Sound Quality

[healimonster]

I have downloaded an album. The MP3 on my coputer sound fine. I burnt them to disk at 12k speed, and played them on my computer off the disk, and I am pretty sure it sounded fine.

Then I played them in my car and they sounded auwful. Seemingly little gaps in the music every withen each second. The disk started off fine, and then as the music became more intense it seemed like the quality of the music got worse.

What is this problem?
Would recording it to disk at a lower speed (2k) fix this problem?
Is it just my picky car CD player?

thanks for any help or advice.

[noneofexion]

if it didn't skip at all when playing on your computer, then it's probably your car cd player being picky. sometimes if you burn audio discs at higher speeds they'll skip on certain players (high-speed burning in general can cause problems with any kind of disc burning). it depends on a lot of things, but basically record it again at 2x to really test it, and see if that helps. if it doesn't your car cd player may not like cd-r's in general...

[healimonster]

Thanks.

It should be noted it is not a traditional skip by any means. It sounds more like music is missing.

The car cdplayer has played burnt cds in the past.
I will give it a better listen on my stero at home and then reburn it at 2k.

[lilpimp]

try burning that junt at 8x

[Jibbler]

CD burning speed is hardly an issue anymore. New burners, those purchased within the past 3 years, have big buffers, so that data is fed smoothly. No more "buffer underrun" errors. Better to find a better source file. I only burn mp3s encoded in 192kbps or higher. This gives the best results, and doesn't take up too much space. 128kbps used to be the "standard" but bigger hard drives have allowed for better rips since space is becoming less of an issue.--

Jibbler

[Shinigami_[R.I.P.]]

Do you know of a program that can rip higher than 192 kbps? I currently use WMP for extraction then user a different proggy for converting to MP3's...

[Jibbler]

Since I don't do my own rips, I couldn't offer you any advice regarding that. However I have downloaded a fair number of 192 and 256 rips. I think you can do 320kbps too, though you really don't see that very often, due to their size.--

Jibbler

[Shinigami_[R.I.P.]]

It's alright. I'll keep searching. :)

[healimonster]

This is probably up for debat but this is what I believe to be the best way to rip HQ MP3's
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Why Only Exact Audio Copy? Why Is [Insert Your Favorite Ripping Software Here] Inferior?

EAC is the only software that offers an option known as 'secure mode'. What is secure mode? In layman's terms it means that your drive reads each section of the CD at least twice. If there are any differences, EAC will attempt to re-read those sections until it finds a match.

Why is this good? Because it means you are assured a 100% perfect digital audio extraction of your CD (in .WAV format naturally). It also means if you've got some CDs that have been scratched, EAC will re-read the scratched section of the CD until it is confident the rip is perfect.

As I mentioned above, there is no reason to bother using a good MP3 encoder on a WAV that is not a perfect copy of the audio on the CD. There is no excuse not to use EAC, it's free.

And no, no other ripper is as good as EAC. Trust me. This is the one you want to use.

Alright, So What's The Best MP3 Encoder?

Oh there's so many choices aren't there? Well, it would be more accurate to say there's many options, but really only one choice you should consider.

You probably already know what a bit-rate is, most of the MP3s you listen to are probably at a bit-rate of 128kb/s, 160kb/s, or 192kb/s. You probably also know that the higher a bit-rate goes, the more disk space you are eating up. (Once again, you see how you don't get something for nothing).

So what's the best bit-rate? Well hold on there, not so fast. We've only talked about constant bit-rates so far. When you have an MP3 that plays at a constant bit-rate of 160kb/s throughout the song, you can say "This MP3 was encoded at 160kb/s CBR." (CBR is an acronym for constant bit-rate).

But what if the bit-rate could fluctuate throughout the song? Perhaps during complex parts of the song it could rise way up, all the way to 320kb/s, to retain all the quality of the original CD sound. And then during 'simple' sections it could lower back down to save disk space. Wouldn't that be the ultimate MP3?

Well luckily other's thought that would be ideal as well, and that's the whole basis of 'Variable Bit Rate' (VBR) encoding.

Let's say Johnny encodes a Metallica song using a constant bit-rate of 160kb/s, and the size of his MP3 turns out to be 4 megabytes.

Along comes Susie, and she decideds to encode the same song, using variable bit-rate. During a heavy guitar riff the bit-rate zooms up to 320kb/s, because that can be difficult for an encoder to encode properly at lower bit-rates. Then during some quiet vocal sections, the bit-rate drops down to 128bk/s, because you don't need a very high bit-rate to maintain the quality of simple vocals.

It turns out Susie ends up with a file that is also 4 megabytes, so who's MP3 is better? Why Susie's of course! She's managed to maintain all of the quality throughout the song. During the heavy guitar riff's, Johnny might find that 160kb/s wasn't enough, and if he listens carefully it won't be as 'crisp' or as pure as the original CD audio.

You may have heard that VBR MP3s had some problems, and a long time ago that was true. However, VBR is now accepted as the best way to encode, and there is only ONE option you need to consider, LAME.

Yes, that's right, the highest quality MP3 encoder you can get is called LAME, and it's free. Maybe you've heard of LAME, maybe you haven't, but either way it's what you'll want to use!
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that was cut and pasted from a cmyden post on October 02, 2002 @ 05:54am

here is the entire article:
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/articles/auto/10012002d

[FuNkY CaPrIcOrN]

;) I Rip CDs at 192 bitrate using LAME 3.92 CBR(constant bit-rate) in stereo.

Sounds fine to me....have compared them to the actual CDs listened to in a car,home stereo and on PC speakers.....can not tell a difference.

["The Avatar Man"]

Originally posted by Shinigami@4 March 2003 - 02:43
Do you know of a program that can rip higher than 192 kbps? I currently use WMP for extraction then user a different proggy for converting to MP3's...
Use musicmatch it can rip at up to 320 kbs in mp3 format.
you are losing quality when you convert from windows media to mp3 :(
It is FAR better to just rip in mp3 to begin with
Musicmatch can be easily found on kazaa ;)

[N£MO]

I usually use EAC,but after reading the zeropaid article im going to try LAME...thanks for bringing this to my attention ;)

[noneofexion]

New burners, those purchased within the past 3 years, have big buffers, so that data is fed smoothly. No more "buffer underrun" errors. Better to find a better source file.

That's true, but the faster you burn the more errors you get because its spinning many times faster and the dye in the recording layer has to react faster. The better the media and drive quality, the less of an issue this is. High-speed recording is more likely to cause jitter than lower-speeds, regardless of buffer size. Most of the errors go unnoticed because they can be corrected by the internal hardware (even though there are more of them) but some players will have more trouble with it. It depends on the media too. High-speed media may not perform well at low speeds.

http://www.cloversystems.com/answers.htm#Q8

More information on discs not playing in certain players here:
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/15634

[healimonster]

for the record, i re-recorded the album using musicmatch (instead of nero @12k) which i think defaults to a 8k write speed and the disk played in my card cd player error free today.