Mastering for MP3

[ernstinen]

Quote:I've found that "double tracked" lead vocals that sound fine in the original mix and on CD tend to get lispy when converted to mp3, at least to my ears.Sibilant vocals and other high frequency sounds with hot transients like cymbals, glockenspiel etc. tend to really show how much digital information is trashed by mp3s. For instance, a common mp3 is 128 kilobits per second. By contrast, uncompressed audio as stored on a compact disc has a bit rate of 1411.2 kb/s (16 bits/sample × 44100 samples/second × 2 channels). So, a 128kb/s mp3 has only about 8% of the info that was on the original CD, if my math is correct. 92% is gone! That's why I don't think this format can last. People with good ears can surely hear a difference, and as the fidelity increases in hi-end digital recording, the difference will be even more dramatic.Should be an interesting next few years with new digital video and audio formats fighting it out once again!Ern

[sgs4u]

Nice math Ern, that must be why an Mp3 is usually about 10% of the hard drive space. I hear the quality loss in cymbals all the time. Kind of sucks, but I don't get to make those decisions. I did just have an opportunity to up[load an MP3 to a client's MySpace site. I compared what the MySpace music player sounds like compared to my original Mp3(at192kps).The myspace copy is quieter, noisier and and the high end is noticeably different as well. And these are the same files. So uploading to MySpace, significantly affects the quality of an Mp3, as much or more than converting from AIFF to MP3. Of course that's just my experience and my ears, which are both well worn from my Taxi ride! steve

[davidharrell]

Mazz --I haven't done any extensive testing, but I can definitely hear it on 192k files.-- David

[mazz]

Quote: I did just have an opportunity to up[load an MP3 to a client's MySpace site. I compared what the MySpace music player sounds like compared to my original Mp3(at192kps).The myspace copy is quieter, noisier and and the high end is noticeably different as well. And these are the same files. So uploading to MySpace, significantly affects the quality of an Mp3, as much or more than converting from AIFF to MP3. Of course that's just my experience and my ears, which are both well worn from my Taxi ride! steve I'm not sure about this but it may make a difference to encode your mp3 at the rate that mySpace does. Maybe they detect the incoming rate and re-compress it to 128 (or God forbid 64). If so, that means that your audio has gone through the meat grinder twice. It might be leaner but the result is harder to swallow. (Sorry for the bad analogy )

[sgs4u]

I'm going to try that Mazz. Twice thru the meat grinder sounds like what is actually happening. thxsteve