Dave I use a NAD amplifier with a good pair of british speakers and an older Emagic USB sound card which was when it came out supposed to be very high quality.
So you will understand why I am asking about bit rate now. Also another thing that prompted my question: I am getting some stuff from utube now - quite old stuff from the 50s and 60s. I use the automatic youtube to mp3 service to convert them and it does seem if they use only 128 kbps and that there is no way to change the encoding there. The problem is that I now find myself taking some of the stuff simply because I cannot get it anywhere else. So I would be prepared to take the slightly lower quality and then look for something better later. After all - what is the most important thing in the end? The absolute correct sound or the music itself? But you are correct - with a sound system like mine you can actually hear the difference in sound quality between different encodings. -----Original Message----- From: pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org [mailto:pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org] On Behalf Of Dave Scrimenti Sent: 30 September 2011 10:08 PM To: PC Audio Discussion List Subject: Re: encoding older music Once music started being recorded on tape, (1950 and later), the quality is sufficiently good that you might not want to compromise. Prior to that, you can get away with it more. On the other hand, do you want to risk introducing even more degradation to something that's already pretty bad? Also, no compromise in sound quality assumes you use a stereo system capable of letting you discern the difference. Sometimes people obsess over bit rates, and then listen with their computer's built-in sound card with crap converters, a junky amp, and cheap speakers or headphones. ----- Original Message ----- From: "André van Deventer" <andred...@webafrica.org.za> To: "PC Audio Discussion List" <pc-audio@pc-audio.org> Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 11:55 AM Subject: encoding older music Hi folks! I again dare to open the can of worms which is the encoding of music which is downloaded from the internet. But today I have a different slant. For reasonably new stuff I do not believe that you can compromise especially when it comes to music with large orchestras. 320 mp3 3encoding is the least that is acceptable. But what happens if you work with music from the 40s, 50s and even the 60s? Is there really an appreciable difference between 128 kbps and 320 kbps encoding - even with music which is recorded in stereo? I realize that this is mostly a matter of personal preference and the kinds of music I am talking about would be say before 1970. Andre To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: pc-audio-unsubscr...@pc-audio.org To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: pc-audio-unsubscr...@pc-audio.org To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: pc-audio-unsubscr...@pc-audio.org
