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Topic: My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please (Read 6830 times) previous topic - next topic
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My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please

Hello everyone. I wanted to better the quality of my songs because some of them were really old. This is what I did(i think i effed up), I encoded my music to 320kbps Dual Channel at Constant and then went to my car to listen to my music through bluetooth and the bass was gone even when I turned the bass all the way up in my car. Then I tried with my audio-technica ATH-M50 and everything was fine I could hear the music maybe it was bc it was turned up all the way on my phone. On my computer the music seems fine.  So what is the issue is it because car stereos don,t support Dual Channel? Is it because of the bluetooth?

I wanted to also ask a few questions in addition

joint stereo
dual channel
stereo

what is the difference? which is better for cars?

when encoding is it better to do constant, average, or variable

My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please

Reply #1
If you start with a lossy codec (like mp3) then any further encoding will further degrade quality. A lossy codec always tries to take away from what you give it. It cannot add lost information.

The lame mp3 encoder supports these options for "mode":
(j)oint, (s)imple, (f)orce, (d)ual-mono, (m)ono (l)eft ®ight

Joint, simple and force are all different stereo coding methods. The other modes result in mono.

If you don't know what this means then don't change the defaults!




"I hear it when I see it."

My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please

Reply #2
Joint stereo is best for quality, and variable bitrate give best quality/size ratio.

My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please

Reply #3
It sounds like your car amplifier/stereo system isn't set up right if lacking bass only on that playback system.  Those AudioTechnica headphones are pretty high quality so I think they'd probably be pretty reliable.  You will want to test out some kind of regular non-automobile stereo to be sure that you didn't make an encoding mistake such as high pass filtering (which would reduce the bass). 

On an unrelated note, in the MP3 format, joint stereo, which is the default, causes some of the lower frequencies, especially the very low ones, to collapse to mono while preserving the stereo content of the high frequencies.  This usually isn't a noticeable loss of quality unless you are extremely aware of some wide bass tunes.  The convention comes from the psychoacoustical idea that on speakers, the bass frequencies are less directional in terms of our human hearing.  Because of that, it's harder to tell if something is panned in the bass frequencies.  So the MP3 codec exploits that shortcoming of human hearing and just collapses to mono the frequencies most likely to be heard lacking directional characteristics. 

The caveat of this practice, is that it's based upon listening to speakers and not headphones.  But now isn't then.  More and more people are listening to music on headphones and  not  on speakers. 
So if your the creator of your own tunes and you had wide bass in them, you might notice some of the bass seems less spacious after lossy encoding to MP3 with the joint stereo setting on. 

The joint stereo is efficient, but at the minor cost of the lost "side"(s) of the bass, amongst other things.  You can avoid this by encoding to "stereo" instead of "joint stereo".  "Dual mono" would also work and at a high rate of 320 kbps constant, there wouldn't likely be any perceptible loss of quality for the mostpart.  320 kbps CBR is pretty robust for the ears. 

The other caveat is that in most encoding softwares, "joint stereo" is the default setting instead of "stereo".  So seeing stereo encoded MP3's is actually still kind of rare.  People will argue for joint stereo in terms of encoding efficiency--that it's an advantage.  But personally, I see no problem with opting for the setting that is the LEAST lossy since hard drive space and portable media player space is pretty abundant and still getting bigger.  You can still have all the advantages of MP3 without having to jump to FLAC for actual lossless.  So you can see it's a nice medium compromise if your player can't do FLAC (yet).  A simpler way of saying this is to say that 320 kbps CBR MP3's are still pretty tiny compared to the source WAV's or AIFF's. 

One more important note:  IN SOME OTHER CODECS, JOINT STEREO HAS A DIFFERENT MEANING BECAUSE OF A DIFFERENT PURPOSE AND IMPLEMENTATION.  THAT'S WHY SOME GET CONFUSED;  SAME WITH MID-SIDE. 

But I don't think that the joint/stereo/dual mono/mono is the issue you had.  I think it's probably something about the playback chain in the car that's messed up.  You'll have to do more checking to find out for yourself.
Be a false negative of yourself!

My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please

Reply #4
Strange....  MP3 encoding shouldn't have hurt the bass.  Bluetooth shouldn't be loosing any bass either....

Quote
I encoded my music to 320kbps Dual Channel at Constant and then went to my car to listen to my music through bluetooth and the bass was gone
What did you convert/encode from?  What are you comparing the bass to?  The original CD?    A previous MP3 version?  Are you comparing A/B or from memory?

Are you hearing bass from other recordings in your car?  Maybe something happened to your car stereo...

If you have the original copy,  compare the original to your new MP3 on your computer speakers or headphones.  Do your best to match the volume in both cases.    That will tell you if the MP3 encoding killed the bass, or if it's something else.

Quote
Then I tried with my audio-technica ATH-M50 and everything was fine I could hear the music maybe it was bc it was turned up all the way on my phone.
I can't imagine how this could have happened, but if the phase/polarity of one channel is reversed the sound waves will cancel and this will be especially noticeable in the bass.  However, with headphones the left & right sound waves never mix so you won't loose the bass.



------------------------------------------------------
Joint Stereo is almost always best.  It's basically just "smarter" compression that saves space by encoding sounds that common to both channels only once.    It doesn't hurt the stereo information and the quality is usually better (at a given bitrate) since those "bits" can be used for something useful instead of saving/encoding the same thing twice.

Of course MP3 is lossy compression, but the stereo-to-M/S conversion which is the basis for Joint Stereo is lossless and completely reversible.

My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please

Reply #5
It sounds like your car amplifier/stereo system isn't set up right if lacking bass only on that playback system.  Those AudioTechnica headphones are pretty high quality so I think they'd probably be pretty reliable.  You will want to test out some kind of regular non-automobile stereo to be sure that you didn't make an encoding mistake such as high pass filtering (which would reduce the bass). 

On an unrelated note, in the MP3 format, joint stereo, which is the default, causes some of the lower frequencies, especially the very low ones, to collapse to mono while preserving the stereo content of the high frequencies.  This usually isn't a noticeable loss of quality unless you are extremely aware of some wide bass tunes.  The convention comes from the psychoacoustical idea that on speakers, the bass frequencies are less directional in terms of our human hearing.  Because of that, it's harder to tell if something is panned in the bass frequencies.  So the MP3 codec exploits that shortcoming of human hearing and just collapses to mono the frequencies most likely to be heard lacking directional characteristics. 

The caveat of this practice, is that it's based upon listening to speakers and not headphones.  But now isn't then.  More and more people are listening to music on headphones and  not  on speakers. 
So if your the creator of your own tunes and you had wide bass in them, you might notice some of the bass seems less spacious after lossy encoding to MP3 with the joint stereo setting on. 

The joint stereo is efficient, but at the minor cost of the lost "side"(s) of the bass, amongst other things.  You can avoid this by encoding to "stereo" instead of "joint stereo".  "Dual mono" would also work and at a high rate of 320 kbps constant, there wouldn't likely be any perceptible loss of quality for the mostpart.  320 kbps CBR is pretty robust for the ears. 

The other caveat is that in most encoding softwares, "joint stereo" is the default setting instead of "stereo".  So seeing stereo encoded MP3's is actually still kind of rare.  People will argue for joint stereo in terms of encoding efficiency--that it's an advantage.  But personally, I see no problem with opting for the setting that is the LEAST lossy since hard drive space and portable media player space is pretty abundant and still getting bigger.  You can still have all the advantages of MP3 without having to jump to FLAC for actual lossless.  So you can see it's a nice medium compromise if your player can't do FLAC (yet).  A simpler way of saying this is to say that 320 kbps CBR MP3's are still pretty tiny compared to the source WAV's or AIFF's. 

One more important note:  IN SOME OTHER CODECS, JOINT STEREO HAS A DIFFERENT MEANING BECAUSE OF A DIFFERENT PURPOSE AND IMPLEMENTATION.  THAT'S WHY SOME GET CONFUSED;  SAME WITH MID-SIDE. 

But I don't think that the joint/stereo/dual mono/mono is the issue you had.  I think it's probably something about the playback chain in the car that's messed up.  You'll have to do more checking to find out for yourself.


Thank you for the information. I forgot to mention that i had already encoded my music to dual channel then to joint stereo constant because phone couldn't play my songs with dual channel. Also that I used my phone to connect with a bluetooth to the fm transmitter, which then connected by transmitting the signals to the radio station of my choice.

So how do I get FLAC and is there a place where I can download my music with the best settings? Is there also a shortcut to having a program look at your playlist then find the music online and download all yours songs? (1030 songs)



My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please

Reply #6
If you start with a lossy codec (like mp3) then any further encoding will further degrade quality. A lossy codec always tries to take away from what you give it. It cannot add lost information.

The lame mp3 encoder supports these options for "mode":
(j)oint, (s)imple, (f)orce, (d)ual-mono, (m)ono (l)eft ®ight

Joint, simple and force are all different stereo coding methods. The other modes result in mono.

If you don't know what this means then don't change the defaults!



Thank you, so if I used "Freemake video convert" to download from youtube then convert to mp3 and set it to 320kbps stereo it should be fine?

My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please

Reply #7
What did you convert/encode from?  What are you comparing the bass to?  The original CD?    A previous MP3 version?  Are you comparing A/B or from memory?

Are you hearing bass from other recordings in your car?  Maybe something happened to your car stereo...

If you have the original copy,  compare the original to your new MP3 on your computer speakers or headphones.  Do your best to match the volume in both cases.    That will tell you if the MP3 encoding killed the bass, or if it's something else.
------------------------------------------------------
Joint Stereo is almost always best.  It's basically just "smarter" compression that saves space by encoding sounds that common to both channels only once.    It doesn't hurt the stereo information and the quality is usually better (at a given bitrate) since those "bits" can be used for something useful instead of saving/encoding the same thing twice.

Of course MP3 is lossy compression, but the stereo-to-M/S conversion which is the basis for Joint Stereo is lossless and completely reversible.


I used free-make video converter, used YouTube then downloaded the song as mp3 320 bits Stereo. Then used mp3 quality modifier to changed it to dual channel constant320bits, found out my phone cant play dual channel so changed it again to joint stereo 320 bits constant. I tested with a car cassette that lets me plug it into my phone on my dads car and the bass was there, then I tried the cassette it worked for a bit because my cassette player is broken but I can hear the bass. So I think it was the fact that I use the bluetooth to connect to my fm transmitter which then transmits the signal to my car stereo.

So should I re download all my songs again, and where from. I dont know what to do :/

My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please

Reply #8
Quote
So how do I get FLAC and is there a place where I can download my music with the best settings?
A few artists allow FLAC downloads, but in general you have to create the FLAC yourself from the CD.   

Quote
Is there also a shortcut to having a program look at your playlist then find the music online and download all yours songs? (1030 songs)
There are online "storage" services that work something like that.  I'm pretty sure they are all lossy formats, but I assume the quality is adequate.

Quote
Thank you, so if I used "Freemake video convert" to download from youtube then convert to mp3 and set it to 320kbps stereo it should be fine?
The weak link is PROBABLY YouTube...  Either the quality uploaded or the YouTube compression.  By the time you re-encode it again, it may have been through 3 lossy compression steps!

At this point, I'd suggest finding a good sounding CD and ripping it to MP3, or buy a good quality download from Amazon or iTunes.  Load it onto your phone and try it in your car.    That will help you determine if the problem is the quality of the download or something in your playback chain. 


Quote
So should I re download all my songs again, and where from.
Amazon, or iTunes, or from the artist's website, or buy the CDs, etc.      If the songs are popular, I'm sure you can find high-quality pirated music online, but I don't do that and I don't know where the pirated files are these days...  And we don't condone piracy here...  It's against the forum rules:

TOS #9:
Quote
9. All members must refrain from posting links to -- or information regarding how to obtain -- copyrighted or illegal material. Discussion containing information of how to obtain such material, how to bypass protection methodologies of such material, or how to otherwise violate laws pertaining to such matters will not be tolerated, and participating members may be subject to administrative action.




My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please

Reply #9
TOS #9:
Quote
9. All members must refrain from posting links to -- or information regarding how to obtain -- copyrighted or illegal material. Discussion containing information of how to obtain such material, how to bypass protection methodologies of such material, or how to otherwise violate laws pertaining to such matters will not be tolerated, and participating members may be subject to administrative action.



Sorry about that.

My songs lost all their bass....HELP ME please

Reply #10
On an unrelated note, in the MP3 format, joint stereo, which is the default, causes some of the lower frequencies, especially the very low ones, to collapse to mono while preserving the stereo content of the high frequencies.  This usually isn't a noticeable loss of quality unless you are extremely aware of some wide bass tunes.  The convention comes from the psychoacoustical idea that on speakers, the bass frequencies are less directional in terms of our human hearing.  Because of that, it's harder to tell if something is panned in the bass frequencies.  So the MP3 codec exploits that shortcoming of human hearing and just collapses to mono the frequencies most likely to be heard lacking directional characteristics. 

The joint stereo is efficient, but at the minor cost of the lost "side"(s) of the bass, amongst other things. 

The other caveat is that in most encoding softwares, "joint stereo" is the default setting instead of "stereo".  So seeing stereo encoded MP3's is actually still kind of rare.

One more important note:  IN SOME OTHER CODECS, JOINT STEREO HAS A DIFFERENT MEANING BECAUSE OF A DIFFERENT PURPOSE AND IMPLEMENTATION.  THAT'S WHY SOME GET CONFUSED;  SAME WITH MID-SIDE.


Given the fact that you seem an informed person, I do not understand why you say that joint stereo is not meant for bass sounds. We are talking about MP3, and specifically 2015's MP3 files, not 1998s MP3 files.


Most current codecs use Mid Side encoding, just like you said, but so does MP3.  Only MP2 and very old implementations of MP3 use Intensity Stereo, which is the one that would "exploit the shortcoming of human hearing and collapse to mono".
(In fact, there are some codecs, including Vorbis that do collapse to mono gracefully when targeting low to very low bitrates, but that's another story).


In LAME encoder, joint stereo (as it has been explained in several places, incluiding its own documentation) switches between (simple) stereo and mid-side stereo during the stream depending on factors that include how wide the stereo image is. (using mid-side on a wide stereo sound doesn't help compression)

Said that, with LAME, suggesting that simple stereo is a better setting that joint-stereo is sharing misinformation.

If you have something that contradicts what I've suggested here, please share it.