Has anyone seriously considered this? I hadn't, so before i condemned it i thought i'd see what it sounded like through a bit of decent kit.
I asked a friend to burn me a CD of some well known tracks. He found the best quality MP3s he could find and burned them on to a good quality Rewritable CD using his home PC.
Without wanting to bore you with too much detail the downsides were very obvious compared to standard CDs:
The frequency extremes were missing, high hats were dull and double bass non existent.
The timing was a little off on rock tracks.
Overall, the whole sound was very listenable since it was not fatiguing but some instruments disappeared. The easiest way to describe the sound was as if someone had put a blanket over my speakers.
Surely this format is only suitable for portable players?
Posted on: 12 June 2001 by Chris L
I've been playing MP3 CD's through my DVD player for quite a few months now, but not music ones so I can't comment on that.
I've been using them for radio plays and books on tape. It works very well as 128kps is plenty for human voice reproduction, and it means that, for example, I can get the all 13 episodes of BBC Radio's production of "Lord of the Rings" on one 80 minute CDR!
It does mean spending the time to records the tapes using my PC, but I was creating CD backups of them anyway!
Chris L
Posted on: 12 June 2001 by Keith Mattox
MP3 has become a boon for fans of concert recordings that have been unable to get into the tape-trading circles. As a matter of fact, several bands (Phish, Primus, and the Grateful Dead immediately come to mind) have MP3s of various concerts freely available on their websites. There are many private sites that have links to web storage sites for MP3s of Pink Floyd concerts. And I've just discovered the number of FTP sites for the same.
Going even farther, a small movement in Napster has discovered the beauty of trading MP3s of long OOP archive recordings, such as 78s.
Cheers
Keith.
Posted on: 12 June 2001 by Chris L
Well, I'd have to agree that the MP3 encoded version of Lord of the Rings would sound crappy compared to properly created CD's. BUT, I was comparing it to the cassette version I've got which is 10 years old. The MP3's were fine in that comparison.
It's also highly dependent on which encoder you use to create the MP3's. I've heard 128kps files from one codec which sounded better than 196kps ones from another.
MP3 is by no means hi-fi, nor is it an exact science. However, it does have a place in my house due to it's convenience. And, as you rightly say, for quality look elsewhere!
Chris L
Posted on: 13 June 2001 by Stephen Bennett
Most of my 'Ghetto Blaster' friends (many of whom are musicians), are perfectly happy with MP3 quality. 'Yes', they say, 'your Naim systems sounds great, but I'm perfectly happy with MP3 through my computer speakers'. These people never buy CDs now, just compile off the net. And some of them MAKE their own albums!
This is why high definition CD makes me laugh. I don't need it, the unwashed masses dont need it and wouldn't know it if it fell on their heads.
Regards
stephen
Posted on: 13 June 2001 by Stephen Bennett
Jonathan wrote
'(PS is the BBC CD version of HHGTTG good? - i've still got my 1978 cassette recordings from FM) '
I have both and the CD is very good indeed. Slightly different, depending on which versions you taped!
Regards
Stephen
Posted on: 13 June 2001 by Stephen Bennett
Harris wrote
'Has anyone seriously considered this? I hadn't, so before i condemned it i thought i'd see what it sounded like through a bit of decent kit.'
Harris, how DARE you do some research rather than spouting off uninformed opinion. What do you think the Internet is for?
Stephen
Posted on: 13 June 2001 by Andrew L. Weekes
I recently ripped Antonio Forcione Live from CD to mp3, using the Fraunhofer codec, at 384kbps.
I then burnt the resulting tracks back to an audio CD - my view is that minidisc is better, but that's almost definitely less lossy than even high bitrate mp3.
The results were OK though, in terms of bandwidth and clarity, it just sounded like an 'average' normal system.
I could certainly use it to judge whether I liked a piece of music, but it wouldn't hold my interest long term.
Andy.
Andrew L. Weekes
Posted on: 13 June 2001 by Harris V
Stephen
'Harris, how DARE you do some research rather than spouting off uninformed opinion. What do you think the Internet is for?'
maybe you're right. QS is wicked, mana is crap. A 72/140 is better than a 52/500 could ever be and vinyl is dead full stop.
Wow, that felt good.
