A friend of mine has some tunes that were originally 192 kb/s and burned as cd audio for his decks, and basically needs to know if these are suitable to play in clubs

thanks in advance

NO NO NO NO NO!

320k is the lowest I'd use.

320 is the lowest I'd use NOW, but I have many tracks that were originally at 128 or 192. They're rare, but they exist in my collection, and so while I adjust the EQ on the board a little bit to compensate for the crappy MP3 quality, I'm not going to limit myself if it's a song that absolutely MUST be played.

But yeah, what Pulse said.

-r-

And a good ear can tell the crappy stuff RIGHT AWAY.... But I know some

'expert' gonna come in and say not always,and then the debate begins.....

And do not convert you current 192s to 320s because that is not going to change anything.

True ,Dave,True !!

I can personally tell an audible difference between a 192kbit and 320kbit encoded mp3 on a club soundsystem. I can hear very little to no difference in a 320kbit vs a wav.

Basically, you can use 192kbit in a club environment and 95% of the people out there wont know the difference... But then again it is always that last 5% that you are really trying to impress

Also i have many songs of 128Kb how much diffrence does it do? 192 compare to 320 or 128?

It's huge.

Look at it this way... a 128kb/s file has HALF the data that a 256kb/s file contains. While it will sound better than 1/2 the quality, it contains 1/2 the data.

The whole concept behind compression techniques is that they remove portions of data which they believe the listener won't miss. But guess what - other crap is created as well. Digital compression artifacts will give tell-tale signs of where the file was compressed. You end up with a less-than-desirable audio file.

Bottom line - use 320k. If you have files @ 128k, use'm for your iPod and NOTHING ELSE.

Giovanni - reason it doesn't make a difference if you upconvert from 128 to 192 or 320 is because the data is already lost - all you'll be doing when you convert from a 128 to a 192 or a 320 is using more space to describe the same data, since the stuff that has been taken out (see Pulse's post) cannot be put back in - it's lost, unless you convert to a 320 or 192 or whatever from the original raw file (aka WAV file).

And, usually, when you cross-convert (128 to something else, like 192) you'll introduce more of the compression artifacts that are you don't want, so your 320 will end up being a lower quality than your original 128.

-r-

Alright but when you buy a Cd doesnt it come each song at 128? in that case how do you get it higher?

No, CD's (assuming they're store-bought, music CD's) are recorded in a special format for the CD player, but they're lossless to the original source, which was probably a wav file or an aiff (if they were made on a mac) meaning that they're actually HIGHER than a 320 by quite a bit. So if you record off a CD to 320, you're golden.

-r-

I think what you are not understanding in the fundamental basics of digital music. The fundamental difference between a CD and an MP3 is compression.



The quality of a CD (or any uncompressed digital audio) is measured in Sample Rate and Bit Depth. There is no loss when you convert an audio file to a CD, it is merely 'translated' into a digital format... 'CD laguage' if you want to call it that.



The quality of a MP3 is measured in Bitrate, which is the number of bits per second used to represent a section of the original track that you compressed. In order to squeeze this much music into a small size, the MP3 encoder cuts bits out and scrunches bits up in it's magic way in order to get it down to your desired file size... The smaller the bitrate the more squishing and prodding occurs and the worse your music sounds. Once this process has been done, there is no way to get the lost sound back, which is why there is no point increasing the bitrate of an already compressed mp3 (ie. going from 192k to 320k).



The most important thing to understand is that an mp3 is different to a CD because an mp3 has been squished down and bits cut out of it to get it down nice and small for your IPOD... whereas a CD is merely a 'translation'; no damage occurs to the actual sound (other than the conversion from analogue to digital, which, at the quality of a CD, is lossless)



Hope that helps...

No, I don't think he gets it either, so here's a visual:



CD:





MP3:





They're both cars, but one is compressed.

Hahaha! Nice 1 pulse!