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Topic: Listening MP3's without clipping (Read 3120 times) previous topic - next topic
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Listening MP3's without clipping

How can I listen my MP3's without clipping the loud parts of the waveform? (If anyone does not know, MP3 can store sounds above 0dBFS. That's one of the reasons those makes MP3 superior.)

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #2 –
@maikmerten It's very hard to understand for me, what should I do with it to simply disable the clipping?

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #3 –
Or if you are using a software volume control and you're not at 100%, you won't clip the DAC.

Or, MP3Gain if your player doesn't support ReplayGain, or Mp3DirectCut can also normalize or make volume adjustments.  Both of these work without re-encoding the MP3.

Note that without re-encoding, MP3 can only be adjusted in 1.5dB steps so you'll be somewhere between 0dB and -1.5dB (or lower depending on the perceived loudness). 

Audacity can change volume by an arbitrary amount but like all "regular" audio editors it has to decompress the file first and if you re-export to MP3 you are going through another generation of lossy compression and the "damage" MIGHT be worse than the original clipping.

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(If anyone does not know, MP3 can store sounds above 0dBFS. That's one of the reasons those makes MP3 superior.)
But your DAC sill clips at 0dB and I wouldn't say that potential clipping makes it "superior".    And superior to what?

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MP3 can store sounds above 0dBFS
MP3 compression It also makes some peaks higher and some lower.  The newer peaks are unpredictable so many people lower the level by (or to) -1dB before MP3 encoding.

Many of my MP3s that were ripped from CDs go over 0dB and show (potential) clipping in Audacity.   But as far as I know, this slight clipping (when the uncompressed original didn't go over 0dB) has never been shown to be audible in an ABX test.    If you hear an MP3 compression artifact it probably won't go away by lowering the volume.     (It's not an "easy" ABX test because ABX tests have to be level-matched.)     It's not something I worry about but I wouldn't intentioinally push the peaks over 0dB before MP3 compression.

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what should I do with it to simply disable the clipping?
By default, ReplayGain lowers the volume to prevent clipping, but you can turn that feature off.    And it lowers the volume on MOST tracks anyway because many tracks (including many quiet sounding tracks) will clip if boosted.   That means the ONLY way it can match loudness (the whole point of ReplayGain) is by lowering the louder tracks,

P.S.
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one of the reasons those makes MP3 superior
MP3 also has more dynamic range than CD on the quiet-end, but in general CD has enough dynamic range for human listening and I wouldn't say that one characteristic makes it superior to CD.    I don't think MP3 it has an exact-specific  dynamic-bit resolution, but I think 24 bits has a wider range than MP3.



Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #4 –
> It's very hard to understand
> what should I do with it to simply disable the clipping?

A simple way is to make everything quieter by a few dB, right after decoding while it's still in floating point format (or even tell the decoder to decode quieter, LAME had such an option maybe).

> By default, ReplayGain …

I don't think it really mandates a default behaviour, it really depends on the implementation (specific player).
(It also depends on whether the files were scanned and tagged appropriately, of course.)

> MP3 also has more dynamic range than CD on the quiet-end

If we allow CDs to use dithering, it's probably not such an easy win, because MP3 (at least, the LAME encoder...) also uses a fixed absolute hearing threshold (unlike, say, Opus), which would affect the quiet end. If you encode the same recording with LAME/VBR but make it quieter before encoding, it will produce a smaller file, because it does discard some stuff that's too quiet compared to an absolute level. And there isn't an universal and easy way to compensate for that while guaranteeing that there will be no adverse side effects for quality.
Btw, Musepack also has an equivalent of absolute hearing threshold, but it can be easily tuned at least. (not just turn it on or off) so if it's automatically set in accordance with ReplayGain, then it's almost as if there was no absolute hearing threshold.
a fan of AutoEq + Meier Crossfeed

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #5 –
For your information, MOST floating-point based codec can save the above 0dB.

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Klymins on
How can I listen my MP3's without clipping the loud parts of the waveform? (If anyone does not know, MP3 can store sounds above 0dBFS. That's one of the reasons those makes MP3 superior.)
But if the consequence is clipping, does that not make it also inferior?!!

How about just turning the volume down?  Surely if the signal is as the DAC's full scale, you're either deafening yourself or the output driver is underpowered for the application.

If your source material contains sections which go over nominal FS, then clearly you need to be sure that your digital chain from the source to the output is capable of handling digital values in excess of nominal FS... but present that to the DAC and you cannot avoid clipping unless you scale the signal so that the peaks do not exceed the FS of the DAC.  So far as I'm concerned, that makes the ability to represent signals over nominal FS pointless with one exception: professional studio mastering, where the engineer will ensure the final product will not exceed FS.  But they won't be using MP3...

To prevent clipping you can either ensure the signal is scaled so that the peaks do not exceed FS (which is what ReplayGain can do for you automatically – it's not difficult), or you have to have some kind of compression operating which scales back just the loud passages (which might be applicable if you're listening in a noisy environment).  The aim of ReplayGain is to level the perceived loudness of tracks as a whole (or over an album), so it will still have the track dynamics – which might not be what you are asking for.  If you are asking to quieten just the loudest parts, you need a compressor in the signal chain.

In the context of FB2K, all you need to do to enable ReplayGain is select you whole library and then choose the ReplayGain operations on the right-click menu.  This will then scan your library and add a dB adjustment as a tag value, which can then be used to set the gain when each track is played.  It's non-destructive, and can be revised as and when according to experience and preference.

Of course, it is possible that the source material contains clipping if it wasn't mastered properly, which would mean you can't get rid of it no matter what you do when playing back.
It's your privilege to disagree, but that doesn't make you right and me wrong.

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #7 –
@fooball I don't want compression and I want my musics to be at the same volume with the other sounds, so is just lowering the volume to 75% or etc. from the Windows' volume mixer enough?

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Klymins on
@fooball I don't want compression and I want my musics to be at the same volume with the other sounds, so is just lowering the volume to 75% or etc. from the Windows' volume mixer enough?
That brings in a whole other problem you had not mentioned.  What other sounds?  Are you saying your music is too quiet relative to other sounds unless you drive it into clipping?

Whatever, I think you're on your own with that one.

I can't tell you whether 75% is sufficient to prevent clipping for any particular track, ReplayGain would look after that for you but it would level your music tracks relative to each other, not relative to system sounds.
It's your privilege to disagree, but that doesn't make you right and me wrong.

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #9 –
@fooball For example, Flash Player. I want my Foobar2000 to use the same volume as Flash Player. And, I want all of the tracks to be at the same volume. Also, Flash Player does not have builtin volume control or ReplayGain feature.

I'm not asking for the sufficient value. I mean, is lowering the volume from the Windows mixer enough?

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #10 –
By the way, I found that lowering the volume from the Windows mixer does not do anything. So, what can I do for that?

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #11 –
I am using rsgain and find it quite good. You should give it a try.

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #12 –
@temp1 How it works?

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Klymins on
By the way, I found that lowering the volume from the Windows mixer does not do anything. So, what can I do for that?
You mean for FB2K?  That will depend what output you have selected for it.

Quote from: Klymins on
I want my Foobar2000 to use the same volume as Flash Player. And, I want all of the tracks to be at the same volume. Also, Flash Player does not have builtin volume control or ReplayGain feature.
In which case your only choice is to use system volume for everything and output from FB2K at full gain (in non-exclusive mode).

You are asking too much I think, especially when you started this complaining about clipping.  Concentrate on one player.

Quote from: Klymins on
I'm not asking for the sufficient value. I mean, is lowering the volume from the Windows mixer enough?
I've already said, it depends why it's clipping... and you said the Windows mixer makes no difference!
It's your privilege to disagree, but that doesn't make you right and me wrong.

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #15 –
On another thread, you say you like to play very low bitrate MP3 under flash player because it resamples badly to the soundcard's sample rate, causing aliasing.
And then you ask here how could you avoid the effect of digital clipping the output of the MP3. (a rather small problem compared to that)

If the player works in integer domain, the only possibility is the one that was mentioned: using MP3Gain to alter the source MP3 files to not clip. (If the player is very bad and doesn't even know how to digitally clip, it could cause integer overflow, which sound really bad)

If the player works in decimal (floating) domain, then using a volume control inside the player, or using an audio API that can receive the signal in decimal domain and reducing the volume in the OS mixer can also avoid the clipping.

People here is used to Replaygain, and usually players let the user tweak it to their needs ( prevent clipping always or don't care, amplify more or less over the replaygain value, consider the gain of the whole album or individually track by track....).
It's difficult to be sure of what your needs would be.

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #17 –
I normalize the whole songs' true peak to -17db to stay at -15db or under after converting to MP3, that way even if there are huge intersample peaks of even 10db I still have 5db extra of headroom for the DAC, this way the music will sound very clean.

Re: Listening MP3's without clipping

Reply #18 –
Quote from: Molledix on
I normalize the whole songs' true peak to -17db to stay at -15db or under after converting to MP3, that way even if there are huge intersample peaks of even 10db I still have 5db extra of headroom for the DAC, this way the music will sound very clean.
-17 dB is quite a lot and possibly excessive. If you expect MP3 compression to sometimes add up to +2 dB to peaks, just normalize your source to -2 dBFS

Also, good DACs should handle intersample peaks at least a few dB over 0 dBFS. If your DAC can't handle intersample overs and you're worried about it, lower your input another 3 dB or so (overs are very rarely more than +3 dBFS). So your input can be normalized to -5 dBFS to account for up to +2 dB for MP3 conversion and up to +3 dB for intersample overs.
Christopher