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**POLL** Can you tell the difference between 192kbps and 128kbps MP3s?

S

screw3d

Diamond Member
Well? I did a A/B blind test and I can't. But I still encode all my stuff to 192kbps or higher anyway.. 😕

Or is it that only with certain music you can tell the difference?
 
Sometimes I don't know if it is better.. but just very slightly different.

BTW I play MP3s on foobar2000, listening through either my Logitech Z560 or Sennheiser HD497 headphones.
 
Someone posted a few .wav files in here once. One was the original, one was encoded to 320 kbps CBR Lame, then back, another was to 128 kbps CBR Lame, another to 192 kbps VBR lame, and one other to some other format. They were all converted and then converted back to .wav format.

I found it very very easy to pick out the 128 kbps file, same with the "other format" one. A little tougher was the 192 kbps file. After listening about 20 times to each of the others I managed to finally distinguish between the 320 kbps CBR and the original .wav file. Sennheiser headphones were used 🙂

It can be done, but it's very very difficult usually. 192 kbps VBR is all that most people will ever need unless they're going to sit in a quiet room with some nice headphones and TRY to pick the flaws.
 
Originally posted by: silverpig
Someone posted a few .wav files in here once. One was the original, one was encoded to 320 kbps CBR Lame, then back, another was to 128 kbps CBR Lame, another to 192 kbps VBR lame, and one other to some other format. They were all converted and then converted back to .wav format.

I found it very very easy to pick out the 128 kbps file, same with the "other format" one. A little tougher was the 192 kbps file. After listening about 20 times to each of the others I managed to finally distinguish between the 320 kbps CBR and the original .wav file. Sennheiser headphones were used 🙂

It can be done, but it's very very difficult usually. 192 kbps VBR is all that most people will ever need unless they're going to sit in a quiet room with some nice headphones and TRY to pick the flaws.
Click to expand...

Do you have a link to that?
 
much of the time yes, you can hear the tell tale digital artifacts, depends on what speakers i use though. cheap speakers you'd never be able to tell. 128 where mp3 is slightly below the minimum bitrate to have enough bits to do the job. i can't tell difference between 160 and 192 though.
 
I save myself from worrying about the right bitrate by using lossless FLAC encoding for true, exact CD quality.

Of course the real Golden Ears crowd will say even CD quality isn't good enough and you need 24 bit 96 KHz sampling fed through plasmanated platinum interconnects to a vacuum tube amp 🙂
 
Originally posted by: fanerman91
Originally posted by: silverpig
Someone posted a few .wav files in here once. One was the original, one was encoded to 320 kbps CBR Lame, then back, another was to 128 kbps CBR Lame, another to 192 kbps VBR lame, and one other to some other format. They were all converted and then converted back to .wav format.

I found it very very easy to pick out the 128 kbps file, same with the "other format" one. A little tougher was the 192 kbps file. After listening about 20 times to each of the others I managed to finally distinguish between the 320 kbps CBR and the original .wav file. Sennheiser headphones were used 🙂

It can be done, but it's very very difficult usually. 192 kbps VBR is all that most people will ever need unless they're going to sit in a quiet room with some nice headphones and TRY to pick the flaws.
Click to expand...

Do you have a link to that?
Click to expand...

No. It's archived I'm sure... It's really old. Like well over a year. In OT if you're wondering.
 
Strange that no one has jumped in yet claiming to be able to hear the difference between 320kbps and a CD yet, there usually are a few idiots around who do that.
 
Even at 128, if the mp3 was encoded by a really good encoder and the style of music isn't that demanding, not even a high quality sound system can give that away. 196 is usually a good compromise for me. Anything above that and I can't tell the difference
 
I doubt I could tell.. but then again, it's not like these 5 year old Altec-Lansing 2.1's are really audiophile quality, either.
 
with my speakers (creative inspire 5200) it's hard, but with my headphones (sennheiser hd-580), i can tell the difference most of the time
 
It usually depends on the production quality of the music. Most of the stuff that I listen to I can tell the difference because there are so many elements to the sound that anything less than 192kbps makes them sound 'muddy'

If you want to test just how much the different bitrates affect sounds, get a program like fruityloops and encode the wav samples for a drumset into 128kbps and 192kbps and compare. when you mix the 128kbps samples together you will definately be able to tell the difference.

It all depends on what you listen to though. Most stuff you hear on the radio will probbably sound decent at 128kbps, since its mixed down to sound well at a lower fidelity.
 
It all depends on what speakers you play them on.. I just got a pair of headphones where I can easily tell the difference between a 128kbps and 192kbps mp3. Try putting your headphones at fairly high volume when you want to do a listening test.

However, I get more annoyed at the awful ripping (bits and pops from cdaudio being ripped too fast and background noise of cd skipping) than at mp3s ripped in 128kbps.

When I played a 128kbps and 192kbps mp3 on my living room speakers (Athena FS31), I could really tell the difference. A 192 sounds crystal clear where a 128 sounds slightly blurred. Whereas, on my Altec Lansing $40 2.1 speakers, every mp3 sounds the same.. You can barely tell a 96kbps mp3 from a 320kbps one.
 
I'M H-UBER-T AND CAN DISTINGUISH SONGS FROM 320kbps and 256kbps!





ok, not really but normally, when there are a lot hi-hats in a song, you can tell the difference pretty fast(between 128 and 192 that is)
 
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