Mass mp3 quality converter?

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oOCyraXOo

Veteran X
I need a program that can scan through a directory and convert any not say 192kbs song to 192kbs, whether its 320kbs, or whatever. anybody know of something like this. sex0r to the first to help :)
 
why would you want to do this? you lose not only the bits going from 320 to 192, but also because it's lossy compression it'll sound like crap (lots of artifacting)
 
Hrm, you're that strapped for space?

For every 20GB of 320Kbps MP3s, if you lowered the bitrate to 192Kbps, it would end up taking up about 12GB of space, so you would save 8GB. (Sounds good, except now you have 8GB of crap.)
 
:bigthumb: seriously though, decompressing and recompressing an mp3 really kills the quality. i'm not just giving you shit for it. :)
 
I always understood that the bitrate of a CD is equivalent to 128Kbps, so any MP3 bitrate greater than that, while it would never be BETTER quality than the original sample, would guarantee you got the best sound from your MP3s.

That didn't come out quite like I intended... :p

Anyway, I always encode my MP3s at 160Kbps, since anything over 192 is really unnecessary overhead. :shrug:
 
Data said:
I always understood that the bitrate of a CD is equivalent to 128Kbps, so any MP3 bitrate greater than that, while it would never be BETTER quality than the original sample, would guarantee you got the best sound from your MP3s.
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The bitrate if a CD is 1,411,200 (44,100KHz * 16 bits per second * 2 channels for stereo) which is 1378.125Kbps.

However, the bitrate of a CD and the bitrate of an MP3 are not directly comparable.

That being said though, I will tell you that an MP3 sampled at 128Kbps is nowhere near CD quality, nor is 160Kbps. 192Kbps is a marked improvement over 128 and 160, but is still not full CD quality all the time. Note, I say "all the time" because yes, it does depend on what sort of music you are listening to.

A track consisting of solely a human voice will sound fine at 128 and 160. Dance songs mostly sound fine around 160Kbps and can sometimes slip by with 128, but more often than note, they sound a bit muffled.

Add in some instruments with wider range and you get problems with artifacting. Cymbals, hihats, etc. will all wreak havoc on an MP3 below 192Kbps.

If you start doing classical music on MP3s, then I would not recommend anything below 256Kbps. Sometimes you may need 320Kbps.

Of course, if your audio hardware sucks ass (headphones are bad, amp is bad, etc.) then it doesn't really make a difference.

As for myself, I try and get ALL my MP3s at 192Kbps or above. If I am ripping a CD for someone, I will make sure it is 192Kbps. I am far from being an audiophile. You can actually fool me on a double blind listening test with a 192Kbps versus its original CD track, but you really can't fool an audiophile.

128Kbps though I can definitely differentiate between, as well as different encoders. Lame is the best encoder available.

Anyway, I always encode my MP3s at 160Kbps, since anything over 192 is really unnecessary overhead. :shrug:
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See above. ;)
 
The statement that 128 is "cd quality" was never meant to be a quantitative statement, but qualitative. 128 "sounds like" cd quality, I believe it was always meant to be (whether or not it does is up for argument).
 
No, it definitely doesn't. You should be able to hear the difference between 128Kbps and the actual CD with any crappy old pair of speakers. Frequency analysis further shows that lots of stuff gets cut out.

But anyways, you're right, it was a qualitative expression, not quantitative. Nevertheless, it's wrong.
 
Data said:
Then apparently I've been lied to.

I'll do some more research...
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I don't know if I would really call it being lied to. The 128Kbps = cd quality thing is a very very common misconception. I think that Napster and other P2P proggies are the main cause of it as well. So many people got right into mp3s at that point, but really had no clue. Hell most of the tracks you grabbed from Napster were incomplete or had errors. So the 128Kbps myth just exploded due to ignorance. If you go on newsgroups it has always been 192Kbps or higher.
 
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