Re: Completely confused over these Spectrum readouts?! Encoding MP3
Reply #7 – 2018-08-19 21:26:33
Second, with Mp3tag you can use freedb, Discogs or MusicBrainz to try and locate your CD and it'll tag the files appropriately for you, quite often with the correct artist for each track. Thank you, I wasn't aware it could do that in batches! I will take a look. Note that for some of these you may also have to register on their website first.Third, you say this is for pub/bar DJing ... In this context, do you really think that with all the hubbub and commotion that's common for such social gathering places, people are going to try and stand still to try and pick out lossy compression artefacts? Unless you're using a ridiculously low quality setting, I say it's not likely anyone's going to ever notice anything that's off. Yes that's exactly what I'm saying.. Maybe not in the literal sense but I've had this happen on more than one occasion, where I've downloaded from supposedly reputable sites (DJ download pools etc, which are stated as 320kbps) and when played through a very high quality loud system in a bar with a dancefloor full of people, it's sounded awful and muffled and this has really killed the mood. People know something doesn't sound quite right and it really kills the atmosphere. (that's from real life experience) It's horrible and embarrassing. All I can think of is, the mastering of the original may have been wonky, or these MP3s were either (accidental, since I'm not attempting to point fingers or anything) reencodes from a lossy source, or used an older, less efficient and fine tuned encoder. As an example, and you can search around these forums for this, the Bandcamp website has provided, on occasion, "lossless" files that almost certainly come from a lossy source, and a user on H-A asked them and they said that they don't force artists to send them genuine lossless files, just a lossless format whose source could very well be lossy. Which brings me to my point: if you know the source of the MP3, which you seemingly do as you have the original retail CDs, and use a modern encoder with a high enough setting, you should be in the clear.I'm not trying to be facetious or confrontational here. The thing is, with modern lossy encoders at a high enough setting, people are extremely unlikely to be able to successfully ABX them when comparing with the lossless original (barring killer samples and whatnot), and that's in a controlled environment, with good headphones. In a noisy social environment, such as a pub, it's a non-issue, imho Of course and I completely agree with you! This post was purely to do with me being a perfectionist/audiophille and obviously if I've got two options in front of me I want to pick the best. I just wasn't sure whether I was actually getting a very noticeable difference in quality as there is an obvious difference in the graphs. It just confused me a little. It may well be to do with the settings and I will continue to play with these. Through headphones no, maybe I can't tell the difference but if there is, I don't want the poorer quality track for my professional work. Cheers What you can do is, use both EAC and Audacity, ignore the spectrograms (because as it was pointed out to you, they reveal nothing, and as a matter of fact can be misleading since it could be possible to produce a spectrogram that looks more like the original but audibly sounds worse), and use a double-blind test, comparing the generated MP3s with the lossless original. If they sound indistinguishable to you on a setup involving a quiet room with a pair of quality headphones, they're going to sound just fine out there in the pub.