Written by Jason W. on 18.05.2007 at 08:22

I've been using WinAmp version 2.76 since it was released - and have never touched another media player. It occasionally has crashed due to Windows XP incompatibilities, but 99.9% of the time, it is flawless, sounds great on my 24-bit soundcard, and uses minimal memory. I refuse to use iTunes/WMP, as I find them terrible in terms of layout.

I use winamp 2 for listening music, also I had media player( I use it how burer, burn CD(norma CD not mp3) and watch videos, but I also had real player for soem radio and vibrationsofdoom and Im happy and satiefield whit those players and I dont need any other because those are good enought for me

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 18.05.2007 at 09:52

Written by Jason W. on 18.05.2007 at 08:22


via headphones at least once.

What is that

> 192Kbps of course....only the best quallity is good enough!

hahaha I think its quite a unanimous decision that Windows Media Player 11 is such a bad piece of software!

weeeeeell.. I have an album on order that should be here some time next week, and I am going to experiment with it! It's a busy death metal album so I am going to rip it at 128Kbps and 192Kbps and maybe even 320Kbps and see if I can tell a difference between them and decide once and for all which bitrate I am going to rip everything at.. (its just that my whole library is at 128Kbps and I really cant be doing with ripping 800 CDs again just at a little higher bitrate.. hahaha.. so I hope I cant tell a big difference)

Written by Baz Anderson on 18.05.2007 at 16:16

hahaha.. so I hope I cant tell a big difference)

Just put some wax in your ears. You wont hear anything.

And yes, Windows Media Player sucks. I'm open for all (please not too heavy) other software.

Why WMP sucks imO ist good player for burning CD(not MP3) I try onbce whit winamp and itwas 40min and real player i didnty change formats and i burn cD who didnt work (I was newby in PC world ) so I choose Media

Written by wrathchild on 18.05.2007 at 11:54

MP3 is free for you, not for WinAmp. OGG is free for everybody
That's why you find nothing pre-installed to play MP3s with many Linux distributions, as if they were providing an MP3 player, they'd have to pay something to Thomson and the other patent holders.
See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_codecs

Thanks for the info I actually had assumed by now the patents would have expired for MP3, but it seems there are a few years to go on them? Eventually they must expire as all patents do at some point. It's a difficult decision to choose then, which would be better, because OGG seems better in principle, but in practice MP3 would seem so. As an end user, in practice, I really don't care who is paying who, as long as I am paying nothing. But in the larger scope of things, it would be great to know that we are all treating each other equally and willing to share technological advances like codecs for free.

For me though, what matters most is how I use it, so MP3 still makes most sense for me: everyone's familiar with it, all players can play it, it's free for me, and at 192+ bitrates, the quality level difference to OGG is negligible to these ears. Even if I transfered all files to OGG to support a free codec like OGG out of principle, it would require me to constantly convert back to MP3 each time I give music to friends - something I'm in no desire to do weekly (or daily sometimes). I would love to see a free sharing system for all technology - Linux makes sense in principle the same way OGG does - but in practice for someone uninterested in getting around the practical differences, using MP3 the way I've been using it makes the most sense, I think...

And with the way that corporations move in and take over formats or technologies, I'd say we're moving further from free and closer to "pay" (considering how much Apple's share has increased with its proprietary devices and formats).

I have a little laptop with 55 Go on my hard disc. Now I have 800 Mo space left .
I'm not really fussy about sound quality, I can hear a difference between 128 and 192 but I don't mind having 128. Most of the time I do rip cd's at 192. But I recently deleted every ripped cd, so as to get more space for new albums.
I cannot have all my cd's on my pc, the whole music I have here takes about... 23 Go, and it's already much because I have to share this laptop with my brother.

i typically rip at 256k, but i try to make 160 my absolute minimum, like if i'm getting songs from other people. i have good speakers, and even on not-so-good ones, i can hear the difference.

- Yes, wmp DO sucks
- Winamp is the best, its "rock" preset in the eq is unmatchable
- 128kbps is enough, a bigger file is harder to recover, more fragmented in disk, uses more memory space, more processor time, and more resources over all
- I don't hear the difference
- Look at the sample rate in Audio CDs: 44KHz, in a 128kbps mp3/ogg: 44KHz
- I even re-rip my downloaded mp3 to 128 kbps
- The more GB you lost due to a failure, the more tears you cry

well I finally got that death metal album through the post and I did what I said I was going to.. I ripped one track at 128, 192 and 320kbps and played one part (with symbols) over and over and with the different bitrates..

I could maybe tell a TIIIIINY difference between 128kbps and 320kpbs.. but nothing major at all..
it wasnt louder, it wasn't any better.. so I am glad I have kept to 128kbps

Written by selken on 08.06.2007 at 06:54

- Look at the sample rate in Audio CDs: 44KHz, in a 128kbps mp3/ogg: 44KHz

That's not a valid argument. The sample rate is not comparable since the first is cd audio and the other is a lossy format. I'm not the right guy to explain that so google it if you're interested.

I don't know at all...I don't know what the difference is nor even how to set it....
Besides....why should I copy music from CDs to my computer if I only have two hard drives, both with the capacity of approximately 5GB(actually less)....I don't have any room on my computer for music...another thing....Barry is speaking of thousands of CDs....I can't speak of it...because I haven't bought nor ordered a CD for ages....last one was year ago probably....and I may boldly say that I possess less than 20 original metal CDs....less than 20....may be even less than 10....CDs cost money you know.....so here's a sad thing too....I know lots of bands....but I've listened to only a tiny part of them.....

Written by Baz Anderson on 08.06.2007 at 18:20

well I finally got that death metal album through the post and I did what I said I was going to.. I ripped one track at 128, 192 and 320kbps and played one part (with symbols) over and over and with the different bitrates..

I could maybe tell a TIIIIINY difference between 128kbps and 320kpbs.. but nothing major at all..
it wasnt louder, it wasn't any better.. so I am glad I have kept to 128kbps

it's not really a loudness thing. but the high frequencies sound really odd and kind of sound messy...you lose definition and everything just sounds kind of noisy and grainy. try ripping something at a really low bitrate, like 56k, and then compare that to something higher....it's that same type of difference. just as you get into the higher bitrates, it diminishes so that you're less likely to notice the difference if your ears aren't as picky/good. 320kbps is almost indistinguishable from .wav files (uncompressed, basically the best it can be) in terms of quality, but the files are much larger than, say, 128k.

haha yes - I used to have a thing on my old computer that could only rip at 56kbps - and that was awful, really bad..
so I knew kind of what differences I was supposed to be listening out for.. but I just didn't hear any..
maybe my ears are so bad - maybe I have been to too many shows without ear-plugs.. but I thought my ears were fine..

I use Windows Media Player.

Written by KryptoN on 08.06.2007 at 19:34

Written by selken on 08.06.2007 at 06:54

- Look at the sample rate in Audio CDs: 44KHz, in a 128kbps mp3/ogg: 44KHz

That's not a valid argument. The sample rate is not comparable since the first is cd audio and the other is a lossy format. I'm not the right guy to explain that so google it if you're interested.

You're right, a CD audio holds infra/ultra sounds that aren't audible by an average human ear, mp3/ogg ripping is actually a loosy form of coding, however, most of the looses are these infra/ultra sounds, but sometimes some high-pitched instruments experiment slight changes in sound, you can look at wikipedia for more info...

Manowar 320kbps other bands 192 lol =D

nah just playing, but I normally rip them at like >192 so it will have higher quality, cant stand audio at 128, it sound so crappy lol

Usually 192Kbps. It's the perfect quality, it sounds well on my MP3 player and on my pC, and doesn't take a lot of space. 128 sounds horrible, IMO.

I'll usually encode at 128Kbps although some of the softer music I have I tend to encode at higher bitrates, 256Kbps onwards. Telling the difference between the varying bitrates rarely affects the sound quality as long as you have high quality encoding software.

With Metal and Rock I can rarely tell the difference between 128 and 192. Anyway, all that codecs do to compress the files from CD to mp3 is they choose which frequencies to keep and which to discard. In the compression process, while a lot of the CD's data is lost, the main information is still there. Now, as a lot of this data is subliminal to the human ear, the compression process removes most of that data. To save more space after that, the codec must remove some more sounds. So an average codec would remove sounds that aren't very audible while in the presence of other sounds. On the other hand, a decent codec will only discard frequencies that can't be noticed even on the original CD. Therefore you're better off getting a good codec to encode CD's and hence save yourself space on your PC rather than encode at high bitrates.

128Kbps is usually acceptable for me. You can't really tell the difference between 128 and 192 as the extra information that is added in 192 is significantly smaller than for example, the difference in information between 56 and 128. Basically what I'm trying to say is that the higher the bitrate goes, that harder it is to notice the difference in sound quality.

Now of course, highest bitrates will sound the best when compared to their original but it'll usually be pretty hard to tell the difference anyway. It just really depends on each individual as our age and various other aspects will affect the sound quality that we hear.

Written by Eternal Flames on 09.07.2007 at 04:04

Anyway, all that codecs do to compress the files from CD to mp3 is they choose which frequencies to keep and which to discard. In the compression process, while a lot of the CD's data is lost, the main information is still there. Now, as a lot of this data is subliminal to the human ear, the compression process removes most of that data. To save more space after that, the codec must remove some more sounds. So an average codec would remove sounds that aren't very audible while in the presence of other sounds.

Right, but the compression process doesn't have human ears. The fact of the mechanical character of the process means there are bound to be "mistakes." The process cuts out bits that it thinks are not noticable according to the programming.

Quote:

On the other hand, a decent codec will only discard frequencies that can't be noticed even on the original CD. Therefore you're better off getting a good codec to encode CD's and hence save yourself space on your PC rather than encode at high bitrates.

While the final quality is indeed dependent also on the codec's quality, none of the technology is flawless. It's just simply not possible with the current publicly available technology to squeeze out a 128/192 kbps copy of a record without some or a lot of differences that can be heard (I say this with the consideration for all music, not just metal or rock). You've got some good points though that apply to some people, but they cannot be generalized.

(the following is not a direct reply to anyone)

For the most part rock/metal is quite monotonic with a strong concentration in the middle of the spectrum and thus the compression is "easier" to execute with minimal loss for the codec. This is what makes it sound considerably good even at low bitrates. I guess we, the fans of metal, are kind of lucky for that.

Classical music on the other hand is usually a lot more dynamic when we look at the full audio spectrum, there's not much the compression can cut out safely. Ever listened to a 128 kbps classical piece? Well I have and it sounded horrible.

I'm not an expert in these matters but as I see it there are a few aspects that I think matter here:

Physical differences: People have physical differences in inner and outer ears resulting in hearing things differently. Ever tried changing the posture of your ears while you are listening to music? Try it. The volume or pitch of some frequencies you hear change when you do that because of the different way the sound waves hit your ears. And then there are the possible differences in inner ears and the hearing centre of the brain.

Hardware and environment(and possible software): The quality of the speakers and the player obviously have a huge effect on the quality. Low quality player or speakers can distort or otherwise simplify or destroy some bits of the sound. The environment where the listening happens has an effect too, the acoustics, background noises (traffic ambience for example) etc.

Training/concentration: Some people have a trained ear for hearing what they want in the middle of the blur of instruments. Think of a guitar player who tries to learn a song by ear listening to the guitar melody from under the noise and harmony of other instruments. This kind of concentration can reveal all sorts of artifacts caused by lowering of the bitrate, while a "casual" listening experience leaves them unnoticed.

Psychological: Placebo effects and the like. And this component can of course be beaten with blind tests.

I guess I'm saying that the best quality is dependent on the person, but that should be obvious already. I don't know if I should consider myself lucky or unlucky for the ability to hear the differences in lower quality pieces. These differences are indeed harder to spot for me in most rock and metal. But when I listen to ambient, classical or trance for example the differences become quite easy to spot.

If anyone has any corrections or more knowledge/experiences/comments/additions to these four points, please go on and share them. I'm quite interested.

@KryptoN - I'm aware that the technology in question is not flawless, although my main point was that it would be very hard for one to tell the difference between a 128Kbps and a 192Kbps because the difference in data loss would be quite small. CD's have a lot of "useless" data on them. Things beyond the human threshold of hearing (20Hz - 20,000Hz) are discarded during the encoding process so while technology might not be perfect I'm sure that not too much 'important' data would be lost. Anything below 128Kbps though, would probably begin to decline in quality quite significantly.

What also had me puzzled is the amount of people that said 192 sounds way better than 128. In my opinion, it's too close to judge. Fair enough if it was 320Kbps, but 192 (depending on the codec used) would be very similar to 128. Maybe it's just my hearing though.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, softer music (eg. classical) I usually encode at higher bitrates, sometimes even lossless. As you mentioned also, classical pieces sound horrible in 128Kbps, although metal and rock fortunately hasn't got such a noticeable loss of quality as classical music does. As for the factors you've mentioned, you've made good points. As I mentioned age would definitely be another huge factor. Attentiveness is also another factor.

As for telling the difference between bitrate, I showed a friend a song encoded at 2 different bitrates (I think it was 128 and 256) and told her which was which. Immediately she said that she could tell the difference and that the 256 sound clearer. Then after showing her another song in two different bitrates and not telling her which was which, she thought the 128Kbps was the 256Kbps, which I guess proves your point about the placebo effect.

Overall, I've personally found that it depends on the particular song. I've found some songs to sound perfectly fine in 128Kbps and others that just sound horrible. Each to their own though.

Yeah I know about the data outside the threshold but I was mainly talking about what the compression does after that has been taken care of.

Well the differences between 128 and 192 can be big or close to none. As you said it depends on the song in question. It also depends on how one listens to music and all the points mentioned, they all have an effect and they all change depending on the song. The speaker system might work better for classical than trance. One song might make you listen to the guitar more closely while another one drums. And so on... It's an extremely complex issue when you think about it.

As for metal/rock, I've found that for me Rotten Sound (chaotic but very well produced soundscape) and Waltari (extremely dynamic) are the bands that I can hear the differences of 128 and 192 most clearly. With softer/more dynamic stuff the difference is almost always noticeable with the exception of some songs.

Also, it is possible that the 128 actually sounded better to your friend than the 256 one, which is another point to consider. It's not always 100% about the actual numbers and the hard quality of the sound. Kind of hard to explain... worse quality but sounds better to the ear?

I've done some blind tests too and with metal and rock the success percent is not as high as with other stuff. The bass side usually unveils the low quality though. The bass gets really muffled with 128 and quite often with 192 too, especially in metal. In some cases this might be a codec issue though, some codecs perform the bass compression with better accuracy. The codec I used was among the top quality ones in many tests (if not the top one) when I did that test. But I usually encoded my music in VBR standard or higher VBR setting anyway, I don't really encode to mp3 anymore though. The HD space hasn't been an issue for me for a long time.

We need to remember that it's human ear we are talking about here, so anything above 192k would be useless, in fact 128 is good enough if you use the best encoders, the thing why people encode in more than 192 is that disk space is no longer a problem today,so why risk losing some quality.

Written by KryptoN on 09.07.2007 at 09:11

Yeah I know about the data outside the threshold but I was mainly talking about what the compression does after that has been taken care of.

Well the differences between 128 and 192 can be big or close to none. As you said it depends on the song in question. It also depends on how one listens to music and all the points mentioned, they all have an effect and they all change depending on the song. The speaker system might work better for classical than trance. One song might make you listen to the guitar more closely while another one drums. And so on... It's an extremely complex issue when you think about it.

As for metal/rock, I've found that for me Rotten Sound (chaotic but very well produced soundscape) and Waltari (extremely dynamic) are the bands that I can hear the differences of 128 and 192 most clearly. With softer/more dynamic stuff the difference is almost always noticeable with the exception of some songs.

Also, it is possible that the 128 actually sounded better to your friend than the 256 one, which is another point to consider. It's not always 100% about the actual numbers and the hard quality of the sound. Kind of hard to explain... worse quality but sounds better to the ear?

I've done some blind tests too and with metal and rock the success percent is not as high as with other stuff. The bass side usually unveils the low quality though. The bass gets really muffled with 128 and quite often with 192 too, especially in metal. In some cases this might be a codec issue though, some codecs perform the bass compression with better accuracy. The codec I used was among the top quality ones in many tests (if not the top one) when I did that test. But I usually encoded my music in VBR standard or higher VBR setting anyway, I don't really encode to mp3 anymore though. The HD space hasn't been an issue for me for a long time.

I think we can safely then agree that it depends on each individual. As you said, it's what sounds better to each person's ear. While some are only satisfied with 320Kbps or lossless others find that 256Kbps sounds best to them. And also, it depends on what song/music you're ripping.

@Black Winter - You have made an interesting and valid point. For a lot of people, disk space is not an issue as a lot of computers come with a 100GB+ hard disk nowadays, although most people who do encode CD's at higher bitrates rarely mention that point.

"it's what sounds better to each person's ear"

I would also propose the idea that it isn't necessarily a persons ear, even when they think it is..
I think people that are picky with sound quality, that know a song has a lower bitrate - will convince themselves they are hearing some lower quality of sound even when any difference may not actually be audible at all
..what I am saying is there is more going on in the mind here then people realise. if you see a song with a lower bitrate then you will convince yourself you are hearing something of lower quality, even if it is impossible for you to tell

Much of this topic depends on the player used. If you are using a mp3 player with headphones or computer speakers 128 is good 192 is better. they are both adequate. It is just obvious though that the higher the bit rate the better the quality. As stated above the codec used is also important. Ive used winamp since its beggining but all the tests in the past have said wma are better quality. I just hate microsoft software.

If you are lsitening on a full stereo nothing beats the original cd or copy. The dynamics are not comparable.

Try this ....... listen to a song from a cd then a song that has been converted and you will hear the audible difference. I often rip mp3s to wave so I can play them on a stereo and the quality is not as good as original.

Written by Baz Anderson on 09.07.2007 at 12:16

"it's what sounds better to each person's ear"

I would also propose the idea that it isn't necessarily a persons ear, even when they think it is..
I think people that are picky with sound quality, that know a song has a lower bitrate - will convince themselves they are hearing some lower quality of sound even when any difference may not actually be audible at all
..what I am saying is there is more going on in the mind here then people realise. if you see a song with a lower bitrate then you will convince yourself you are hearing something of lower quality, even if it is impossible for you to tell

This is what we were talking about with the placebo effect and it can often be the case. Successful blind tests can partly rule this out. (If the results are random, then it's clearly either a placebo or the listener knows he can't tell them apart. If the results match the facts with good accuracy, then the listener can hear the difference.) The test only rules it out for that particular test session and the next time you listen to something you are fully vulnerable to the placebo again if you are at some level aware of the quality level and expecting something. The test only shows whether one is or is not able to hear the difference in the first place.

Any psychology experts here who could explain it better?

it's just common sence..

if you listen to something at 128kbps - but are told it is 192kbps - you will believe you are listening to the good quality track

the basic principle with that test that could be done you speak of works if you have two tracks to compare against each other
(if it is possible to tell the difference between the two anyway)
if one track is played and then straight after - you should be able to tell the difference much more often then if there is a gap between the tracks
with a gap there I guess it is possibly some form of inattentional blindess - but with hearing.. - the gap is all to do with your short term memory and how much it can hold to be able to compare two units of information (two songs, and the quality of) - with a gap there then the short term memory will deteriorate and other units may enter themselves into the memory as well..

thats my take on what I think you are saying anyway

Written by Baz Anderson on 09.07.2007 at 19:38

it's just common sence..

if you listen to something at 128kbps - but are told it is 192kbps - you will believe you are listening to the good quality track

the basic principle with that test that could be done you speak of works if you have two tracks to compare against each other
(if it is possible to tell the difference between the two anyway)

That's exactly what the test is about.

Quote:

if one track is played and then straight after - you should be able to tell the difference much more often then if there is a gap between the tracks
with a gap there I guess it is possibly some form of inattentional blindess - but with hearing.. - the gap is all to do with your short term memory and how much it can hold to be able to compare two units of information (two songs, and the quality of) - with a gap there then the short term memory will deteriorate and other units may enter themselves into the memory as well..

This is certainly almost always true with songs you are not familiar with. But I don't think it's always all about the short term memory. If you suddenly listen to your very favorite song for example in worse quality than what you have always heard it in before, it's possible that you will spot the difference even if you haven't listened to that song in a while. Well, at least I've found that this has been the case with me and some of my favorite albums. But I don't know if it's something else. I'm not an expert of high definition audio nor psychology, I'm just throwing ideas around which make sense to me hehe.