[SteveC]

As an almost lifelong music lover, I have a large collection of vinyl and CDs. It took me years to adopt CD as in the early years it sounded rubbish....very mechanical and electronic.

For music on the move I used to carry around a Sony Professional Walkman with cassettes recordered on a nice Nakamichi recorder. Cassette player in the car with various amps and aftermarket speakers. The sound would always knock a CD player into a cocked hat. More recently CD has improved, although laughingly, well recorded high quality 'metal' cassettes would still sound more musical in a good car set-up.

I have ignored the most recent digital iPod revolution until recently I started craving music on the move again. After some research I bought a Cowon Z2 player (UK release end of this month) and tossed up between Westone 4R and Shure 535 earphones, eventually deciding on the Shures.

This past weekend I set up dBpoweramp CD ripping software, bought some Micro SD cards for the Cowon, 32GB memory sticks for the car and a 2TB harddrive for archiving. The car only has Codecs for MP3 and WMA files, so I set up a test between FLAC (lossless), MP3 and WMA formats.

I couldn't believe what I heard. FLAC sounds pretty much like the CD which may be good or bad, depending on how well the original recording was done, but essentially the 2 files sound pretty much alike, so is a good medium for digital archiving. The Cowon plays FLAC files, but the size (ca. 330mb) limits how many albums you can carry (hence the 32GB Micro SDs). WMA certainly degrades the sound to a degree but for a car, with all the external noise its still acceptable and the file size is a lot smaller. MP3 on the other hand is absolutely hopeless. Where are the frequency extremes? It sounds muffled, like its playing behind a pillow and with one-note bass.

One of my test tracks was Toto's Hold the Line. I've never actually bought a Toto album (bit too commercial for me) but always liked the vocals on this particular track and admire Jeff Porcaro's drumming; expecially the way he makes hi-hats sound. Encoded using MP3 the hi-hats are missing entirely and its sounds like Jeff tuned his entire drum set to have the same pitch. In a word aweful.

Is it any wonder that the music industry is dying? Outside of the popular stuff there's still plenty of talent but if MP3 is what most people are listening to, recorded music is unlikely to survive. MP3 is by far the worst I've ever heard recorded music sound. Its lifeless shit that is completely missing the soul of the music, like an art gallery displaying 1 MP photos of all its works or an AM radio on a poor night (without the interference of course).

With digital storage becoming cheaper by the day, I'm fairly certain that MP3 as a format will soon disappear. So remember, if you are paying Amazon or whoever good money for MP3 downloads, you're stuck when the format goes and the industry comes up with a less 'lossy' protocol (which it almost certainly will). Put differently, when MP3 goes, it gives the music industry the opportunity to sell you your favorite songs for the 4th time!

[dave-the-rave]

Originally Posted by SteveC

As an almost lifelong music lover, I have a large collection of vinyl and CDs. It took me years to adopt CD as in the early years it sounded rubbish....very mechanical and electronic.

For music on the move I used to carry around a Sony Professional Walkman with cassettes recordered on a nice Nakamichi recorder. Cassette player in the car with various amps and aftermarket speakers. The sound would always knock a CD player into a cocked hat. More recently CD has improved, although laughingly, well recorded high quality 'metal' cassettes would still sound more musical in a good car set-up.

I have ignored the most recent digital iPod revolution until recently I started craving music on the move again. After some research I bought a Cowon Z2 player (UK release end of this month) and tossed up between Westone 4R and Shure 535 earphones, eventually deciding on the Shures.

This past weekend I set up dBpoweramp CD ripping software, bought some Micro SD cards for the Cowon, 32GB memory sticks for the car and a 2TB harddrive for archiving. The car only has Codecs for MP3 and WMA files, so I set up a test between FLAC (lossless), MP3 and WMA formats.

I couldn't believe what I heard. FLAC sounds pretty much like the CD which may be good or bad, depending on how well the original recording was done, but essentially the 2 files sound pretty much alike, so is a good medium for digital archiving. The Cowon plays FLAC files, but the size (ca. 330mb) limits how many albums you can carry (hence the 32GB Micro SDs). WMA certainly degrades the sound to a degree but for a car, with all the external noise its still acceptable and the file size is a lot smaller. MP3 on the other hand is absolutely hopeless. Where are the frequency extremes? It sounds muffled, like its playing behind a pillow and with one-note bass.

One of my test tracks was Toto's Hold the Line. I've never actually bought a Toto album (bit too commercial for me) but always liked the vocals on this particular track and admire Jeff Porcaro's drumming; expecially the way he makes hi-hats sound. Encoded using MP3 the hi-hats are missing entirely and its sounds like Jeff tuned his entire drum set to have the same pitch. In a word aweful.

Is it any wonder that the music industry is dying? Outside of the popular stuff there's still plenty of talent but if MP3 is what most people are listening to, recorded music is unlikely to survive. MP3 is by far the worst I've ever heard recorded music sound. Its lifeless shit that is completely missing the soul of the music, like an art gallery displaying 1 MP photos of all its works or an AM radio on a poor night (without the interference of course).

With digital storage becoming cheaper by the day, I'm fairly certain that MP3 as a format will soon disappear. So remember, if you are paying Amazon or whoever good money for MP3 downloads, you're stuck when the format goes and the industry comes up with a less 'lossy' protocol (which it almost certainly will). Put differently, when MP3 goes, it gives the music industry the opportunity to sell you your favorite songs for the 4th time!

FLAC is a lossless compression format, which means the waveform is EXACTLY the same as CD. I use it for everything now, can totally heard the difference between them and mp3s

[Bungle009]

Agree fully. If you are interested in why CD & Digital audio sounds generally pants, this si worth 40 mins of your time.

[Dave_3]

There are many sampling rates you can code to in MP3.

Make sure your default setting for ripping is not too low. The higher the sampling rate the less "smoothing" will occur.

D.

[SteveC]

Agree fully. If you are interested in why CD & Digital audio sounds generally pants, this si worth 40 mins of your time.[/QUOTE]

Thanks a lot....that was a fascinating lecture. Now I understand why some recordings sound so bad. While you don't necessarily 'conciously' hear the distortion it certainly generates high levels of listener discomfort and almost instant fatigue.