iTunes encoding quality

[thedbp]

I'm definitely an audiophile, and I've had my Mac hooked up to my surround sound system since day 1 ... and something I noticed that iTunes does that I haven't seen with other encoders is that it keeps the surround channel in audio CDs. I was floored when I put on the Tool MP3s I had made from a friend's copy of Lateralus (I know I know I need to buy it but I'm broke) and heard distinctly the surround channel. These were encoded at 160, and sounded great.

I re-encoded them at 192 a little while later, bumped the file size up considerably, but I didn't get that much better quality out of it. Some of the toms stilll sounded weak to me, and the guitar/bass still bled together a little bit. But overall, it sounded just dandy, better than tape quality at any rate, and isn't that what MP3s are here to replace more than anything?

My vote is 160, especially if you are limited in HD space. I'm struggling with my 12GB drive ... i have X, 9 Classic, and 9 Main systems installed, plus all the apps?!?! And VPC with a full install of Win2K?!?! I don't have that much left to worry about the marginal difference in quality between 160 and 192.

[beef]

uh... isn't Tool Lateralus in STEREO?

if you select surround sound mode in your preamp, anything will come out in 5.1, 7.1, or whatever it supports... but the surrond channels won't have their own discrete sound... if the surround channels seem to have their own sound... i think that has more to do with the difference between your main and surround speaker, and other setup,etc...

but...I'm not an audiophile...and you say you're... so you probably know things I don't... I'm not even sure about Tool's Lateralus encoded 2 channels only... and I own the damn thing (just never bothered to listen in surround...) I'm more of a caveman when it comes to surround music...

...I've listend to some SACD, DVDA, etc... personally, I don't get this surround music... I appreciate surround sound in Movies, etc... but I've never been to a place where I'm actually surrounded by the band. Whatever concert, etc, I've been to, the band is always in front of me... I dunno about you guys, but it'll be a while before I'll get into surround music thing... I'm not gonna listen to Stereo materials in surround either... unless somebody here tells me how it's done right.

well...I've heard a lot of arguments when it comes to tube vs transistor... and I still use Musical Fidelity A3 (pre/amp) which I still think sound good... and transistors tend to have better numbers on test bench...and they produce less tonal harmonic distortions... but afaik, that distortion is high-order/odd-order...while the tubes produce (yea.....a lot more substantial...but...what's the word...soft?) even-order harmonic distortions... which one's more natural...which one never appears in music...?

I probably am biased after reading stuffs... but yea... things come down to personal preferences... after listening to tube and transistor for awhile... I thought I preferred tubes (was I determined to believe tube sounded better...? maybe... I dunno... I was proud of my stuffs, too though...). I prefer stereo for music... etc...

...so yea... whatever you prefer...

and about mp3... I still say encode with LAME (takes a lot of time though) at 192 or better... there're links to lame's latest build and script that works with iTunes at macosx.com.
--edited
I recommended 192 or better, because I think gadgetlover mentioned he has
Creative Jukebox thing. I dunno how long he listens to music, but I personally think the battery would run out before he's done listening to everything in it... and I'm hoping he doesn't mind adding/deleting files in it occasionally.

[scruffy]

The names of the encoding rate carry meaning: at 128 kbps, mp3 files take up, unsurprisingly, 128 kilobits per second of audio.

128 kb/s / 8 b/B * 60 s/min = 960 KB/min
192 kb/s / 8 b/B * 60 2/min = 1440 KB/min = 1.4 MB/min

And so on.

[kilowatt]

Tubes are better for listening to vintage music because:

1) The guys in the 60's were using tube amps in studios. They recorded, and listened using tube amps, so the music is almost made to be heard through tube amps.

2) Tubes are not flat-frequency. Tubes have a semi-variable compression based on frequency and volume (where as a digital compression algorithm pretty much ignores frequency - and I'm not talking about data compression, just audio compression). This compression yields a fatter warmer sound.

3) Tubes tollerate. You can easily blow out your friend's solid-state class ab amp in his boom box. No prob. But tubes can take abuse.

4) Nuclear-blast resistance. In the event of an EMP from a nuke, most anything that relies on silicon as an electrical semiconductor will become useless. So if we get nuked, I'm gona crank up the music.. because I can!

In my studio, I use a rather large mixer and some Crown, Peavey, and Mackie amps. These amps have a much higher headroom than most home stereo gear, so you don't get any compression or loss of signal dynamics.

When I want to hear my music, though, I use some custom class-a audio amps I built a while back. These use 12 6L6 tubes in class A configuration, and I use one of these amps for each of four channels (which I usually just run in stereo configuration).

Do I use LP's? You bet! Well, untill those movers bonked my lp player... time to get another one I suppose.

I don't compress most of my music. Why? Well, if you have a 60gig hard disk, and are willing to set aside 20 gigs for music, thats... 650mb/disk... about 1gig for two disks... thats forty cds. Which accounts for 90% of the music I listen to. As a rule, I never compress Pink Floyd, Hendrix, or Classical/jazz music.

Seriously, if you enjoy listening to music, go with what sounds best. I don't bother with gold connectors because I used my ossiliscope and a frequency alanizer, and I couldn't see any differnece between gold plated connectors and normal connectors... I do use balanced signal lines whenever possable, though.

[mrfluffy]

Originally posted by thedbp
My vote is 160, especially if you are limited in HD space. I'm struggling with my 12GB drive ... i have X, 9 Classic, and 9 Main systems installed, plus all the apps?!?! And VPC with a full install of Win2K?!?! I don't have that much left to worry about the marginal difference in quality between 160 and 192.

same here, except i've got 2gigs less and softwindows with win98

[mindbend]

My recommendation for the re-encoding option is to only bother when/if you hear a track or album that you notice any issues with. If you're listening to your stereo passively I doubt you will have any problem with your current 128 quality. If you pop the headphones on or listen more carefully you will notice more aliasing.

I encoded all my CDs based on how much I liked the album. My favorite albums got the 192, most everything else got the 128 and the rarely listened to ones got the low end.

Audiophiles will be audiophiles, but anything beyond 192 for general listening is pointless. I've got a pretty nice set of critical listening monitors (Alesis Monitor Ones) and the 192s sounds excellent. If I need quality beyond that, I'll put the original damn CD in.

[Paragon]

I encode my mp3's with stereo 160 VBR, quality high and standard stereo.

I have it all hooked up to my HiFi, a Cyrus dAD3 cd-player ($1400), Cyrus Straight Line amplifier ($670) and a Cyrus Power preamp ($800). All hooked up to my speaker's two System audio 1070 ($970).

...I LOVE my system.

[mindbend]

Paragon...what possible humanly justification could there be to drop $1,400 on a CD player?