Music Quality

Nixy

Nixy

Elimi-nistrator
Staff member
I am listening to a CD that a friend made for me about five years ago...I'm SHOCKED at how crappy the quality is...I never noticed it then but listening to it now...it's HORRIBLE...I guess quality really has come along way :)
 
It would depend on what you were playing it on back then too.With a Discman it may not have sounded bad,but on a Newer 5.1 surroundsound system or even a decent car stereo :eek5:.
 
Nixy said:
I am listening to a CD that a friend made for me about five years ago...I'm SHOCKED at how crappy the quality is...I never noticed it then but listening to it now...it's HORRIBLE...I guess quality really has come along way :)
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It sure has, I used to listen to mp3z encoded at 128kbps and thought the quality was good. But now...I can even hear artifacts at 256kbps. It all depends on your taste and how annoying the distortion is.

Have you heard DVD-Audio?, the clarity of the sound is astonishing, especially at high frequencies.
 
Starya said:
CD's also loose quality over time. Not sure if 5 years is long enough for that though..
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AFAIK, the reed solomon coding scheme corrects a big deal of the errors in the stream. As long as you don't scratch your cds, they shouldn't lose quality over time.
 
Well..I would have been listening to it on a discman or crappy computer speakers back then...now I'm listening to it on the built in speakers on my laptop...so I wouldn't think the speakers are much better...
 
I used to listen to mp3z with a soundblaster live and cambridge pc speakers, and thought it was ok. Now I listen to them with an audigy 2 and a 7.1 set, the difference in the output sound is not that tangible, but now that we've listened to higher quality we are more demanding.
 
There are a shitload of different ways music can sound like shit. Too quiet? Clipping-style distortion? Sounds like the speaker's under water (like a lot of poor-quality MP3s)? Can't hear the singer over the bass? Lead guitarist plays solos that sound like those of Susan Tedeschi?
 
Odds are that CD is sourced from MP3's. MP3's sound like absoulte shit, even the ones that are suposed to be "high quality". While the drag on the high end (around 12k) is annoying enough, the hollowness of any bass below 120 Hz pushes me over the edge.
 
I've tended to have good luck with the bass on mp3 files. Usually, a poor quality mp3 sounds very watery in the high end to me.
 
Distortion mostly...so mcuh so it was driving me nuts...

Oh, and rrfield: I am comparing how this CD sounded to me then and how it sounds now...also how newly downloaded MP3s sound now and how the CD sounds now (same speakers)...so it's not the file type.
 
Luis G said:
It sure has, I used to listen to mp3z encoded at 128kbps and thought the quality was good. But now...I can even hear artifacts at 256kbps. It all depends on your taste and how annoying the distortion is.

Have you heard DVD-Audio?, the clarity of the sound is astonishing, especially at high frequencies.
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the new Ben Folds album (released yesterday) is a dual disc, cd on one side, dvd-audio and documentary on the other. the 5.1 dvd-audio sounds great, though i can't say that the cd audio sounds any worse to me. though the CD appears to have some copy protection built in, when i ripped it using a cd-rom, cdparanoia reported errors, i switched to an -RW drive and it ripped without a hitch.
 
tommyj27 said:
the new Ben Folds album (released yesterday) is a dual disc, cd on one side, dvd-audio and documentary on the other. the 5.1 dvd-audio sounds great, though i can't say that the cd audio sounds any worse to me. though the CD appears to have some copy protection built in, when i ripped it using a cd-rom, cdparanoia reported errors, i switched to an -RW drive and it ripped without a hitch.
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Are you sure that's DVD-Audio (5.1, 96kHz, 24 bits), and not Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (5.1, 48kHz)?

I searched for the title, but found no link as to the specific format of the tracks, which leads me to think that it is encoded as DVD-Video.
 
you're probably right on, it does have some video encoded, it shows stills from the album art for each track. I'll have to check the input format on my receiver when i get home.
 
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