![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Well.. this is another thing that is being debated and that is whether or not there is a difference when using higher bit rates for MP3... or what the difference is between an MP3 or an Uncompressed wav version of a song. Recently I have found a uncompressed version of NIN - Capitol G which has 1411kbps bit rate. I took this file and ran it through the iTunes converter converting it to a 192kbps Variable MP3 file and compared the two and the uncompressed version simply had more resolution and more highs than the compressed version which sounded kind of muffled when comparing the two.
The amount of muffling of the frequencies gets worse the lower the bit rate you put the file through and especially if you convert the song several times. There are more intelligent encoders like LAME that do a better job converting songs to variable bit rate. I use the LAME plugin for iTunes to rip cds and I have it set to 192kbps Variable with the variable setting set to highest quality so the bit rate usually hovers in the 200 and it does a better job at conveying more of the frequencies than just using lower bit rates but I do realize it's not exactly like the CD. It's a trade off on size\quality that I choose... and considering that today we aren't as strapped for hard drive space as when MP3 first came out it's wiser to use a higher bit rate nowadays.
Although you have to realize that whenever you compress a picture\song\video there has to be something lost in order to get that compression. There is of course formats like FLAC that alleviate this but unfortunatly devices like my MP3 player don't support those kind of files and I don't want to have to transcode them every time I want to transfer so I go with a high bitrate variable MP3 for my music.
Also the type of quality that is acceptable to a person is subjective and it also depends on a lot of factors including quality of speakers\headphones, your listening environment, etc. Some people don't like any kind of digital music at all and that includes CDs.
The amount of muffling of the frequencies gets worse the lower the bit rate you put the file through and especially if you convert the song several times. There are more intelligent encoders like LAME that do a better job converting songs to variable bit rate. I use the LAME plugin for iTunes to rip cds and I have it set to 192kbps Variable with the variable setting set to highest quality so the bit rate usually hovers in the 200 and it does a better job at conveying more of the frequencies than just using lower bit rates but I do realize it's not exactly like the CD. It's a trade off on size\quality that I choose... and considering that today we aren't as strapped for hard drive space as when MP3 first came out it's wiser to use a higher bit rate nowadays.
Although you have to realize that whenever you compress a picture\song\video there has to be something lost in order to get that compression. There is of course formats like FLAC that alleviate this but unfortunatly devices like my MP3 player don't support those kind of files and I don't want to have to transcode them every time I want to transfer so I go with a high bitrate variable MP3 for my music.
Also the type of quality that is acceptable to a person is subjective and it also depends on a lot of factors including quality of speakers\headphones, your listening environment, etc. Some people don't like any kind of digital music at all and that includes CDs.
