Stereo Setup for Music

BTW, how does one analyze any mp3/flac file and get the encoding details? I guess there would be tools available. VLC etc players seem to just show the mp3 compression (320kbps etc) info.

Properly encoded mp3 files will contain the information in the shape of an ID3 tag. This tag is a type of metadata contained within the mp3 file with information such as artist, genre, album information and various other related information regarding the track. That is how music players such as iTunes / Foobar and others read the information about the track and the same information is used to sort the library.
The same applies for DAPs like iPod / Sansa Clip and others and now apps on our cell phones. Cowon players for a very long time did not adapt to the ID3 tagging universe and so their players preferred the folder tree structure.

If you use softwares to say rip an audio CD to mp3 then the software normally has tools to tag the tracks properly. iTunes for example checks its own database for the information on the album, fetches the info and puts it in the file. Others utilize community maintained databases such as freeDB for album records.
 
Thanks Shibashis. I'm familiar with the ID3 tags - my question was actually regarding the bit encoding e.g 16 bits at 44KHz etc of the actual audio. From what I gather based on asliarun's post above, two mp3s may be created at 320kbps but the actual audio could be at 16/44khz or 24/192khz or somewhere in between. Trying to see how that can be found out. In general, I would like to listen to two such mp3s where original audio has different level of encoding and see if my ears can notice any difference.

forever.pramod - Sorry in case I hijacked your thread. I guess I'll start another thread to continue this discussion and will leave this thread for your original query.
 
If you use Foobar as your player then it has a nice panel listing all the information regarding the track including sample rate, bitrate and codec.

If the aim is to discern the difference in audio quality between two encodings of varying parameters then Foobar will serve your purpose, and it is a very well received player for faithfully reproducing the music with many different customization options available.
 
Oh - good. Just yesterday I downloaded foobar after reading some other articles but haven't had a chance to explore it much - will check out for the bit rate etc details. Thanks.
 
Yes, I will also second that. Foobar is probably the most versatile player there is. And it has such good plugin support too.

Note that I personally don't know of any mp3s that decompress to high res format. But I haven't listened to much high res formats anyway.

If you want to do a comparison, you might be better off listening to Flac which is lossless where mp3 is lossy.

The other thing is - I personally feel that mastering and remastering has the single biggest impact on sound quality. I often wonder if people only feel that high res and vinyl only sounds better because they were better mastered and recorded to begin with. Especially because these market segments cater to people who are a lot more picky and choosy about audio quality than the market that listens to standard CD and apple and iTunes recordings.

In fact the bulk of the market prefers Beats audio type of recording - hugely boosted bass, chaddi thumping sound, and auto tune.
 
Hahaha, Pramod, here are my answers:

- Generally speaking, when one gets a component that does one specific job, all the attention and engineering budget is put on getting that part right. Like, if you see most power amps, they will have rating of 100W RMS (and upwards) whereas integrated amps will generally have 45W, 60W etc. The other interesting thing I have found is that power amps are available for far lower prices in the used market. Not sure why. Maybe because supply/demand - people generally prefer integrated amps so they are priced higher and command higher prices?

I had a Parasound power amp that I bought for a ridiculously low price ($350 for a 6 month old amp - new was costing $850). That amp was so powerful (while being fairly compact as well) - it would drive any speaker with ease and not even get heated up. Generally, the strong amps - you will see power rating scale linearly. Like if an amp does 50W in 8 ohms, it will do 100W in 4 ohms (and even 200W in 2 ohms for really difficult to drive speakers). Amps with weak power supplies will only do 70W in 4 ohms for example - or will even state upfront that they cannot support anything below 8 ohms or 6 ohms.

Now most speakers cleverly only state nominal impedance. Your speakers are 6 ohms nominal - but I can bet that in reality, it dips down to 4 ohms in some audio frequencies. This means that your amp needs to have a powerful/robust enough power supply that it can handle the 4 ohm load with ease as well. Many, if not most speakers, dip down to 4 ohms routinely. With weak amps, they start failing to provide adequate power at these impedance dips and in extreme cases, start clipping (pure DC signal) which can damage your speaker drivers. That is also why overkill on the amp side is actually not a bad idea. My old Parasound amp for example would do 125W in 8 ohms, 200W in 4 ohms, and up to 400W for 2 ohms.

- External DAC - From personal experience, AVR DACs are decent enough. A discrete DAC would still be better of course, but now it depends how much quality or musical flavor one wants. My Audio GD DAC was significantly superior to my Marantz slimline AVR, but I am happy enough with the Marantz inbuilt DAC for now. M room and speaker placement is suboptimal anyway.

2 - 24/192 - that is mostly bragging about features - it is about high-resolution audio formats. It has become the new buzzword. It refers to the DAC's ability to process audio that has been encoded in high bitrate formats (24 bits at 192 khz). CD audio is encoded at 16 bits at 44KHz. That is actually supposed to be more than sufficient for human hearing, but as you know, audiophile loves overkill in everything. Personally, I find it irrelevant.

Truth be told, this is marketing gimmick. DAC quality is largely governed by the quality of its power supply, the quality of implementation (design), quality of parts used (not just the DAC chip, but even capacitors, etc). But that is unfashionable - so marketers sell DACs by bragging about bitrate support instead.

In fact, many people prefer older DACs because most of the money in old DACs was spent on power supply etc. and matter of fact, some people even prefer the older DAC chips (they feel the newer ones sound more artificial).

- The ability of a DAC to process high resolution audio (24/192, 32/384, etc.) has nothing to do with mp3 bitrate. This is difficult to explain but I will try. When analog audio is converted to digital audio in the studio, it is stored as uncompressed digital samples. The 24/192 indicates that they use 24 bits to store each sample, and sample the audio signal 192,000 times a second. (Audio CD stores audio sampled at 44,100 times a second, with 16bits to store the value of each sample). This is uncompressed digital bitstream.

However, this takes up a lot of space - CDs take up 600MB to store 60 minutes of (uncompressed) audio. High resolution audio like 24/192 takes way more (several GB) for the same. To save space, mp3 came up with a lossy compression format (a zip file is a lossless compression format). The bitrate of mp3 determines how lossy the compression is - i.e. how much sound quality do you care to lose to achieve more and more space saving). 320kbps gets really really close to original CD quality (16/44) - and for entry level systems like ours, or rooms that are not properly setup/treated, I don't think we will even notice much difference. But again, like everything, this is subjective, right?!

Ultimately, mp3 or any other format has to be converted back into the original (24/192 or 16/44.1) digital bitstream. DACs only understand this. If you feed mp3 into a DAC, it will not know what to do. This conversion is usually done in software (mp3 player like winamp or foobar in a computer, or a device/audio player that supports mp3).

So think of mp3 like a zip file. The real digital audio is the file inside the zip file. The zip file has to be unzipped for you to feed it into a DAC.

I just want to add that there are disadvantages too associated with separates. An all in one (Marantz, naim stereo receiver for example) is manufactured and tested that way, so you are guaranteed with minimum acceptable audio delivery and system matching taken care of.

System matching is the hardest part with the seperates. Added to this is the sound signature introduced by all the cables along the path. For Eg: An AVR has a single power cable connected to the mains and a single HDMI with assured digital delivery connected to ARC. Compare this with a processor and 3 + 2 power amp setup where in 3 power amp and 10 cables between the processor and power amps and a coax/optical connection to/from a computer source. The longer the chain, the longer it takes to get it to work in your favour just because there are a gazillion combinations possible to setup and not every one sounds even remotely as good as an AVR manufactured that way.

It is possible to assemble really cheap components and hit a real good sound and most probably it is also possible to put together a really high end system which sounds like real shit. This is where the endless tweaking starts.

IMO, in any price range, it is safe to get a fully built AVR for multi channel sound (period). Same approach for stereo sound is debatable and I would invest the higest in the DAC/CD player while still getting the best INTEGRATED amp for the money you wish to spend. A lot of people do the reverse. separating out pre and power is not my cup of tea and I have travelled that path before without success.
 
regarding your query of Stereo amp & integrated amp

Stereo Amp: Stereo means for 2 channels only, could be boxed in two different boxes, pre-amp & power amp or in a single box called as integrated amp.

Integrated Amp: An amp which has both pre & power in one box but can amplify any number of channels, 2,4,5,7 etc

I think the mp3 files of 320kbps is a root for all your dissatisfaction & moreover if you are concerned to listen songs, your best value for money would be investing in a 2 channel system. But if you go in 2 channel line, you have to buy everything- amp, dac,speaker for music etc in that line itself. It will also do some sort of justice to movies but if you want a dedicated movie set up, you have to buy a separate HT for movie experince.
 
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Hi Pramod,
my suggestion would be to look at integrated stereo amplifiers which have a built in HT by pass (Arcam, Peachtree, Rotel..) this means that it can be attached to your existing setup and would let you enjoy two channel music in highest quality along with your HT. Pre outs Fl & FR connect to the stereo integrated and the HT bypass mode essentially turns the stereo integrated into a power amp controlled by your AVR when watching movies and when you want to listen to music you can switch inputs to enjoy what ever you have on your laptop, media player, CD/DVD etc.. This will also improve the movie performance of the avr as the Front left and right speakers would now be powered by the stereo integrated and with reduced load on the AVR it will give cleaner rendering of dialogues and surround information..
Cheers
Ravi
 
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