Rushguy

I now have mp3 and dvd in the car. I see they now sell audio dvd's and when I play a regular dvd inthe car and a song comes on its amazing. So I'm guessing dvd audio is the best but mp3 is cheaper. Now I don't have a keg I load mp3's onto a cd and stick em in the changer. Question..are mp3s better quality then wma, wav. I used to make my cd's with Nero and it converts them but nwo I can drag mp3s right onto a cd and put 100 times more on one disk. Sorry for the long post basically whats the best way to make my cd's for highest quality. Thanks.

afr0puff

iTrader: (1)

It all depends on the bitrate and sample quality. Typically uncompressed audio is either WAV or AIFF format. WMA is garbage IMO. But I think .mp3 is going the way of the dinosaur since Apple uses MPEG-4 AAC by default instead of mp3 for its audio stuff.

bastard

I burned a disk of WMAs on the highest setting my car headunit would play, and it still sounded like garbage. An uncompressed .wav file would have the best sound of those three, if at 16 bit, stereo, 44.1 khz (or more). This is at CD quality, but you might as well just use CD audio format. .Wavs in this format are approximately 10MB per minute.

As far as I know, mp3 works by "losing" audio you'd never hear--a probably very complex algorithm works this out--and usually have a "shimmery" effect in the cymbals. Basically any time you compress or simplify--lose parts--the sound quality will not be as good as the original.

DVD audio, which I know little about, could actually be the best option, since the disks can hold a lot of data at really high quality.

peanuthead

For movies the best audio is DTS . . . better than Dolby Digital. For any serious audio fanatic you'd need a surround processor to process all the info that is missing in your mp3's.

KPierson

iTrader: (1)

MP3s don't 'lose' audio you'd never hear. MP3s are created by a complex theory called the Nyquist theory. Basically, the theory claims that if you create a digital signal by sampling an analog signal at twice the highest usable frequency then you should be able to recreate the original analog signal without noticing any loss. The hightest any human can hear is around 20Khz. That is where the 44.1Khz comes into place, 2x the hightest usable frequency.

So, when you 'rip' an MP3 digital info is stored every 1/44100 seconds. The size of the digtial info is the bit rate. The higher the bit rate, the more accurate the digital info is, the bigger the file is.

Anyone confused yet?

Basically you save space because instead of having a continuous analog signal you only have encoded points ever 1/44100 of the way!

Kevin

ecstaz

Check out this article on Crutchfield.com
http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/S-...nd.html?page=2

chaparro78

iTrader: (2)

Holy dog **** batman, I just learned about this in one of my engineering classes. SCHOOL PAYS OFF - WOO HOO

photoz

KPierson,

Before you start telling ppl how mp3 works, you better do a little research first. (this took about 10 sec to find from Google)

Nyquist Theory: The theorem states that, when converting from an analog signal to digital (or otherwise sampling a signal at discrete intervals), the sampling frequency must be greater than twice the highest frequency of the input signal in order to be able to reconstruct the original perfectly from the sampled version.

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...nyquist+theory

MP3s use a psycho-acoustic model to remove information that you would never (theoretically) hear in the first place, so by removing this data from the audio stream, you can reduce the size of the stream, hence why mp3s are smaller files than uncompressed wavs.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i...oustic&spell=1

photoz
(audiophile)

KPierson

iTrader: (1)

I have never researched how MP3s work. I was told in one of my numerous electronics classes that MP3s were made based off of Nyquist. And, by using Winamp, you can see the sampling rate and bit rate, both are components of the nyquist theory. MP3s may use that other thing you said, but I have never heard of it (and really don't care about it) I still believe that most of the compression of MP3s comes from the sampling, the reduction of music you wouldn't hear.

The reason I am standing firm on this is because of the way recorded music works. Speakers reproduce music based on an analog voltage put out to them. As we all know an analog value has one discreet value at every moment. By taking away a high pitched sound all you are doing is changing the signal voltage at that particular time. Although there might be less sound, data still has to be recorded for that instance, thus taking up space in a file.

MP3s however are 'decoded' by your MP3 player. Basically, decoding is taking the sampled data and reconstructing it.

Like I said before, I have done NO research into this, I just know how to play MP3s and I know the Nyquist Theroy, and the two seem to go hand in hand. Sorry if this is hard to follow, I'm driving down I70 right now at 70mph in my work truck!!!!

Kevin
www.kptechnologies.net

photoz

KPierson,

Every digital sound file is based off of Nyquist: wav, mp3,ogg, aac,wma. They are all digital interpretations of an analog signal, which is all Nyquist is concerned with.

Nyquist does nothing for compression. Think about it: Nyquist states that you have to sample at twice the Hz to obtain an accurate digital represention of an analog signal, thats 2x the data that is originally there.

Ok... thats in the analog world, we're talking digital.

MP3s and other compressed music file formats find ways to remove parts of this audio information to reduce the size (compression) of the digital interpretation (the audio file if you will).

So please don't go around spewing mis-information about mp3s just b/c you had an EE class on ADC.

The fact that you're not willing to research it makes me wonder why I spent the time to even write this post.

Oh yeah.. to answer the original poster's question:

Which is the best format? What do you want? Quality/Quantity?

Quality: DVD Audio
Quantity: burn your mps3 to a CD... if you are ripping CDs of your own, make sure you use a high bit-rate if you want to maintain some quality (atleast 128Kb/s)

If this is greek to you, then it won't matter.

KPierson

iTrader: (1)

Total mindblow, I spent the last three years of my life thinking I knew how MP3s work. I appologize for posting an inpropor interpretation of how MP3s work. Although they are based off of the Nyquist theory (like all other digital music) there is more going on then just that encoding. I particiipate in these forums for fun, and the only tine I ever research anything I post is when wire colors are involved. The forums would not be fun for me if I researched and documented all my sources before I posted something. These forums are full of inaccuarate information and anything you read in here you should never take as fact unless you have proved it yourself.

Oh, and whenever you 'sample' a signal, no matter what the frequency you will have LESS data as analog signals are defined at every given point and 'sampled' signals are only snapshots of a full analog signal.

Sorry for misleading hte 350 community!

www.kptechnologies.net
Kevin

photoz

sorry if I came off sounding rude, was not my intention... you do know how mp3s work to an extent. You know whats going on with the ADC part... which normally results in a wav file or some other uncompressed, raw format of the audio stream (analog signal). mp3 (and other compression algos) takes this a bit further by trying to maximize quality while reducing files size.

enough tech talk, where are my keys...

photoz

KPierson

iTrader: (1)

Where are YOUR keys??????????

I've been in Chicago all week long and I've spent all day driving my stupid work truck back to Dayton (still about 10 minutes away)... My coupe better be sitting at home waiting to be taken for a ride!

zxsaint

How about VBR (variable bit rates?) ... is this a better option while encoding mp3's or just keeping it static (I usually go for 192)

photoz

VBR is a compromise... it'll reduce the size of the file by applying lesser bitrates to portions of the music that are not as "intense". I say if you have the disk space, stick with a constant bitrate (192 is a good choice) it'll keep the quality of the music consistent throught the entire song.

Nice sig pic zxsaint... the background blur and radial blur on the wheels really adds to the feeling of the pic!

I'm still trying to find a good photo location for my new baby...

zxsaint

Thanks, but can't take credit for that. It's a nissan promo pic, but I did some of the blurring as well as the front chrome grill to match my current setup.

JasZ

All that math and Nyquist aside. The fact is that an orignial CD sounds better than MP3. Just rip your stuff at 320kb/s for better mp3 sound quality.

If you already have mp3's, you can't get better sound than what is already coded into the file. You could get some programs to amplify the sound or change some other sound characteristics.

If you want to mix tracks from CD's with no quality loss, don't convert them to mp3 at all. Just mix the .cda tracks.

You could rip everything at 320 and put them on a CD in mp3 format to play in the car. More songs and less loss.

MP3's do cause you to lose sound that you would normally hear on a CD- depending on how good your hearing is.

CD's are already "sampled" representations of analog sound and ripping that to MP3 discards some of the CD's digital data. No Nyquist junk needed there. Nyquist is for analog sampling so you avoid aliasing on signal reconstruction.