly.
But, assuming your tastes are likely to refine and get more demanding as you gain experience as a listener and music lover, lossy formats aren't a good bet, except for environments where the convenience is the prime consideration. Note that there are recording formats, such as MLC for DVD-A (Meridian Lossless Compression) which DON'T throw away data, but merely use compression techniques akin to ZIPing a file to save space. ATRAC, DCC, and MP3 use techniques that are more like JPG file compression at compression levels above 50%; you do lose information.

Regards,

Jon




Earth First!
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We'll screw up the other planets later....

[ThomasW]

does that go for MD too that it's not viable for serious listening?

I think I can safely speak for both Jon and myself by saying that MD is a good format for car and MD "Discman" use.

For "serious" music no, there's too much compression of the signal. The current ATRAC version is significantly better than the older ones. But...

Again if you were to "record" a CD to MD and do a A/B playback comparison you'll hear significant differences with a good sound system




theAudioWorx
Klone-Audio

[Digital Bob]

I have a slightly different take on the MD/MP3 comparison. While I certainly agree that MD is not as "high fidelity" as CD, I do think it sounds better than MP3. In my experience, even the highest bit rates and best codecs for MP3 fall short of newest versions of ATRAC. On a system with decent resolution you can distinguish the differences bwetween them.

Clearly ATRAC is a lossy compression format that cannot compete with uncompressed signals. But it does outperform MP3 by (IMO) a fair margin. I had the pleasure(?) of sitting through a technical presentation on the newest ATRAC a while back and it was pretty amazing. Every once in a while Sony gets thing right. Inventing MD was one such instance. However, the way they marketed it in the US versus Asia and Europe is a whole different story...

Want the best audio qualtity? Go with CD.
Want a great sounding, reliable, lightweight, convenient, swappable media, skip proof, portable format? Stop looking, go with MD.
Want "free" music off the web? Live with quality and convenience trade off and go with MP3.

Want the ULTIMATE solution [and an end to this post ]??? Use MP3 to scout out new music you might not otherwise risk buying on chance. If you like it, buy the CD for home and car playback. And record/edit it on a blank MD to take it with you. Ahhh, audio heaven.




dB

[ThomasW]

Bob

Don't misunderstand I wasn't saying MD was inferior to MP3. We agree that MP3 is the poorest of the "systems" being discussed here




theAudioWorx
Klone-Audio

[Digital Bob]

Thomas,

Nah, I didn't think you were saying that. I just thought there was some room in the "roughly equivalent" sentimnet that should be explored. Sounds like we agree that MD is "the best of the worst" when it comes to sound quality. 8)




dB

[KennyG]

You guys couldn't have said it better!