Very true. Interestingly, yesterday I was listening to a performance of
excerpts from Bach's B Minor Mass on YouTube that was taken from a cassette.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNe3OR9ACRc
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Jacobson" <steve.jacob...@visi.com>
To: "PC Audio Discussion List" <pc-audio@pc-audio.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 01, 2011 2:02 PM
Subject: RE: encoding older music
Keep in mind that you don't know the history of anything you get free from
the web. For example, if you find a site with
higher bit rates, you don't know if there wasn't a point where it existed
at a lower bit rate. You can't really get sound
back that was once lost. When you convert something to MP3 from YouTube,
you really don't know what the bit-rate
of the audio is that was part of the video. Some of what you are hearing
could even be left over from how the audio
was encoded as part of the video. Changing the bit rate on the YouTube to
MP3 conversion would very likely do
nothing in many cases to help the sound because of how it existed before
it was converted to MP3. Lots of YouTube
stuff sounds good to me, especially compared to old cassettes that I have,
but if you are going to analyze how
something sounds, whether you can hear the encoding, you have to consider
the entire history of the recording. . It is
even conceiveable that you could find another 128KB MP3 recording that
sounds better than what you got from
YouTube because it existed at a higher bit rate before being converted to
MP3.
Best regards,
Steve Jacobson
On Sat, 1 Oct 2011 07:56:16 +0200, Andr, van Deventer wrote:
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: "Andr, 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
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