[Music] So why did MP3 become the most popular format?

[Rob D]

Well, ignoring for a moment the flavour of a bridge-substructure symbiont posting, here is an insight of why MP3 was the format to be.

First, back in them olden days when men where still men, women still women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri still small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, a normal MP3 players capacity was not rated like today in GByte but in it's lower cousin MByte, say, 124 mbyte or ram. Which meant a lower quality rip could spell the difference of having 30 songs on it, versus only 10. Also, back in them olden days, when the mp3 players still either ran on steam power or illegal plutonium charges, the soundchips were even worse than what they are today.
Also they were never meant to give the ears of audiophiles a sound orgasm, but they were merely meant as replacement for the walkmen that used tapes (yes, some people would have to look up what tape or audio cassette means nowadays). If one was into aural sex, they usually did that in their seclusion of their home where they had a stereo system.

[semaphore]

The quality of a format depends greatly upon both the encoder and the settings used. It's been a long time since I used MP3, but I remember back in the day that the LAME version was vastly superior to the reference MP3 implementation from Fraunhofer, for example. So I think Kuukl1 is right, your methodology is rather sloppy and the results should not be taken seriously. MP3 ought to be able to deliver very good quality if you use a serious encoder like LAME. I've never used this "Total Audio Converter v3.0.88" before, but it looks like one of those convenience programs that sacrifices quality in exchange for user-friendliness, and probably has a built in MP3 codecs that's subpar compared with LAME.

I was under the impression that MP3 ruled supreme also due to the fact that the alternative codecs at the time just weren't up to par when it came to distribution and applications that could encode it. I think that WMA lost that battle because it's technically proprietary and can have DRM in it, something that people did not want when P2P was all the rage, and the fact that a program must own a license to encode into WMA, unlike MP3.

It's also because MP3 was out for so long that there was a great deal of support for it, both for encoding and playback, while the newer codecs were not as well optimised and so was only better in theory.

[Xuvial]

Can anyone recommend me a solid program that can reliably convert FLAC to MP3? And don't just Google it, recommend it from experience :P because my MP3 encoder could possibly be doing a terrible job. I'll be happy to test.

[Sensei_Sin]

It's also important to notice when a codec is practically better or just theoretically better. At what level can the average user notice the differences? What would the average user need to take advantage of the theoretical advantage of one codec over the other?

[Riggsmeister]

Very interesting to read this. I have a lot of albums in FLAC format and it will be great if i can keep the quality with a reduced filesize. But i need some more insight in the conversion. Total Audio Converter looks nice from the short video i've seen, might give it a bash.

[Promark]

Any particular reason that you left Vorbis or aoTuV off the list? Especially considering that you are using an orchestral piece as your basis.

[Deleted]

Source needed.

Yes, actually, it's largely irrelevant on V0(220-260) not 192.
Keep in mind, the sample rate is also very important. Lower sample rates make music sound darker, and high frequencies aren't as accurate. You could keep the quality if you recorded in 96kHz, and then converted it into 44.1kHz. Who knows how are OP's files ripped.
The placebo plays a big part in this, too. The ideal thing would be if he could show us the objective analysis graph from an audio analyzer of some sort.
Of course, there is no doubt that .FLAC and .wav files are of greater sonic quality.

this reminds me of video format, where we're still using .avi's over the MUCH better .mp4 or the godly .mkv

Umm, lol. .mkv is just a compressed "folder" which can store audio and video formats such as .avi, .mp4, or the today's most popular for HD movies - h.264(which is also .mp4, but better quality per megabit).

[Xuvial]

They were ripped at 48khz sample rate, the highest available for me : /
Considering the card supports sample rates up to 192khz, I'd really like to get my hands on something running at that rate for comparison purposes :P

[semaphore]

Can anyone recommend me a solid program that can reliably convert FLAC to MP3? And don't just Google it, recommend it from experience :P because my MP3 encoder could possibly be doing a terrible job. I'll be happy to test.

LAME is universally considered the best MP3 encoder.

[Cute Chen]

Can anyone recommend me a solid program that can reliably convert FLAC to MP3? And don't just Google it, recommend it from experience :P because my MP3 encoder could possibly be doing a terrible job. I'll be happy to test.

Have you tried Audacity?

[Nazrark]

QWERTY keyboard was intentionally designed to help build strength in the fingers of the people who used typewriters. Just saying...

[ragingsoul]

my question would more be:
what are you listening your music on?
where are you listening it (big room, small)?
what card do you have?
how is is everything connection (analog, digital)?
What settings are you using (is something enhancing the output or changing the amplitude (dB) )?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but giving the little information you gave, most of your findings can just be related to any of the above questions.
Systems are not perfect, some frequencies sometimes are not handle the same way.
Doesn't necessary means the codecs are at faults.

[Deleted]

They were ripped at 48khz sample rate, the highest available for me : /
Considering the card supports sample rates up to 192khz, I'd really like to get my hands on something running at that rate for comparison purposes :P

Yeah, but we don't know what sample rate was each of the files before compressing.
I have Reason, and every sound sounds better when it's in 96kHz mode. But if you export the file as a, let's say .wav, in 44.1kHz, you get the sound which would be as if you made it in 44.1kHz. But if you export as 96kHz and then you compress it, for an example, with audacity to 44.1kHz, 320kbps mp3(LAME encoder of course) you don't lose those sounds. Maybe there's a difference, but I personally can't notice it.

[Xuvial]

Alright I will use Audacity with LAME MP3 encoder plugin, that should get the job done. I'll report back soon

[DeltrusDisc]

QWERTY keyboard was intentionally designed to help build strength in the fingers of the people who used typewriters. Just saying...

False, it was designed so that the first pins or whatever they were didn't get screwed up together, at least not as often as it would with other layouts.

This fact was up on overclock.net (or overclockers.com, whichever one had the recent overhaul) during their updating.

---------- Post added 2011-11-13 at 03:10 AM ----------

my question would more be:
what are you listening your music on?
where are you listening it (big room, small)?
what card do you have?
how is is everything connection (analog, digital)?
What settings are you using (is something enhancing the output or changing the amplitude (dB) )?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but giving the little information you gave, most of your findings can just be related to any of the above questions.
Systems are not perfect, some frequencies sometimes are not handle the same way.
Doesn't necessary means the codecs are at faults.

Most of this is in his signature, and I'm well aware what it is, it's a setup I drool over and wish I could have:

Sennheiser HD558s and an Asus Xonar Essence STX.

[semaphore]

Audacity apparently uses LAME binaries/encoders to do the job, so I'll use it and report back. Thanks!

Actually you'll have to download and install it separately IIRC, but yes give that a try.

[Xuvial]

my question would more be:
what are you listening your music on?
where are you listening it (big room, small)?
what card do you have?
how is is everything connection (analog, digital)?
What settings are you using (is something enhancing the output or changing the amplitude (dB) )?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but giving the little information you gave, most of your findings can just be related to any of the above questions.
Systems are not perfect, some frequencies sometimes are not handle the same way.
Doesn't necessary means the codecs are at faults.

> headphones
> n/a
> Xonar STX
> 6.3mm audio jack
> headphone amp set to high gain (12db for 64-300ohms)
> equalizer: custom


Although I don't know why these settings are important since I'm simply COMPARING one format to another, they're all being put through exactly the same settings.

[huth]

QWERTY keyboard was intentionally designed to help build strength in the fingers of the people who used typewriters. Just saying...

Not build strength, but to limit typing speed and keep often used characters further apart to prevent jamming on old mechanical typewriters. If you wanted to build strength, it would be more sensible to make them harder to press.

Yes, it's intentionally inefficient and doesn't really make any sense with modern typewriters or computers.

[Baphomette]

They were ripped at 48khz sample rate, the highest available for me : /

Don't see any information on the source, but if you are ripping from CD 44.1KHz is going to produce higher quality than 48KHz (which will introduce aliasing).

Best results will be from a sound card that doesn't internally convert frequencies. Dunno if the one in your sig does, I haven't kept up with any of Creative's "upgrades" recently.

[Deleted]

All of this music is in his signature, and I'm well aware what it is, it's a setup I drool over and wish I could have:

Sennheiser HD558s and an Asus Xonar Essence STX.

He needs studio headphones with flat frequency response. Not sure if these sennheisers are, googled them, it just says they have phat bass.
That's one beast soundcard, though.

You ought to put it on neutral if you want to test it properly.