MP3: V0 or 320?

that's a bit much; i mean led zeppelin albums were all recorded to analogue tape; how much frequency response do you really need on recordings made with much more limited tech and the obvious effect this had on recording quality?

  On 11/12/2010 at 8:26 AM, Greg Reason said:

  On 11/11/2010 at 1:08 PM, Backson said:

i struggle to tell the difference between a WAV and a mid quality MP3

 

which scares me cos I'm studying to be an audio engineer.

 

A good way to develop your hearing is to take a track you know very well and convert it to a variety of qualities and do direct comparison starting from lowest to highest. In order to remove any additional artifacts, make each conversion directly from the original WAV. So something like this would be good:

 

64kps 128kps 160kps 192kps 256kps 320kps FLAC WAV

 

Hearing them from worst to best or conversely, best to worst, helps make clearer how the differing levels of compression affect the sound of the track. The most noticeable difference between an mp3 and a FLAC or WAV is the extreme top end, as high frequency soundwaves are much smaller than low frequency soundwaves. Converting to mp3 discards part of the audio and thus bass sounds can make it through slightly more intact whereas toppy sounds suffer, especially cymbals, vocals and ambience/reverb.

yea, minimal percussion is one of the first things to go when quality is lowered.

you'd need better sound technology to really hear the difference, obviously. not sure if you tried that or not, backson