At 12:27 PM -0800 12/15/07, Dan Dugan wrote:
> >This is either a
>>technical question or a "golden ear" question and not meant to imply
>>anything bad about Bernie and his fabulous recordings... is 192kbps
>>as good a recording as a CD? This seems to have been a debate when
>>iTunes came out and I haven't really heard much except for speculative
>>comments. What does this group of true audiophiles think about this?
>> Is this discrepancy in quality a myth or fact?
>
>I've done double-blind listening tests. 192K MP3, with a good encoder
>(there are some dogs out there), is -very difficult- to distinguish
>from CD. That qualifies as good enough in my book, and I keep my
>personal entertainment and bird ID libraries in that format.
>
>To put it in perspective, the damage done to a recording by MP3
>encoding is an order of magnitude less than dubbing it to analog tape.
>
>-Dan Dugan
>
I have a very hard time distinguishing 256kbps from the 16 bit
original but I believe I can begin to detect small differences in a
Logic Audio-encoded mp3 at 192kbps. The 96kbps encoding seems to be
quite different.
This QuickTime movie
http://www.uwm.edu/~type/audio-reports/LowSaturation/AudioClips/Orig-256kbps-192kbps-96kbpsH263.mov
has an uncompressed, 16bit sound track with the original and three
mp3 encoded samples. I imported the generated mp3's back into Logic
Audio to create the 16 bit movie soundtrack.
1) 16 bit orig -> 16 bit movie soundtrack
2) 16 bit orig -> 256 kbps mp3 -> 16 bit movie soundtrack
3) 16 bit orig -> 192 kbps mp3 -> 16 bit movie soundtrack
4) 16 bit orig -> 96 kbps mp3 -> 16 bit movie soundtrack
I sense that the most common quality hit stems from folks just using
the default setting on their mp3 encoder application. Most apps I've
used default to 128kbps or lower. Rob D.
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