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Topic: Vinyl rip to mp3 (Read 6442 times) previous topic - next topic
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Vinyl rip to mp3

Hi guys! First off happy holidays!

Now, I know I'll get murdered for this thread but I have to ask this. I have a vinyl rip of an album in FLAC that's 24bit and 96khz. The size is over 1GB so naturally I'd like to convert it to an mp3.

What would be the best way to do it so to preserve the original rip's depth and quality in a way that matters? I mean I can probably convert it to a standart 44khz 16bit mp3s but that would defeat the purpose, won't it? Or is there any point to try to preserve some part of the original quality when it's gonna be a mp3 anyway.

Thanks and have mercy!

 

Vinyl rip to mp3

Reply #1
Of course it won't defeat the purpose! You have a brilliantly high fidelity copy of all of the hiss, clicks, rumble and other general noise that you get from vinyl, and you're worrying about how well mp3 will "preserve some part of the original quality"?

Encode it to mp3, put the uselessly bloated FLAC file into an archive, and get on with your life.

Vinyl rip to mp3

Reply #2
Also, MP3 and most other lossy formats do not have a bit-depth; the samples are stored in floating-point. In other words, you cannot specify a bit-depth for such an encoder to use; it’ll do whatever it pleases with the bits you allow it.

16 bit and (especially) 44.1 kHz are more than adequate for the vast majority of listeners, whether the audio is losslessly or lossily encoded. And you make a good point that using anything higher when encoding to a lossy format is probably completely unnecessary.

Vinyl rip to mp3

Reply #3
Thank you for the quick replies. The dilemma is that I have the CD version of this album and this rip is supposed to be superior. It even had some spectrograms and samples included to prove so. The spectrogram compared to the CD version looks like.. well a normalized one - with a lot of space above and below if u get my meaning. In the samples provided the vinyl one sounds quieter while the CD is strong and clear. It's not an ancient vinyl mind you, a 2006 edition.

So that's why I wasn't sure how to translate that in mp3. But if I can't have any use of the 24bit depth then I'd clearly be better off without the bloated thing indeed.

Thanks again!


Vinyl rip to mp3

Reply #5
The spectrogram compared to the CD version looks like.. well a normalized one - with a lot of space above and below if u get my meaning.
I don’t quite!

Also, visual methods are, as Ouroboros said, of no use—you listen to music with your ears, not eyes; and it is immaterial if a spectogram shows frequencies that you cannot hear—and are also ruled out by #8 of our Terms of Service.

Finally, don’t believe everything you read, especially on the internet, and especially about audio! ToS8 exists in large part to preclude people being mislead by claims such as that.

Vinyl rip to mp3

Reply #6
Quote
By whom? What evidence did these people provide that allowed you to deduce that the vinyl rip is superior?


I didn't say I take it as a fact. Just the way it was presented conveyed that - "super uber duber quality rip" and so on with all the fancy spectrograms, analysis files and all that jazz that means squat to me. If I was sure It was so awesome I wouldn't be posting here in the first place.

Again thanks Ouroboros and db1989 for taking the time to clear things up for me. Much appreciated!

Vinyl rip to mp3

Reply #7
Glad to help.  (And hey, at least they didn’t make you pay for the “super uber duber quality”—skepticism has its benefits!)

Vinyl rip to mp3

Reply #8
Also, MP3 and most other lossy formats do not have a bit-depth; the samples are stored in floating-point. In other words, you cannot specify a bit-depth for such an encoder to use; it’ll do whatever it pleases with the bits you allow it.

16 bit and (especially) 44.1 kHz are more than adequate for the vast majority of listeners, whether the audio is losslessly or lossily encoded. And you make a good point that using anything higher when encoding to a lossy format is probably completely unnecessary.



There is mp3 surround by fraunhofer, according to the review it supports 24bit (not sure if it means that the wav meant for encoding can be 24bit or if it encodes the mp3 in 24bit depth, http://www.all4mp3.com/tools/command-line-tools.php) and 5.1 surround, encodes only with 192 kbps and needs additional decoder plugin for winamp in order to be played. Also there is WMA (i think v10) that supports 24bit 96khz wma encoding although im not a fan of wma's neither of mp3 sorround.

Vinyl rip to mp3

Reply #9
Hi guys! First off happy holidays!

Now, I know I'll get murdered for this thread but I have to ask this. I have a vinyl rip of an album in FLAC that's 24bit and 96khz. The size is over 1GB so naturally I'd like to convert it to an mp3.

What would be the best way to do it so to preserve the original rip's depth and quality in a way that matters? I mean I can probably convert it to a standart 44khz 16bit mp3s but that would defeat the purpose, won't it? Or is there any point to try to preserve some part of the original quality when it's gonna be a mp3 anyway.

Thanks and have mercy!

 



As far as I know, a vinyl is 11bit or so, and a CD is 16bit. I don't see any point in 16bit vinyl rips when you can have a CD rip of the same music and especially I don't see any point in 24bit vinyl rips.

Vinyl rip to mp3

Reply #10
There is mp3 surround by fraunhofer, according to the review it supports 24bit (not sure if it means that the wav meant for encoding can be 24bit or if it encodes the mp3 in 24bit depth

Lossy encodes do not have a bit depth. AFAIK they do not even contain information as to the bit depth of the source. They can then be decoded to whatever bit depth you like, even 64 bit float etc.


Vinyl rip to mp3

Reply #11
There is mp3 surround by fraunhofer, according to the review it supports 24bit (not sure if it means that the wav meant for encoding can be 24bit or if it encodes the mp3 in 24bit depth

Lossy encodes do not have a bit depth. AFAIK they do not even contain information as to the bit depth of the source. They can then be decoded to whatever bit depth you like, even 64 bit float etc.



I wasn't claiming that there's a 24bit mp3 codec, just posted what I've read about mp3 surround, however here is a screen shot of wma10 encoder from dbPoweramp that shows its 24 bit and 5.1/7.1 channels ripping options.

http://8207.4.img98.net/out.php/i183338_24bit-wma.jpg