MP3 failings

Rocker

MP3 is fine for portable music listened to through in ear buds. Perfectly fine. But play a YouTube or similar video through even a middling hi-fi and it sounds poor. No problems with instruction videos such as guitar or bass 'how to play' types. I played a Dale Watson YouTube video last evening. The bass is a very important element in that music but it was practically inaudible. Seems on an instruction video, the frequency range is narrow which compresses well. But on a band, the frequency range is much wider so a lot of needed information ends up on the virtual cutting floor. 

Teetonetal

Happily I don't have time to sit and listen to music - all done on the move or through headphones at work. I don't even own a hifi anymore. the only time I'm not listening on the move is when I'm at a gig. Listening to the real thing.

Gassage

I had a flac player for xmas- it's very noticable how much more clear punch is in that format.

robinbowes

Youtube audio has been notoriously low-quality in the past, see here: https://www.h3xed.com/web-and-internet/youtube-audio-quality-bitrate-240p-360p-480p-720p-1080p

They're getting better, but it's still relatively poor.

R.

robinbowes

Oh, and it's mostly AAC these days.

guitarfishbay

It depends on the quality.  At HD quality YouTube is equivalent to 192kb/s IIRC, which isn't amazing if you're comparing it to .wavs from a CD but it's fine for how most people use YouTube.  People spent a decade listening at 128kb/s back when iPods were only a few GB.  I think a lot of people are quite used to mp3 these days.

ICBM

I don't really understand the extreme opinions that you often read about how mp3 is "unlistenable" - even at lower bit rates, let alone high ones. Yes, I can hear the difference - but I'm entirely happy with 128kbps for most daytime purposes. Firstly it's the only way I can get 35,000+ songs onto an iPod, and secondly it's still significantly better quality than the AM radios and portable cassette players I grew up with. It may not be as good as FM radio but I tend to only listen to that in the car, where the rest of the sound system and the ambient noise make it irrelevant, as it does when I'm listening in my workshop or at the shop, where it's being played back through something quite lo-fi anyway.

The bottom line is that if I can hear the music, the sound quality is secondary  - I'm meant to be concentrating on working or driving usually . That's not necessarily true if I'm sitting down in the evening to listen to an album properly, but that's what I have CDs for.

stickyfiddle

ICBM said:

I don't really understand the extreme opinions that you often read about how mp3 is "unlistenable" - even at lower bit rates, let alone high ones. Yes, I can hear the difference - but I'm entirely happy with 128kbps for most daytime purposes. Firstly it's the only way I can get 35,000+ songs onto an iPod, and secondly it's still significantly better quality than the AM radios and portable cassette players I grew up with. It may not be as good as FM radio but I tend to only listen to that in the car, where the rest of the sound system and the ambient noise make it irrelevant, as it does when I'm listening in my workshop or at the shop, where it's being played back through something quite lo-fi anyway.

The bottom line is that if I can hear the music, the sound quality is secondary  - I'm meant to be concentrating on working or driving usually . That's not necessarily true if I'm sitting down in the evening to listen to an album properly, but that's what I have CDs for.

Couldn't have said it better. I have some decade-old-and-then-some 128k mp3s which are a bit pokey sounding but anything above 192 is fine unless you're an audiophile, at which point you're listening to the equipment and the recording and not the music, and I'm out.

Sporky

I find 128kbps tends to have very "splashy" cymbals. 160 and above gets past that.

ICBM

stickyfiddle said:

I have some decade-old-and-then-some 128k mp3s which are a bit pokey sounding

That's true - although the algorithms have improved a lot now. If I hear old ones that are a bit ropey I try to re-rip them from the CD when I can get around to it.

robinbowes

I find that the more "natural" the recording, the better quality required to reproduce it. Lossy compression screws up phase relationships, esp. at high frequencies.

R.

kaypeejay

ICBM said:

The bottom line is that if I can hear the music, the sound quality is secondary  - I'm meant to be concentrating on working or driving usually . That's not necessarily true if I'm sitting down in the evening to listen to an album properly, but that's what I have CDs for.

I agree up to a point. I find when I go away on holiday, I'll listen through my phone or at best a portable dock at low res. When I get back home, I immediately need a fix of good music on a good system. Basically, there is only so long I can stand listening to low res music on a crappy dock!

dogload

This takes me back!

I remember twenty-odd years ago listening to my audiophile mates slagging off CDs coz they don't sound as good as vinyl, and spending thousands of pounds on turntables and speakers. 'Plus ca change...' I suppose.

monquixote

A statement like "mp3 sounds bad" is meaningless. 

Most of the time when people think an mp3 sounds bad is because it's been ripped badly or it's gone through multiple generations of compression, or some other processing has been applied.

128k sounds a bit ropey, but once you get to 256 or 320 practically no one can hear the difference in a blind test.

Also you don't need to use mp3 these days. AAC or Vorbis is a much better choice.

english_bob

ICBM said:

The bottom line is that if I can hear the music, the sound quality is secondary  - I'm meant to be concentrating on working or driving usually . That's not necessarily true if I'm sitting down in the evening to listen to an album properly, but that's what I have CDs for.

Exactly. Most of the time when I listen to music I'm at work using the player on my phone with one earbud half out so that if someone tries to talk to me they don't have to yell or come and tap me on the shoulder and scare the crap out of me. It's not exactly lab test conditions for listening to music, so I don't worry too much about sound quality (unless it's really shit).

At home on a halfway decent system it's CDs, vinyl or .FLAC. 

MP3 will go away eventually as storage gets cheaper and it becomes possible to carry large quantities of lossless files on a portable device. 128GB MicroSD cards will carry a decent number of albums in FLAC, and are already reasonably affordable (£40 or thereabouts from Amazon) and I doubt it'll be too long before you're paying much less than the current £200+ for 256GB and 512GB cards.

That's if you want to carry the files with you. With enough data on my mobile plan and the right app, I could stream FLAC files from my NAS at home to my phone at work. MP3 is practically obsolete already. Save your old iPod and wait the MP3 retro fad in 2035.

UnclePsychosis

Blaming mp3 technology for crap sounding youtube videos is like blaming studio compressors for the loudness wars.

The technology is great, the problem is that sometimes it is misused or misunderstood. People say "mp3s sound crap" when what they actually mean is "low bitrate mp3s sound crap". Even then, the problem is overstated a lot---128kbps isn't all that great but its hardly unlistenable and, as already pointed out, its probably way better than the old AM/FM radio technology that weirdly enough all these audiophiles don't seem to have a problem with.

Rocker

The bass on the link I mentioned is simply not there. It was when the recording was made. This is not a sound quality 'rubbish MP3' comment. Rather I would like to hear what looks like an interesting bass line.

robinbowes

Got a link to the video? On what were you listening to it?

mburekenge

I'm surprised that people able to detect the most minute differences in overdrive mud hump frequency response can't hear the difference between 320 and 128kbps MP3s.  


then again, my studio monitors were twice as expensive as my car lol

robinbowes

SCM50?

mburekenge

robinbowes said:

SCM50?

Yep