OFF: Help with all this digital stuff?

[Doug Pearson]

On Thu, 6 May 2004 18:28:07 +0100, HawkFan <hawkfan at RATSAUCE.CO.UK> wrote:
>>OK, that makes sense. So what bitrate would give CD quality?
>
>192KHz is good enough for playing back on a PC or probably one of
>the little MP3 players. 128KHz is about as low as you'd want to go and
>audibly worse that 192KHz.

This is a fair assessment to my ears.  But keep in mind that you can NEVER
have CD quality from MP3s because they use lossy compression (but it might
sound close enough to CD quality for your ears).

>Where I'm not fussed about file size I rip at 320KHz. This is pretty
>near CD quality. On your average Hawkwind track I'd be surprised if
>you could tell the difference :-)

Actually, "non-musical" stuff like synth swoosh tends to be a bit
problematic for MP3 encoders, so the average Hawkwind track might not be
the best example. :^)

>Remembering back to the days of Walkmen, cassettes used to make the sound
>duller and less dynamic. MP3 compression doesn't seem to do that as even
>on a high compression it still sounds lively and the bass is good. It
>seems to make the sound a bit shallow, if that's not a strange metaphor.

Different formats, different sound degradation issues.  LP's have surface
noise but no hiss, cassettes have hiss (and a narrower frequency response
than LP & CD) but no surface noise.  MP3 compression, especially at lower
bitrates, can add a bit of digital "crunch" (especially in the higher
frequency ranges) and impart a shallowness (or flatness) to the music.
None of those are serious problems for "walkman" (or iPod) type
applications, but they're the sort of things you want to minimalize when
listening on a quality home system ...

(Sorry I can't help with any of the DVD stuff - I know squat about those.)

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com