Question about lossy formats

[GeorgeO]

Folks

If one wants to rip and play music with minimal degradation what is the minimal acceptable bit rate? I have an Android phone with an 8GB SD card in it and am planning to use to play audio in my car. I find that flac reduces the amount of stuff that I can copy, so am exploring options. Also,how much of compression can I get if I were to rip it in 256 or 320K?

Any advice welcome

TIA

 

[arj]

if you use a high quality headphone you will find the 320 has a smoother treble (i am assuming a good hardware for audio in your phone)
i use 320 on my phone which i stream via blue tooth and find it hard to differentiate from 256 although can easily make out 192.
since the size difference between 256/320 is not huge prefer 320 as future proofing...also it sounds better when i use my Beyer DT990 ..no matter how rarely it is

 

[Shivam]

Use VDR. It will help you save some more space.

 

[GeorgeO]

And can you elaborate a bit more on what VDR might me? A cursory search using google did not shed any light for me.

Thanks

 

[soulforged]

I think Shivam meant VBR - Variable Bit Rate...

In essence, you let the software decide what bit rate to use for ripping a particular portion of the song. Basically, the bit rate varies over time segments allowing complex parts, which require more data, would be at a higher bit rate while other parts that are not so complex would have a lower bit rate...thereby reducing the overall file size and 'reasonably' mantaining the SQ...

I have generally found VBR 256 (the baseline around which the bit rate would generally hover) to be more than adequate for iPods and the likes. I could even live with VBR 192/CBR 192 for listening to music in the car...

 

[ajopaul]

And can you elaborate a bit more on what VDR might me? A cursory search using google did not shed any light for me.

Thanks

I think he meant VBR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_bitrate ?

 

[shibashis]

320 is my preference, although there is little difference to be seen between 256 and 320. I use dbpoweramp to rip CDs, and keep the conversion speed to 'slow'. That takes more time but overall SQ is better.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

if you use a high quality headphone you will find the 320 has a smoother treble (i am assuming a good hardware for audio in your phone)
i use 320 on my phone which i stream via blue tooth and find it hard to differentiate from 256 although can easily make out 192.
since the size difference between 256/320 is not huge prefer 320 as future proofing...also it sounds better when i use my Beyer DT990 ..no matter how rarely it is

Probably my ears would extend down to 192.

But the think with MP3 compression is that the effect is not necessarily immediately obvious, but is felt as a fatigue, a feeling that the music was not as enjoyable as it should have been, and not wanting to listen to more.

People say that there is a difference in the encoding and in the decoding softwares. Add VBR and MP3 becomes something hard to quantify just in the numbers.

 

[arj]

Probably my ears would extend down to 192.

But the think with MP3 compression is that the effect is not necessarily immediately obvious, but is felt as a fatigue, a feeling that the music was not as enjoyable as it should have been, and not wanting to listen to more.

People say that there is a difference in the encoding and in the decoding softwares. Add VBR and MP3 becomes something hard to quantify just in the numbers.

You should look for the treble and high freq trailing edges..they sound tinnier as the compression increases. Bass quality also becomes sharper.

These days my wife also has stopped downloading anything belw 256 as she says now that she knows she is not able to enjoy it...talk about ignorance being bliss

 

[wishihadtubes]

MP3s at 320 kbps with CBR (constant bit rate) is the only way to go if you want good sound. My ears can't tolerate MP3s with a lower bit rate.
I have all music files in FLAC in 16 bit/44.1 KHz or high-res. Use foobar to covert FLAC files to MP3. Foobar's conversion option is rather nifty as it retains all tags and album art in the MP3s.
BTW, you say you have an 8GB card - you'll find it filling up rather fast if you add MP3s at 320kbps, and may need to get a bigger card

 

[ranjeetrain]

George, IME I have found MP3 compression with highest quality VBR encoded at 160-320 Kbps to be very very good while still being space saving.

Even better is AAC if your device can play it. After spending weeks in A/B, I found AAC to sound closer to WAV for the same bitrate than MP3. AAC @320 kbps is pretty darn close to WAV (dare I say virtually indistiguishable on anything but very resolving systems).

 

[elangoas]

Folks

If one wants to rip and play music with minimal degradation what is the minimal acceptable bit rate? I have an Android phone with an 8GB SD card in it and am planning to use to play audio in my car. I find that flac reduces the amount of stuff that I can copy, so am exploring options. Also,how much of compression can I get if I were to rip it in 256 or 320K?

Any advice welcome

TIA

I guess you first question was answered already above...

A FLAC file Per/Min will be Approx 7MB in file size... If you were to rip you CD's to MP3 in CBR/VBR @ 320 Kbps, you will end up with 1.5 - 2MB/Minute...

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

You should look for the treble and high freq trailing edges..they sound tinnier as the compression increases. Bass quality also becomes sharper.

These days my wife also has stopped downloading anything belw 256 as she says now that she knows she is not able to enjoy it...talk about ignorance being bliss

:clapping:

Cymbals are a good give-away too --- except that my ears can't really get that high frequency Cshhhhhhhh any longer without eq anyway.

Long time back when I was a would-be music student, I used to use minidisc a lot. I'm convinced that the lossy compression Sony invented for it was superb, and the results with portable machine and a half-decent stereo mic often amazed me. But there was one thing it could not do: the sound of an electronic shruti box! Curious!

 

[echo77]

I have Audio Technica ATH-AD700, and here's the skinny (note that I've compared same songs in different quality encodings that I have, and I don't use an equalizer)

flac -> 320 mp3: no difference
320 -> 256 mp3: very mild distortion in high trebles (cymbals follow through), sometimes barely noticeable
256 -> 192: usually, there is some noticeable difference in quality
192 -> lower: noticeable difference in quality can be heard

Sometimes it depends on the song and I can't hear any difference between 192 and 256 but I definitely know that I am listening to something under 192. This is the curse of having good headphones

IMO, it's a car and you will have ambient noise that will prevent you from hearing those highest and lowest notes, so I suggest you go for 192 or 256 rather than 320 if you really want to squeeze out that much more space.

If you want to hear those same mp3's in headphones from your cell, I suggest you go for 320.

Again, remember that everyone's ears are different, so what I hear is not what you hear.

 

[Shivam]

I think Shivam meant VBR - Variable Bit Rate...

In essence, you let the software decide what bit rate to use for ripping a particular portion of the song. Basically, the bit rate varies over time segments allowing complex parts, which require more data, would be at a higher bit rate while other parts that are not so complex would have a lower bit rate...thereby reducing the overall file size and 'reasonably' mantaining the SQ...

I have generally found VBR 256 (the baseline around which the bit rate would generally hover) to be more than adequate for iPods and the likes. I could even live with VBR 192/CBR 192 for listening to music in the car...

I think he meant VBR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_bitrate ?

Thanks. That is exactly what I meant.

 

[GeorgeO]

Thanks guys. Will plan accordingly.

 

[musiklava79]

Sorry to butt in!
If you have space constraints then it is better for you to rip your music at VBR. If it is accuracy of rip that you desire then it is better to encode at CBR. 192 kbits is the base for a reasonable quality rip for personal media players.
You can try ripping music at 192 kbits with EAC in secure mode, which will encode your music to a near accurate rendition of the original source. However, a lot of patience is required as EAC secure mode takes a lot of time for the MP3s to be encoded. Else you can try ripping in burst mode but it's not as accurate or "true", but reasonably fast.

 

[sam9s]

If you really are in a space crunch ..... 256kbps VBR is the way to go as far as I am concerned, else for the best ... 320 kbps CBR is the max you can get from an MP3 file.

 

[haisaikat]

pay for 3G and listen online or at best if your phone has usb host feature then plug in a 16-32 GB usb drive that you can reuse anywhere even your car stereo if that has a usb

 

[GeorgeO]

The space crunch is probably a short term thing-prices of SD cards will be dropping, and probably at 32 GB or 64 GB I really may not bother too much about compression.