Digital Audio Fidelity

[prism]

I'm looking into purchasing a new deck for my car to replace my 8-year-old Pioneer, and I'm looking at an Alpine Ipod adapter (can't play CDs on em). I listen to almost exclusively burned CDs; not mp3 CDs, just regular audio CDs that hold ~20 songs on em. Do mp3s have a lower level of audio fidelity than burnt CDs? I guess this question is probably moot anyways since the deck I'm looking at getting is of much higher quality than my old Pioneer, but I figured I'd ask anyways

 

[FP]

mp3s are compressed so yes.

will you notice? probably not.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: binister
mp3s are compressed so yes.

will you notice? probably not.

Well said. OP, you might also check and see if you can do lossless, which should be equal to the .wav version only you can actually tag the tracks and everything (and it takes up less space, roughly 1/2-3/5).

 

[slugg]

I'm assuming that you're taking ripped MP3's and burning them onto audio CD's. This being the case, there would be no difference in audio quality between an audio CD that you've burned or a data CD that has the mp3's on it.

BUT if you were to play a store-bought, uncompressed CD, then the audio quality would be much higher.

 

[0roo0roo]

higher bitrate mp3 is very high quality
unless you have some insane sound system theres really no rational reason for lossless on an ipod.
car environment is very hostile to audio. road noise...the speaker locations and all the stuff in between/glass etc.
if you have a sound system custom designed and tuned well enough to overcome that and a car well insulated enough from road/wind noise that you can actually justify lossless then you have some serious $$$

mp3s technically have lower quality than burned cds. thats assuming your cd mixes are from source uncompressed wav files ripped directly from cds. cd audio burnt from mp3 doesn't improve in sound quality. course this difference at high bitrate~ 192+ vbr with lame encoder is not noticable to most people on most systems. you'd have to spend massive money before you could probably tell. even them most people would fail on a blind test.

 

[theprodigalrebel]

Use the ABX Comparator feature in foobar2000. It's an easy to setup double-blind listening test. It was quite a revelation to me - turns out I don't have golden audiophile ears (or maybe I just have shitty speakers and headphones). Good mp3s (I always rip using LAME and the insane preset that uses VBR up to 250kbps) sound excellent. I personally would have a stupendously hard time telling the difference between the mp3 and the original PCM track. Maybe while A/B-ing but certainly not at first listen.

Besides, a car audio system is nowhere close to a properly setup system at home. Listen to 0roo0roo

 

[Soundmanred]

I've got a great competition grade system in my car, and I use MP3 discs almost exclusively and most of the time can't tell the difference. I use high bitrate/quality encoded MP3s of course.
As slugg said, if you burn an audio CD from MP3s, it would be the same quality of an MP3 CD anyway.
Nobody I've ever tested has been able to tell the difference in blind tests.

 

[slugg]

You need a trained ear to hear the difference.

I've mastered audio tracks before. While I'm not a pro, I do have experience with high resolution, high fidelity audio. I'm talking 96khz 24 bit tracks through top of the line studio monitors. In my case, I have a sensitive and trained ear. On a proper audio system, I can pass blind tests easily. It just boils down to experience and hearing ability. I only say this to emphasize that *although blind tests seem to fool most people, there is DEFINITELY a difference - it's just that most people can't determine the difference.

The truth is, 99.9% of people don't know the first thing about music or audio quality. Most people are happy with booming bass and call it "high fidelity". Almost nobody has ever heard a truly responsive audio system, so they dont KNOW what "good" really is. Good a is a relative term. So while most people can't hear a difference, partially it's because they're ignorant to the fact that they've never had the chance to actually HEAR the difference.

Which brings me to my last point... As everyone else has said on here, it's impossible to design a car to be 100% acoustically accurate. That being said, no matter how much money you spend on your sound system, you'll never be able to tell the difference between high bitrate MP3 quality and CD quality.

** So to directly answer your question, it doesn't matter if you burn the discs as data or audio - you'll perceive the same quality. This is assuming that your mp3's are of good quality.

edit: Something to note... the higher quality your sound system, the WORSE lower quality audio will sound. For example - if you're listening to an MP3 on studio monitors, it will actually sound WORSE than listening to it from your iPod with decent headphones. This is because the studio monitors recreate the "poor" quality signals much more accurately. In other words, high quality audio systems make imperfections stand out more.

Think of it like watching standard cable on an HDTV - it looks worse than a normal TV right? That's because the HDTV more accurately shows how crappy the standard cable signal is

 

[LS21]

in a CAR? no way in hell

 

[sdifox]

IF the source of your music CD are mp3 chances are they are lower quality than a regular cd.

 

[videogames101]

I tell you, I only have .wav on my player, The difference for me is just incredible, if you have the space on your player, .wav is worth it.

 

[torpid]

Is there some advantage to getting the alpine head unit that has no cd player built into it?

 

[SSSnail]

You listen to music in your car, parked?

The reason I asked because it's ridiculous to concern yourself with bit rates and audio fidelity in a moving car. You should be more concerned with storage space, as in how many songs you can listen to before having to repeat before the trip is over.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: SSSnail
You listen to music in your car, parked?

The reason I asked because it's ridiculous to concern yourself with bit rates and audio fidelity in a moving car. You should be more concerned with storage space, as in how many songs you can listen to before having to repeat before the trip is over.

I disagree. I re-encoded my music into VBR MP3s using LAME specifically because they sounded noticeably worse than a CD in my car. They were previously at 128kbps encoded using whatever windows media player uses (which might be the same thing). I didn't notice the difference in my previous car, though.

If he's got mediocre sounding mp3s and is comparing to CDs, in some cars, it's going to be a difference (assuming he's not burning the CDs FROM the mp3s as mentioned above).

 

[LS21]

just think about this, sound quality of satellite radio is the rough equivalent of 64kbps 44hz mp3... and yet most people believe its great/perfect/cd-quality .. so if you rip 128 for your CAR (context, people), it'll be more than enough