Note: once again I have manually removed sci.electronics.repair because
it is irrelevent to the discussion, and because others don't have the
common sense to remove it themselves

Joseph Oberlander wrote:

Once you know what to listen for,

Aah...yeah...at this point allow me to point out you are making sweeping
generalizations, and backing them up with your own anectdotal
perceptions. The fact of the matter is that with a pure source, MP3
audio is superior to Redbook CDDA. CDDA or CDA is in fact only recorded
at 174.6 kb/s using PCM without compression. The equivalent to this is a
113 kb/s MP3 file. Given two audio tracks recorded under these
conditions from a pure source, you will not be able to tell a difference
no matter how good you think your ears are. And believe me, my ears are
very good. I know what to look for.

The "syrupy" description is perfect, IMO - the syllabance and
ring and crispness slowly degrades until it sounds like very
clean FM or AM radio if you push it enough. By the time you get
to 128K, a CD to 128K side-by-side comparison is painfully
revealing.

And is this MP3 file generated off a CD, the same CD we are comparing it
to? And what codec did you use? Is joint stereo enabled? Obviously under
best case conditions an MP3 will be equal to or less than the CD it was
ripped from, and generally it will be inferior because of generic codec
settings which compromise quality for file size.

Do the comparison youself. Find an SACD and rip it to a CDA file, and
also rip it from SACD to MP3 @ 128 kb/s. Use whatever you like, but I
recommend some Baroque chamber music or light jazz. Now find those
artifacts, if you can, and compare them to the CD artifacts.

--
thelizman

teamROCS Car Audio Forums http://www.teamrocs.com/caraudio/
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"It's about the music, stupid"

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