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Topic: How to determine original quality of CD music? (Read 4114 times) previous topic - next topic
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How to determine original quality of CD music?

I have some music on CD's in .cda format. I'm trying to figure out if they were originally mp3's or wav's and what quality they were.
There's no point ripping them as 320kbps mp3's if they were originally only 160kbps. If they were wav's then I'd probably want to rip them as flac.

Basically I'm trying to retain maximum audio quality without using unnecessary hard drive space.

Re: How to determine original quality of CD music?

Reply #1 –
There is no reliable way to do this.

Re: How to determine original quality of CD music?

Reply #2 –
Yeah I was kinda expecting that :/

I tried encoding a song at 320 and 160 and I really can't tell the difference. I was only comparing 1 section of 1 song though, so others might be more obvious.

Re: How to determine original quality of CD music?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: foggs on
I have some music on CD's in .cda format.
I suppose you are talking about CDDA shown in Windows Explorer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cda_file

CDDA only supports 16/44 PCM, you can't put mp3 data in CDDA without transcoding them to 16/44 PCM. When you rip a CDDA with mp3 sources, you can only rip the transcoded 16/44 PCM data, not the mp3 data.

Regardless of the source format, the only way to retain data integrity of CDDA is rip to lossless formats like ape, flac, wavpack and so on. Ripping to mp3 is a lossy transcoding process.

Short answer: forget about how to identify mp3 sources and bitrates, always rip to flac if what you need is data integrity instead of transparency.

Re: How to determine original quality of CD music?

Reply #4 –
It's very unlikely that a commercial CD was made from an MP3.   If it's a homemade/burned CD, who knows. 

I'd recommend ripping to whatever format you usually use.    If you normally use FLAC, a few more FLAC files aren't going to eat-up much more disk space.

The damage from multiple generations of MP3 compression does accumulate...  So, if it was originally a 128 or 160kbps, made into a WAV or CD, and then re-encoded to 160kbps, or even 320kbps, there is additional theoretical damage.    

You may or may-not hear a difference.     Of course in this case, you can only compare the two MP3s (or an MP3 and a WAV made from an MP3) if you don't have access to the uncompressed original.

Re: How to determine original quality of CD music?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: foggs on
I have some music on CD's in .cda format. I'm trying to figure out if they were originally mp3's or wav's and what quality they were.
There's no point ripping them as 320kbps mp3's if they were originally only 160kbps. If they were wav's then I'd probably want to rip them as flac.

Basically I'm trying to retain maximum audio quality without using unnecessary hard drive space.


As was pointed out, there is no reliable way to detect past passes through lossy compression by means of easy and reliable technical analysis. However, there is a good probability that the music was lossy-compressed if there are obvious signs of low-pass brick-wall filtering at some frequency well  below 22 KHz.

Re: How to determine original quality of CD music?

Reply #6 –
Yet no way to determine if that was involved in the actual mastering, short of acquiring a legitimate CD and ripping it yourself, with the added bonus of AccurateRip telling you if 10-20-50+ people also ripped the same exact result.

Re: How to determine original quality of CD music?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: foggs on
I have some music on CD's in .cda format. I'm trying to figure out if they were originally mp3's or wav's and what quality they were.
There's no point ripping them as 320kbps mp3's if they were originally only 160kbps. If they were wav's then I'd probably want to rip them as flac.

Basically I'm trying to retain maximum audio quality without using unnecessary hard drive space.



Maybe the free tool Tau Analyzer (http://tausoft.org/wiki/True_Audio_Checker_Overview) provides what you are looking for?
I used it years ago and just remembered its name.

Re: How to determine original quality of CD music?

Reply #8 –
And if you've been paying attention to this forum, that sort of analyzer is easy enough to fool. All you need to do is enable noise shaped dithering in the conversion, and it suddenly becomes ~99% CDDA according to their metric.

Re: How to determine original quality of CD music?

Reply #9 –
Yes, but if you want to check the self recorded CDR that you have in the car since 2001 whether you recorded it from lossless or MP3, then it can be useful.

Re: How to determine original quality of CD music?

Reply #10 –
There's also Fakin' The Funk, which was launched recently. The developer also made a post about it here on Hydrogen Audio. Although some people pointed out some things it couldn't do, it seems quite reliable at finding out if a file has been changed from e.g. 128 kpbs mp3 to 320 kbps, or from 320 kbps mp3 to wave.
It's free as well.
"What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"
- Christopher Hitchens
"It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge"
- Sam Harris