mp3/lossless question for audiophiles...

[U2Lynne]

Originally Posted by Forgot

ok i am gonna download something i don't want just to get my seed ratio up

I've never understood this. Why not just wait until something comes up that you really want and hop on it early so you can seed then?

Originally Posted by U2Lynne

I've never understood this. Why not just wait until something comes up that you really want and hop on it early so you can seed then?

Better yet...he could start his own seed.

[beeerlover]

Sennheiser!

[KarVictor]

Nah,

http://www.stax.co.jp/Export/ExportProducts.html

[chriscor75]

Interesting...let's talk about physics!!
To create a mp3 file, some frequencies are cutted, for high bitrate mp3 (at least 256kbps) the frequency is around 18kHz.
Now let's talk about human earing: we are able to ear sound from 20Hz (low frequency) to 20kHz (high one), but with the age our band of frequency is getting smaller, so about 30yo, we can't ear more than 16-17kHz, which is under the 18kHz cut frequency of mp3...so as far as music is concerned, how can you ear a difference?maybe you have bionic ears?
But!! there's a difference on dynamic of music, it depends on the bitrate too, so you can ear a difference of some musical attack, so changes in level...but to be sure it's mp3 high bitrate or lossless, i don't know how you can say that just earing??some old analogic recording have poor quality compared to mp3 high bitrate (cut frequency and dynamic!!)
The only thing that is very annoying for me in mp3 is the "click" between each tracks, for the other things maybe my ears are too old??

[paddington]

^^ you are assuming the only thing that happens with MP3 (or any other lossy compression) is that the high freqs are rolled off above 16kHz.. that is incorrect. There are MANY chunks of audio data discarded over the ENTIRE spectrum, which is easily heard (and confrimed in a spectrum analysis).

but - even if it WAS just the high end (which it certainly is not), the fact that it rolls off the high freqs IN the audible range for humans means we get to hear the atrifacts of the ugly digital LPF that is used.. and it makes the complicated high frequencies sound 'shimmery' or 'glassy' or 'watery'. What you are hearing there is "aliasing" - course stairstepping at the roll-off shelf created by the lossy encoder's LPF (low-pass filter).

[U2Lynne]

To get rid of the clicks between tracks when you burn your mp3s to a CD, just open the wav files up in an editor, like audacity, and get rid of the 'silence' and then save the new wav and burn that.

I have a bunch of mp3s and wav files on my iPod. I've got a nice set of speakers in my kitchen that I hook the iPod up to and I can definitely tell when the mp3s play. However, I can't tell at all when I am just going for a walk with the earbuds in.

[Audioarchivist]

Originally Posted by chriscor75

...snip...
Now let's talk about human earing: we are able to ear sound from 20Hz (low frequency) to 20kHz (high one), but with the age our band of frequency is getting smaller, so about 30yo, we can't ear more than 16-17kHz, which is under the 18kHz cut frequency of mp3...so as far as music is concerned, how can you ear a difference?maybe you have bionic ears?
...snip...
for the other things maybe my ears are too old??

I can't remember exactly where the link was, but there was a hearing test site someone put up a while back. It gave test tones for you to calibrate your ears.
I'm almost 40. I definitely heard frequencies at 19000. At 20000 I could still sense something. At 21000 it was nil.
I suppose what I'm saying is that it shouldn't be assumed that age=deaf.

[Splinterr]

i noticed that whenever i download a show the taper almost always includes a bit about not converting the show to mp3 format but for some of us thats simply impractible. if i post downloads of shows in mp3 format on this site are people gonna be pissed off and crucify me as some kind of blasphemous evil does in the middle ages? do people want to download mp3 formatted shows?

[Audioarchivist]

This is a lossless only trading site.
We have all realized that eMPty3 files cut out sound, and generally sound like crud.
I wouldn't say you'd be crucified, but surely you will be wasting your time - the posts will be pulled.
We ask most times that lossless files not be transcoded to lossy so that those lossy files don't get traded further, as bloated mp3>wav. Everytime eMpty3 files are reconverted to wav, they take up way too much space, and don't sound any better. Then, someone takes that fake wav file and re-eMPty3 encodes it, further reducing any hope of fidelity.

IMHO, eMPty3 files ARE from the dark middle ages. They were cool when we all had dial-up and we all thought a 20 gig drive in our pentium 1's were huge! We've outgrown those artificial limitations. There's plenty of other lossy fish in the sea. Post your lossy crud somewhere else. If you want to play with the big boys, stick around, learn some facts, and have fun!

[Splinterr]

This is exactly what I was referring to. I sensed a definite hostility in your message. Maybe I'm wrong. I was just asking a legitimate question. I’ve been to a lot of shows all over the country and I understand why you want to preserve the quality but other people have different needs and different reasons. I will gladly respect your wishes and not post any “eMPty3s” here.

[Audioarchivist]

There's no intended hostility, I'm just stating the facts of the rules of the board, and some reasons why 'eMPty3' files are (IMHO) bad, antequated, outdated, and should be left to the mid 90's...
There's a difference between how I'm a little cheeky when I've said not to "pervert" to "eMPty3" files, even for your own personal use (I thought that was funny and tongue in cheek) as once you grab any files that are gray-area as far as copyright (ie: not commercially available) they are really yours to do with what you want. They are fair game to transcode to wax cylinder for all the taper/sharer has any right to say what you do with them.
From what I've seen at TTD, this is the cream of the crop, as far as known lineages of shows, and that there's no lossy files at all permitted (and people check - it's easy to tell). Like I say, there's plenty of places to share those lossy files you so crave. Just not here.
It's not a legitimate question if you had read the FAQ about this site. It's pretty clear when you read up about TTD, that it's "NO LOSSY" policy is in the mission statement.
No offences meant at all, and I hope you stick around to grab some good pure music here. If you're going to pervert and re-post the stuff you grab here as lossy files somewhere else, I wouldn't spread the word of that here. I think the majority of folks here are anti-eMPty3.
Of course, really, if you can't make rockbox firmware work on your little music portable player so you can play flac files directly, you can make the files lossy for your own personal use so you can enjoy them. It is more than frowned upon to let those files get into future trading circles.
Is that a legitimate answer, or am I being too hard on him / you?

[AAR.oner]

welcome to TTD splinter--

most of our reasoning behind not allowing mp3s or other lossy formats, as well as a wealth of info on other aspects of the site, can be found in our FAQ:
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/faq.php?

also, here's a thread that we stickied [at the top of the page] on the subject of lossy files:
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...ad.php?t=39406

hope these help a bit

[splumer]

Originally Posted by Splinterr

i noticed that whenever i download a show the taper almost always includes a bit about not converting the show to mp3 format but for some of us thats simply impractible. if i post downloads of shows in mp3 format on this site are people gonna be pissed off and crucify me as some kind of blasphemous evil does in the middle ages? do people want to download mp3 formatted shows?

For your own use, mp3 is fine. It's hard to play anything else on an mp3 player! But when posting shows for download, only shows with a 100 percent lossless lineage are allowed. Look at it like cassette generations. mp3 degrades with each sucessive generation, whereas FLAC & shn does not.

I think if you actually posted a show in mp3 there'd be stunned silence for a day or so... then the angry posts will begin.

think about that 50meg file being squashed down to 5megs; that's ten times smaller... so where did all that data go??? in binary terms it's just a stream of zeros and ones, but as far as your hi-fi system's concerned it's sound, man, and sound is the thing that The Traders Den won't compromise.

there are tons or sites out there that don't give a damn what format you trade in.

and those messages at the bottom of threads about "do not convert... etc" are aimed at future trading, not personal use.

if you want these concerts on your i-pod, go ahead and squash 'em!!

just don't pass 'em on in that format to other traders, or there is a chance that some of us will wind up downloading a concert that's been converted from mp3 to WAV; and that would be a total bastard.