Phonograph Cylinder > Compact Disc

[roger]

Does anyone know of a program to convert the bit rate of an MP3 song?

I found one program (AudioCommander) that did convert the song, but it sounded horrible!

I found that I could save 10% of the total size of my music collection by using an average of 128kbps rather than what I have now (171 kbps). This amounts to 600Mb, and 125 more songs on my MP3 player.

Thanks!

[sylvester]

Originally Posted by roger

...but it sounded horrible!

That is a good sign. That is your own body defending itself against the onslaught of corrupted sound waves. If you are young man and you are satisfied with anything less than 320kbps (224kbps when under influence) then the problem is with your hearing. Or maybe you are just using bad headphones/speakers.

If you are a young person with normal hearing and cannot hear the improvement from going above 192kbps then my advice is to immediately lay away whatever you were using (inhaling,insufflating,injecting,etc.) It doesn't do anything good to your brain.

Notice that there's no smiley in my answer. I used to consult for the entertainment industry, I am speaking from experience and I'm fucking dead serious. If you have to use something, find what did people like Carlos Santana or Neil Young used to use when they were young. At least it didn't completely fried their brains.

[roger]

That is a good sign. That is your own body defending itself against the onslaught of corrupted sound waves. If you are young man and you are satisfied with anything less than 320kbps (224kbps when under influence) then the problem is with your hearing. Or maybe you are just using bad headphones/speakers.

Actually, I listened to the song before conversion (320kbps) and after (128kbps). Then I listened to another version of the song at 128kbps and found it ito be virtually identical to the 320kbps. This means the conversion/program itself was horrible, not the difference in bit rate.

If you are serious, used to consult for the entertainment industry, or whatever, why didn't you just answer the question? I see no harm in asking, nor in giving or recieving a decent answer.

Frankly, I don't see anything your post had to contribute here.

[davieddy]

The principle involved is analogous to lowering the
number of bits in a JPEG image.
A quick abd dirty expedient is to ignore the higher
frequency components of the fourier transform, but
for best results, you start from scratch with the
decompressed image/song.

David

[sylvester]

Originally Posted by roger

Frankly, I don't see anything your post had to contribute here.

I'm sorry I offended you.

I will repeat myself using different words. I (and other poeple like me) had been asked the question like yours many times. In the past people were asking how to slow down the tape speed in a tape recorder. The outcome was and is always the same, that the original problem was something totally different.

It is also interesting that in my experience women never ask this type of question. My suspiction is that this has something to do with women having genreally better hearing than men, with divergence starting earlier that the medical profession assumes (which is around 40 y.o.)

[retina]

Maybe roger is not very concerned about losing a small amount of clarity for the added advantage of gaining space for more tracks? Perhaps it has nothing to do with hearing loss because of drugs or age or whatever else and more to do with wanting more variety in the set of tracks available? Maybe roger CAN hear the difference in quality and is willing to accept it up to a certain point?

[Uncwilly]

This is a typical audiophile vs. convenience discussion.

78 rpm records (the real old records before LP's) have better sound resoultion than CD's. And CD's are better than MP3's.

Beta has better colour resolution than a DVD.



The audiophiles need to understand that many people prefer the convenience of portable devices and the ablity to carry huge number of songs. And get over it, most people that are listening to portables are not spending half their budget on their headphones.



BTW, I still try to buy my music as CD because they are better sound quality than the downloads.

[sylvester]

Originally Posted by retina

Maybe roger CAN hear the difference in quality and is willing to accept it up to a certain point?

Music listening has always been a social activity. Even if you have a supposedly personal device, you still are expected to occasionally let other people put on your headphones and listen to what you were listening. Since he's a young man, he'll probably be asking women to listen to his music collection.

I refuse to contribute to the self-imposed social isolation of any reader of this board.

Q: How many psychotherapists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Normally just one, but the lightbulb has to want to change.

With the above old joke I bid you gentlemen good night.

[roger]

Music listening has always been a social activity. Even if you have a supposedly personal device, you still are expected to occasionally let other people put on your headphones and listen to what you were listening.

I agree, but you seemed to have missed the point I made earlier: same bitrate mp3 files, one that had been converted from a higher bitrate and was subsequently much worse quality overall.

As for Uncwilly's post, I also agree that CDs are better than MP3s, and 78s sound much 'fuller' due to the little imperfections in the vinyl. And yes, it's convenience: I'm not going to carry around a record player, ghettoblaster, or CD player because of size limitations in both regards.

I just wanted a link to a conversion program that doesn't noticeably reduce quality while reducing the size of the file. This would hold me over until I could buy a much larger MP3 player.

Also, I don't see what gender has to do with this. The difference in quality is very small audibly, so the fact that women have better hearing is a moot point.

Basically, what retina said.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by roger

Also, I don't see what gender has to do with this. The difference in quality is very small audibly, so the fact that women have better hearing is a moot point.

By the time you get to my age, especially after spending 30+ years riding motorcycles and living with machine-room fans (not at the same time, I hasten to add), it's undoubtedly a mute point.

And to think that at age 14 I could hear a pure sine wave at 22kHz.

Paul

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by roger

As for Uncwilly's post, I also agree that CDs are better than MP3s, and 78s sound much 'fuller' due to the little imperfections in the vinyl.

Also, I don't see what gender has to do with this. The difference in quality is very small audibly, so the fact that women have better hearing is a moot point.

It is not the imperfections. It is the greater resolution. Running at 78 rpm around a 10" disc, there actually is more information than on a comperable CD track (wav file) of the same length. IIRC, a single CD (used for data, not a standard wav) is roughly the same content as a single song on an LP (33). To get the equivlent total data content as an ablum's worth of 78's, one would have to go beyond a DVD's capacity (Blu-Ray might do it.)

(As an aside re, "newer is always better" I would also point out the about accuracy of the Kentucky long rifle vs the M1 vs the modern frontline rifle, it has gone down, but the usefullness in combat is better. [The is not about sniper rifles.])

Men's hearing tends to degrade in the range of the human female voice. Yes we all lose the top end, but men's seems to center on more functional lose in the area that women speak. No joke.

Paul, are you familiar with the mosquito ring tones?

Roger, if you have the OG CD's, I would suggest that you re-rip the MP3's.
For various things audio I use WavePad, Audacity, and CDex. (All various levels of free.)