Sep 9, 2009
Why mp3s suck, and how to hear it
I hate mp3, and this post will tell you why.
DO NOT read this post if you have a large collection of mp3s, enjoy listening to them and can’t hear any problems with them, because it’ll ruin them for you !
There’s been plenty written on how mp3 works, and why lossy compression sounds worse than uncompressed audio in general. My aim here is to demonstrate how mp3 sounds bad, for all the people who keep telling me there’s no difference.
I’m going to give you clear guidelines and examples on what to listen for and the negative effects of mp3, but there’s no going back – once you can hear the problems, you’ll never stop hearing them.
This isn’t limited to audiophiles, or “golden ears”, by the way – in my opinion anyone can hear this stuff, with a few pointers.
So seriously, unless you’re prepared to start using Ogg Vorbis, FLAC or AAC - stop reading now !
Still here ? Good.
First, I need to make this clear – I have nothing against lossy audio or data compression in itself – I do most of my casual listening on an iPod, using 128kbps AAC files – they sound fine. Not as good as the original CDs, obviously, but OK. And yes, I’m well aware that AAC is just a more advanced version of mp3. But the fact is that mp3 has fundamental limitations – even at higher bitrates.
Next – I’m also a pragmatist. mp3 is a temporary phenomenon, just like AM radio, cassettes and CDs. In the long run, none of those have killed music, and neither will mp3, or lossy compression in general. So, why the rant ?
Because people keep saying mp3 sounds great, or “indistinguishable from CD” and it’s just not true.
mp3 isn’t good enough
It doesn’t matter what encoder you use, it doesn’t matter what settings you use or what pre-processing you apply – mp3 just doesn’t cut it. AAC and later, more sophisticated encoders use more advanced encoding methods, and sound better to varying degrees, but mp3 just FAILs.
How does it fail ? That depends a little on the encoder being used, but some of my own pet hates include:
- mp3 sizzle – the artificial, unnatural swirling metallic noises that sound like someone’s added chime bars to everything, or there’s a mosquito buzzing in your ear. Some people actually say we prefer these noises in mp3s – I say bullshizzle !
- Added distortion – Yet another side effect of the so-called Loudness Wars. mp3 encoders rarely include any headroom for the encoding process itself, so the added processing pushes the music even further over the limits, generating inter-sample peaks and adding even more distortion in the process
- Flat, two-dimensional sound mp3 works by throwing away musical information that we supposedly can’t hear – up to 90% of the original information, at 128kbps. That means all the subtle, delicate stuff, like ambience, space and realism. So a lush, three-dimension original is reduced to a flat, cardboard replica of itself
- Mushiness All but the very best mp3 encodes just sound fuzzy, muddled and – well, mushy !
Hear for yourself
Don’t take my word for it – here are some examples. First, a truly nasty 128kbps mp3 example, from a Deep Purple live album I mixed a while back:
Please install Flash plugin
(Before anyone jumps on me, I’ve heard even a 256 kbps mp3s sounding like this – I’ve just used a low quality version to make the point.)
If that doesn’t sound too bad to you at first, try this - I’ve filtered the file to highlight the high frequencies. You can hear the problems most clearly when the vocals start:
Please install Flash plugin
Some people describe this effect as “sizzle”, or “swirlies”. It’s not just that I’ve removed all the bass, what I’m pointing out is the unatural bubbling, twinkling “chime-bar” type sound, or as my friend and fellow mastering engineer Nick Watson once called it, the “flocks of tweeting ultrasonic birdies”. It also reminds me of someone crinkling up tin foil !
Once you’ve picked it out, listen the first version again. Doesn’t sound so nice now, does it ? Can you ignore the swirlies, now you know they are there ?
Now download and listen to the original file:
‘Talk About Love – Excerpt’ – 5 MB WAV file
Listen to the clarity, punch, and bite of the WAV, compared to the swirly, soggy mess of an mp3. Which one do you prefer ?
The loss of depth, richness and three-dimensionality is more subtle side-effect, but just as unfortunate. Here’s a snippet of a recording I did for the brilliant Hans Koller, featuring Christine Tobin on vocals:
Please install Flash plugin
(This is a much better mp3 encode, with far fewer heinous swirlies. But still…)
Here’s the WAV version:
‘The Great Bear And The Small – Excerpt’ – 11 MB WAV File
Don’t expect the difference here to leap out at you straight away, it’s more a case of feeling it – listen to the swirls of the harp from 30 seconds in, listen to the piano and Christine’s voice – on the wav file, there’s a warmth, and a depth, and a sparkle that in the mp3 has just gone.
Listen to the wav several times over, then switch to the mp3. Do you honestly feel it sounds as good ? The mp3 is OK, but it’s just… meh. I’m not drawn in, my attention wanders, it doesn’t move me.
Something essential has been lost, and you can’t get it back. And once you’ve heard that loss, even cranking the data-rate up doesn’t help. The only solution is a more advanced format, or lossless files.
Try listening to the mp3s in your music collection. Go back and compare them to the CDs you ripped them from.
…Sorry.
Or click here to subscribe to the free RSS feed
Update: I’ve had lots of interest in this post, and lots of discussion, especially on link-sharing sites. There are a few common responses that I want to answer here.
No-one uses 128 kbps mp3s
Wrong. If you’ve made this comment, you probably already know about LAME and the all other flavours of mp3 codec, and you probably do choose to use higher bit-rates, but you’re in the minority. Most “regular listeners” go for the default settings – and even in iTunes this is only 160 kbps.
192/320 kbps sounds fine
Sometimes. This depends so heavily on the material, the encoder and the codec – you simply can’t make blanket assumptions. Ironically one of the factors that makes mp3 so popular – the fact that it’s free and open-source – also makes it far harder to get a decent encode. By contrast, the grip Apple have over the AAC format at least ensures consistently high standards of encoding.
You’re just an Apple fanboy
No. Well alright, yes – I am a big fan of Apple’s products, but there are plenty of other alternatives to mp3 – OGG Vorbis, FLAC etc. The only reason I mention AAC a lot is it’s a format I have deep experience of, and always sounded good (but not perfect !) to me.
And another thing
To everyone who keeps saying “just use 320 kbps”, I say – why ?!? mp3 simply has inherent limitations compared to other formats. The whole point of lossy audio is to save space. At 128 kbps that saving is 90% – well worth having. At 320 kbps though, that saving is only 60% and it still doesn’t sound great – I’d rather go with FLAC or Apple lossless, which can often achieve a 50% saving, and have something that sounds every bit as good as the source.
Image by Roger B
No related posts.
.gif "Dynamic Range Foundation - Active Member")
I am not an expert on any of this but is there any digital music that replaces the clipped audio to make it a digital signal?
I guess I’m really tired of reading such grossly oversimplifying, pointless rants which seem to based on some snobbish attitude rather than on facts.
Despite of being theoretically(!) inferior to AAC, the design deficits of MP3 are compensated by more advanced psychoaccoustic models used by modern MP3 encoders. There have been many listening tests prooving that modern MP3 encoders compete well with AAC and outperform Ogg Vorbis at bitrates > 128kbps.
In fact the last scientifically conducted listening test showed that all(!!) modern MP3 encoders outperformed iTunes AAC at 128kbp average bitrate (http://listening-tests.hydrogenaudio.org/sebastian/mp3-128-1/results.htm). The often claimed inferiorty of MP3 is a myth based on the ugly performance of some MP3 encoders 10 years ago! The incredible development MP3 encoders have taken since was due to the competition between the open source Lame encoder and the commercial encoders. AAC remains unattractive for me as long as there’s no open source equivalent to Lame. Of course lessless compression should be considered an important alternative to MP3, as it is free from the drawbacks of lossy formats and disk space is continously increasing. Again, the most mature and widely supported standard is open source FLAC – for the same good reason that Lame became the most widespread MP3 encoder. The ~256kbps Lame mp3s offered these days by Amazon usually offer superior sound quality to all of the AAC files you’ll get from iTunes.
Hey Tim,
Thanks for commenting. And, I’m sorry you think the article is a grossly oversimplified rant, I think that’s an exaggeration – the clips are there so people can judge for themselves. But hey – as I’ve said in a comment above, it’s not meant to be a scientific analysis.
The study you link to doesn’t show that mp3 outperforms AAC at all – the iTunes encodes used were still mp3 encodes. Additionally, the study clearly shows that all the encoders tested were statistically equal in quality – but over very small samples, in general. Given that the study has no control over people’s listening software or hardware, I would also hesitate to call it scientific at all.
Regardless, my real point is: go lossless. I’m not interested in the open-source debate, I just want encoders that work and sound great with no tweaking.
My experience of mp3s from Amazon is… not good. And as I repeatedly say in the article, most people use 128kbps still, this is the widely miss-named “CD quality” standard, and that’s what I want to debunk. I see so many more articles ignoring all the problems of lossy encoding completely, than ones criticising lossy compression, and that’s what I want to redress.
So again, sorry the article annoyed you, but as someone who’s already fully engaged with the issues, you’re not really the audience I’m trying to reach.
Cheers !
Ian
I’m with you Ian.
I’ve found very little I can listen to from mp3. I don’t mean have as background music, I mean *listen* to.
I’ve been to a couple of events where there has been a DJ quite obviously playing mp3′s. Outrageous really as someone has paid him to provide music he should be providing the best possible sound given the environment he has.
Sounds swirling around, weird phasing, no soundstage and a muddled mess.
Turn the volume up and it is really is uncomfortable.
Strangely, many other people don’t seem to either care or notice….
I can’t hear ‘swirls’ and ‘chimes’, it all sounds the same, though I personally still like CDs fer the artwork etc, and am listening through laptop speakers! All this same shit used to be said about CDs and Vinyl. I have good sounding mp3 files and I have shitty sounding ones.. what ya gonna do?
Could anyone listening to music on computer speakers please leave the room? It’s nothing personal, just that this thread is definitely not for you.
Listening to music on computer speakers is like listening to a portable radio, it has nothing to do with sound quality and never did.
out
I agree, and panicked at the 128-mp3 invasion long ago when I still cared.
Now it just seems too late, all over the place and no-one who can seems very interested in enforcing rules to guarantee sound quality.
I agree with your opinion on mp3′s. I actually noticed this before and searched to see what other people think. I make some music myself, and when people want small files, I convert my songs to mp3, and end up disgusted. However, I have to disagree with one point. The added distortion from the Loudness Wars isn’t from the mp3′s. Even most lossless audio contains this distortion. The reason is that mastering companies, not lossy compression, try to make music as loud as possible. That’s why much of modern music, lossy or not, is missing quality. It would also be nice if you made a rant about Loudness Wars, if you haven’t already.
Maybe I didn’t explain it well enough – you’re right that the Loudness Wars aren’t the reason mp3s sound bad, but music with a very high average level (ie. A Loudness War casualty) will make the mp3 encode sound even worse.
You mean like this ?
Metallica “Death Magnetic” – Stop The Loudness Wars
Or this ?
How to avoid over-compressing your mix
Or this ?
Ian Shepherd from Production Advice discusses the Loudness Wars
Glad you liked the post !
Ian
To do a direct comparison your levels need to be conistent. To me, all your WAVs seem louder than their comparative MP3, people will tend to go for the WAV in this case because it’s louder an instantly “perceived” as better without actually listening to the true differences that you’re trying to highlight
How ironic and hypocritical of you to say ‘you simply can’t make blanket assumptions’. Surely thats exactly what youre doing.
I agree mp3 isnt 100% perfect… the fact that it is lossy however, tells you that it isnt going to be 100% perfect. And encoding something at 320K mp3 makes a huge difference and at a 40% to 60% of the uncompressed space required Ill use that for the music that I listen to less and FLAC whenever else. It annoys me when fanboys write a post and try to find even the silliest things to hate with their opponents tech just so they can see ‘see, told you’. And as for the ‘read this and youll hate mp3′ line, its simply nonsense. A couple of people ive spoke to thats read this article have said ‘well it didnt ruin it for me’. Most people wont notice any problems listening to mp3 instead of flac for example. Some people only listen to music because they like the end result, not the fact that ‘oooh did you hear that tinny noise, thats it mp3 has destroyed my love of music’. Yes there are better lossy compression systems for music but youll notice that in normal life…. something comes out (mp3) and over the years they find better methods of compression etc (aac). Thats life. I remember seeing my first video in mpeg1 and thinking OMG thats amazing. Then we got divx and xvid and thought that was the best, now h264 is out and watching an xvid after seeing the film in h264 looks blurry and blocky.
Basically, yes 128k can be rubbish, but we know that. You need to get over yourself and try to create something like a compression format before telling everyone its a certain one is rubbish.
Thanks for the reply !
Hypocritical, hey ? Maybe. Here’s something else to annoy you then:
There can be no interesting debates without grand, sweeping statements.
More seriously – I’m glad there are people who can still enjoy the sound of mp3s after hearing the flaws ! But I’m not one of them.
You(and several others)are going to laugh your behinds off because there are only three formats in which I use to listen to my music. Here they are: 1.Dual 1215 Turntable(As well as my Dual 701 turntable) 2. Denon DRW-660 tape deck 3.Phillips CDR-785 Cd player/burner. I am sorry but I do NOT own an I-pod or an MP3 player. LOL!! I’ve listened to other peoples MP3′s and felt really bad for the owners. Newer is not spelled B-E-T-T-E-R. LMAO!!!
I enjoyed the article and the samples and agree with the basic premise. Personally, even though my hearing has been going down hill, especially over the last couple of years, at 53 I can still hear the difference between mp3 and AAC files verses WAV or CDs. I think part of the confusion surrounding this issue results from a couple of big factors. One is that the ability to hear the difference requires that one is a well trained listener. The other involves the quality of the audio signal chain. With my iPod, for example, the sound quality between mp3s and AAC files is not so apparent as it is with my Olympus PCM recorder/player and great headphones. On studio monitors or audiophile quality gear with relatively low distortion, maybe more people would hear the difference? On the other hand, typical listening conditions are such that ambient noise essentially nullifies ones ability to hear such qualitative differences, e.g. driving, walking around with cars or buses driving by, airplanes flying overhead, evaporative coolling towers droning away… I would like to add that at least to my ears, the most profound difference between compressed and uncompressed formats can be heard in the rendering of stereo imaging and reverberant fields. With lossless formats and low distortion hardware, one should be able to get a vastly more realistic sense of acoustic space (if the recording has such stereo information to begin with). Digital reverberation will even offer a much greater sense of depth or space if distortions are sufficiently low. The popular mp3 file format is definitely a weak link, but I would say that the quality of hardware (e.g. ear buds, cheap headphones, cheap media players) are equally limiting factors. Maybe at some stage of hardware development, memory will no longer be the limiting factor and we’ll abandon the various forms of data compression? Here’s one for you: I’ve even heard some folks say that they like the sound of the Philips cassette much better than mp3′s. It’s just a different flavor of distortion really. I’m grateful for WAV and FLAC though, and for now we still have CD’s.
Hi Skooter,
I agree with pretty much everything you said ! Personally I still notice the poor sound of mp3 even on listening on my iPod, although maybe not on a windy day:-)
Ian
It is FLAC or nothing for me.
lossy?… Thanks, but no, thanks.
Skooter said “the ability to hear the difference requires that one is a well trained listener”.
I’d risk changing this to: “the ability to NOTICE the difference requires that one is a well trained listener”. …Because I tend to believe that this is a typical case of ‘baseline shift’, as a great proportion of untrained listeners have been induced to getting used to clearly worst quality audio in mp3 without even noticing. Especially younger generations, kids that were born in the mp3 era and were never used to hearing much CDs and surely fewer LPs or tapes. …And this is pretty sad because technology should work to make things better, not worst.
Even untrained listeners can notice there’s something wrong w/ mp3. The so-called “unnatural swirling metallic noises” are pretty evident many times, and I had not a few untrained people come to me commenting about this (of course they were just puzzled, sometimes thinking they’re “hearing things”, not knowing the origin of the weirdness).
Hi Lou,
I agree, but I think I would go with “the ability to notice the difference often requires that one is a well trained listener” to reflect the fact that some people hear these problems “out of the box”, as you also rightly point out.
Ian
Mp3′s sound crap I know, tinny swirling metallic noise, brittle, awful…I have even tapes that sound better than that tinny metallic mp3 mess. I listen to own recorded tapes too, don’t mind retro style and listen to a Sony tape Walkman. Yes the still raging loudness wars I’m more that sick off…Just about every Cd sounds rotten bad, distorted, flat, over-pitched. I can’t listen to such rotten bad mastered music…Some say I have dog ears, but one day I was in a big shopping centre and I heard a tinny screeching sound coming from speakers of some music shop all of a sudden. I thopught my ears are going to collapse, such numbing treble screeching…I had to leave, but just before I just quickly checked what CD it is…Yes a CD by Delta Goodrem (Sony Music)…Erry numbing screechy pitch, no bass (And believe it or not, others seem not to notice it at all…)…After that I couldn’t listen to any music for days…It so numbed my ears…The music sounded like pure TIN (I wonder of those mastering engineers really…cant hear, that this sounds so crap?!?)…I heard of a term called white noise too. Sometimes after I wanted to find out why this over-pitched’ distortion-noise music giving me such head & ear aches…Loudness wars, over compression etc (Sure the reason I always turned on ‘bass boost’ on portable CD players)…So stinks to me, and all that tinny mp3 rubbish. How come so many not notice this rotten bad mastering and all the tinny mp3 crap?!? Can’t get it…Some kind of couldn’t care less notion I somehow perceive, which makes me feel real sad.I don’t know what the future of music really is? … I’m an in-depth oriented music fan/enthusiast and intend to release own songs one day, but this rotten bad mastering and rubbish tinny mp3 junk?, sorry no thanks (Will master it myself therefore…). Education about audio quality I feel is badly needed…This downhill sound quality has been going far too long…
Not being an expert I can only go along with what I hear…. I have some great sounding music files on computer (some are WAV some MP3; no I don’t understand the difference), and most sound good through an ipod. I feel it’s the over-compression of music (like this mega- compressed illegal copy of an Iron Maiden track ‘Different World’ I have which is overloud and distorted) that is really affecting quality. There’s a pop music channel in the UK which is always significantly louder than the other channels, i’m assuming they are over-compressing to make it louder. If so, surely this loss of quality has a knock on effect in how the public consume music. If you can’t hear a nuanced guitar solo or cool bass run properly, how are you going to be able to appreciate it? Is this partly the reason that ‘pop’ (as apposed to Rock, Jazz, Metal, Acoustic etc) actually ‘sounds’ so awful, rather than just not very good music?? Help; a confused audionoob….
Hi jonny,
There’s no question the “loudness issue” affects music quality too – that’s why I started Dynamic Range Day:
http://DynamicRangeDay.com
I’m hearing this now in all genres, but yes, the ‘pop’ sound of the moment is very squashed and unpleasant (to me).
mp3 is just another factor making audio quality worse now than 10 years ago !
Ian
Wow, Ian, thanks so much for the rant, it introduced me to lossy compression, which I did not know about. I’m a amateur musician, and have dabbled in composition and recording over the years. When Audiograbber became availible, I jumped on it, and I use it a lot for converting line-in sources to mp3 files. You’re probably gagging by now, but let me explain why I’ll continue doing this. I’m not participating in the loudness wars. I’m recording Bach pieces on my guitar. I’m not making CDs, I’m making A CD for my grandchildren. Getting the picture? It all depends on what you want to listen for in music, and for me, musical structure is enough. It doesn’t have to be really good quality audio to be adaquate to some ears. 78s brought pleasure to a lot of people, imagine! I once knew an audiofile who absolutely had to have top end vinyl gear. He simply couldn’t bear to hear less than the best sound possible. The sound was amazing, but not necessary to my ear. Forgive me for saying so, but this condition seems to be an unfortunate handicap for some people. If you are a recording engineer, you better have the ears you apparently have, but not everyone needs them. Anyway, thanks again for the explanations and the examples, it was just what I was looking for.
I thought it was just me. I recently downloaded a few mp3S from Amazon because I wanted to avoid clutter. I’ve been enjoying CDs through my stereo system as well Sennheiser headphones. When I tried my first mp3, it just didn’t sound right. Plus I heard sounds that just shouldn’t be there. Changing my EQs didn’t work so I just assumed there was a quality sacrifice with downloading. I had some great experiences with FLAC files and others I’ve downloaded from sharing groups. For now, I will just stick with CDs and deal with the extra clutter.
@ kiwi888 – It’s not just you
@ Zvladko – If it sounds good to you, that’s great ! But personally I believe poor mp3 encodes reduce our enjoyment of music, whether we can consciously hear the problems or not. Of course the content (song, arrangement, performance) is the most important thing – but the quality has an impact too, whether we realise it or not…
It really is all about the Nyquist sampling theorem and Claude Shannon’s information theory, isn’t it? If you want it to sound right, you must provide ample bandwidth. There is no compromise in this regard. The issue at hand in these discussions is, what is adequate for your individual purposes and tastes. Again, many thanks for posting this thread, there have been many thoughtful remarks from you and other careful observers. – Z.
Imagine going to the movies for the first time when you’ve only ever had a mono tv – suddenly you’re aware of what’s truly possible
That’s the problem with our acceptance of the poorer quality – we don’t realise what we’re truly missing out on.
It goes for many things in addition to mp3 – for example, many telephone calls are sampled and compressed at miniscule bandwidth and the quality is self evident – newer and cheaper? Yes. Better? No.
I also can’t stand the standard earphones that came with my iPods (iPod mini, 2 x iPod 120gb, iPhone), went straight for Sennheisers.
I can immmediately hear the difference of the same CD playing on my modern Sony Discman (it sounds really dissappointing) versus my old Sony Discman. The new one’s output is so thin, and very flat – to exaggerate for illustrative purposes, its a version of ‘telephone’ equalisation!
So to mp3′s – I have always heard the taint in the sparkle of drum cymbals in .mp3′s, but usually it’s just barely been passable enough if the encode has been done with a quality encoder.
To my listening, the difference in mp3 quality is directly a result of which encoder has been used – a quick encoder that creates a 320kbps file produces a far poorer quality sound than a high quality (but slow) encoder creating 128kbps files.
I’m not saying my hearing is better than anyone elses. Here’s my point…
People ask – why does it matter if our hearing doesn’t notice the difference…
…the answer is, it does matter, because on a large PA system, playback of these files becomes evident to pretty much everyone in the audience!
I’ve lost track of the number of times clients have queried me “the files I gave you, it doesn’t sound right, what’s wrong?”. The answer is you’re hearing the awful quality for the first time because on a system this size, every nuance is going to become GREATLY amplified.
Speaking of large PA systems, I’ve discovered there’s a gentle loss of midrange when connecting devices via their headphone sockets – perhaps its the mismatch of impedance (just like plugging a guitar into the wrong HiZ/LoZ input). I’ve found great result from a $20 cable that connects to the digital port of the ipod and terminates as proper RCA -10db line outputs ready for a DI. Works great (and also removes the need to adjust volume on the ipod itself!).
Ian – you’d be heartbroken to hear how many times I’m presented with something far far worse than mp3 though – I’m talking audio that has been ripped from Youtube! *gasp* :-O Now that is truly TRULY awful on a large PA…
Hi David – I don’t want to think about it… :-s
this post was made in 2009 and a lot of things have changed in mp3 technology since then,
old encoders just don’t work all that well.
Sorry Nigel, I disagree. The fundamental algorithms used for mp3 encoding aren’t sufficient to get a really good encode, in my opinion. I get sent new mp3s every day (in 2011) and the vast majority still sound very poor – obvious artefacts.
I found this article after noticing something else wrong with my MP3 collection (100% 320kbps encoded by windows Media 12) It’s all encoded flat. The modern “I don’t care about quality” attitude has spawned something more insidious than the lossless or lossy quality of the encoding. I remember when stereos had to come with Tape de-hiss and almost always had at least a 5 band equalizer so the sound system itself could be calibrated for the music that was playing on the speakers and room that formed the sound stage. I used to tweak it for every album I listened to separately. MP3 players in general, regardless of what the output is, rarely even have a bass and trebel to try to re-balance the sound. MP3 is taking alot of flac in the music quality scene (and so are the others to be fair) due to a lack of caring about the sound output, not because of their inherant deficiencies. I suggest people do what I am doing now. I noticed a severe drop in bass response in some of mp3′s. I re-recorded those in mp3, but with the low frequency filter turned off. I then went through my entire collection and removed the auto volume leveling information stored in the tag file. I find if you encode in one player and listen on any other player.. the mp3′s levels get jonsed so bad you’d swear it was recorded in a bathroom stall. Remove the leveling info and load several white and pink noise samples into your collection first with the auto-volume leveling turned on and at a comfortable volume that isn’t causing your peak meter to redline. These will form the basis of every mp3 your player will compare the volume to afterwards in most cases and since it is a blanket set of frequencies at a constant level, your peaks in the volumes of songs should never distort once thier volume tag has been set. Set your collection to read-only after this so Windows media player or iTunes or whatever doesn’t get any funny ideas about changing it afterwards.I have over 400 CD’s and I have had to set the volume manually on most of them. It is real work akin to having to adjust my old 10-band EQ back in the analog days, but if you want good sound you have to do some work.
On a last note… please do all of this with regards to your intended listening source, and if that’s earbuds off your iPhone you’re wasting alot of time. I use a Bose speaker system for playback when setting the final levels of a disc when I rip it. It’s worth it and will cascade through everything else you listen to.
Hi Tommy,
I also balance the levels of all the music on my iPod by ear – and I agree, you need good speakers to make the judgements on.
But, I think this is a different issue to the whole lossy/uncompressed argument – I would make the same changes even if I had ripped everything using a lossless codec.
As far as adjusting EQ for each album goes – that I don’t have enough time for :-p
Ian
The reason I found this webpage was because – I make music right?(I think its good too
) – and I noticed everytime I converted my files to MP3 and either put them on a CD or a Flashdrive for example and play it on any system it would sound metallic! At first I thought I was missing something, but to miss something 10 times? Highly improbable. So I finally hunted down some info on the web, and here I am. I’m gonna change the format then test it & come back with results. 
Hi Stan,
Great, that’s why I wrote the post ! Glad it helped – I hope you find a better-sounding format.
Ian
You know OGG is lossy too, right?
@ Arthur – Yes, and so is AAC usually. This is specifically a rant about mp3, although more and more I dislike lossy compression in general.
So I’m back like I promised. Thanks alot Ian for the great article.
)
Now I realize the MP3 format passes as the equivalent for junk food for the audio masses(a little rap there
I turn all my music into AAC now. Unfortunately a lot of systems & players only accept MP3 & WMA…
So I have no choice to convert to MP3 or WMA in that event…
And, I have a great analogy for the MP3 format… it’s gonna sound drastic but I think it fits.
Ever hear music from a greeting card or other gag device? Would someone in their right mind use that audio source to play or make serious music? That’s how I feel currently about the MP3 format analogy-wise.
Hi Stan,
Glad you’re getting better results with AAC
Ian
I listen to music on USA made polk speakers, EU made project Turntables and Japanese made amp.s
I refuse to listen to mp 3 s and avoid CDs when possible.
I am alone, nobody else can hear the difference or cares either. It is like choosing KFC over my home made Punjabi food , for life.
You people have evidently never heard vinyl played through a $20,000 all valve system. It is beyond words.
My family friend in Pakistan has such a set up. It is almost scary how human and lifelike it sounds.
Analog is what humans are and when we musicians make the air vibrate with music that is not 0101010101010 in action , thus , digital in any format is a forgery, it fools your ears but not mine.
@ Taariq The playback system in my old studio was worth in excess of £40,000, excluding the cost of the room itself and the acoustic treatment. Some vinyl played through it sounded great, some sounded dreadful.
The whole analogue versus digital thing is a red herring, the secret of great sound lies elsewhere.
But mp3 still sounds bad
Both the MP3 and WAV version sounded pretty bad – a lot of distortion and hiss… I ran them both through a spectrum analyzer and not only were they both overdriven, they were remarkably similar. The only real difference was slightly less bass response in the MP3 file.
Mate, use your ears to listen with, not your eyes.
A spectrum analyser can’t even begin to tell you the damage an mp3 encode does.
I used both, and both of these example files were equally terrible – a lot of mid range, quite muddy, and distorted – obviously you missed my point. The spectrum analyzer proved that both versions were equally bad to start with. In order for a decent comparison, the WAV file should be crystal clear, normalized, and adjusted using a decent equalizer.
You’re wrong.
It’s often very easy to hear mp3 artefacts with poor quality source material, and in contrast high quality audio often stands up to the encoding process better.
Looking at an analyser “proves” nothing, it just gives you an objective measurement of the frequency response.
Maybe you don’t understand how the audio spectrum works… a compressed recording looks completely different compared to an uncompressed pristine recording.
I analyzed and compared the two files for the following reason:
I did notice a big difference between the MP3 file when played through the flash player as apposed to the actual version in which I downloaded from your site. When played through flash there is even more compression going on because is being streamed as opposed to the actual file on my desktop. I don’t know if you intentionally did it that way to try and prove your point or what… As it stands right now your WAV vs. MP3 comparison is unfair at best.
This is a good article and you made some *good* *points*
why Mp3 is not a good choice for a good quality of music.
I am a music producer and i guess my headphones are too
good for mp3 as well. Most people have only cheap head-
phones, they can’t hear the difference between Mp3 and CD
with them.
But Mp3 is good for interviews where people speak, there
quality is not that important but more the content, or
in reports and radio shows with talk guests and so on. In
these days i would say FLAC is the perfect choice, you have
CD quality with just 50% of the orginal file.
MP3 is not rich and full and warm like CD sound – and yes
Mp3 destroys music details and some sounds that you hear
not only sound you don’t hear.
@ FanOfNone – you’re starting to sound like a troll. Check out my About page and then tell me I don’t understand how the audio spectrum works. I didn’t say you couldn’t see a difference between a WAV and an mp3 on an analyser (although I’ve never bothered to try) I said you can’t evaluate audio quality by looking at an analyser – you can just get information about the frequency content.
As far as I know, there’s no re-compression involved in the Flash player – it just streams the mp3 audio. But again, I haven’t checked – I just use the Flash player so people can listen without downloading.
It wouldn’t surprise me if you hear a difference between the streamed version and a downloaded copy, though – there will almost certainly be a level difference, for example, in which case all bets are off:
http://productionadvice.co.uk/level-matching/
Regardless, you’re right, it’s not a fair comparison. It’s meant to raise people’s awareness and prompt them to listen critically, and hopefully stop using mp3.
Let’s just agree to disagree about whether my musical samples are good or not, shall we ?
Not a troll at all, as I found your site because I’m interested in the best compression possible with regard to audio quality vs. file size. I was expecting a very drastic difference from what you stated in your article. I’ve never used AAC, only WMA, MP3, and WAV.
I listened intently to the two versions you posted here. The streamed MP3 version did sound quite terrible compared to the WAV version. At that point I was on board with you…
But because I’m both a computer scientist and a classically trained musician I had to dig deeper in order to find out why there was such a discrepancy. I wanted to see and hear for myself what the difference really was.
After downloading both versions I listened very intently again and this time they both sounded quite the same – something odd was going on here. I only used the analyzer in order to prove that what I was hearing was indeed something very similar.
There is a definite loss of quality when the flash player is used, but not nearly as noticeable with the downloaded MP3. To that end, IMO your argument doesn’t stand up to the hype.
So yes let’s just agree to disagree – MP3 is not perfect, but it’s also not the monster it’s made out to be.
Ok, finally I think you’re right.
After listening to some albums in FLAC I can hardly listen mp3 songs, even in 320. At the first eyesight it may still sound good, but mp3 really sucks when you use better formats. Now I use FLAC when possible: for my mobile phone I use ogg – better than mp3, and more supported than aac.
@ Marcin – great to hear !
@ FanOfNone – As I say, the biggest difference between browser streaming & download is likely to be the playback level. Happy to disagree, though