Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Audio/Jukebox/MP3 Forum => Topic started by: marikelis47 on December 18, 2020, 07:54:21 am
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I'm a DJ who is going to play at a much higher quality venue with a very good sound system soon and I'm afraid my mp3s bit rates are too low for this system. I collect CDs of my favorite tracks and albums but I have to bring a USB with my tracks on it to the event and I can not use my CDs. Could I rip the music from the CDs using a CD reader to get 320kbs mp3s? Would that damage the audio in any way? Or is there a better way to get 320kbs files?
Is there a good website or service where I can buy my tracks at 320kbs so I can avoid this issue in the future? (I know beatport offers mp3s at 320 but they only have a select amount of music)
Thanks. (Sorry about poor structure I'm on mobile)
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Rip your own CDs so you can be in complete control of the quality.
I've used CDex for years; you can set it to go directly to CBR 320Kbps mp3s, or flac if your playback hardware supports it (which is lossless audio, so it doesn't lose any fidelity versus the original).
It will also query online databases to auto tag the files from the cd.
https://cdex.mu/
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Convert to FLAC and you'll get the best sound. I used to rip my own mp3's for the longest time, funny part is, I can't for the life of me remember what program I used. I simply use things like Pandora now or listen to XM radio so I'm not really into it any more. But I do remember hearing people "claim" that the sound difference between 128 and 256 was no different, to that I said "BS". Even my non tuned, slight hearing loss ears could tell the difference. Don't know that I have ever heard a 320 track, would be interesting to compare it to 256 and see. No point in even trying against 128, wouldn't even be a match up.
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The differences between the bitrates are particularly striking when you look at a spectral analysis of audio.
Here's a segment of a track I was writing, in flac, 320, 256, and 128. The source material has an abundance of high frequencies from distortion and percussion elements. You can see how significantly the higher frequencies are clipped. Right out of the gate going from Flac to 320 looses everything above 20khz, and the upper frequencies disappear even more the lower quality you go.
Here's the audio as well for comparison:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UO0JlyIC6FIlkN0MKyOZzQrt7fo92GPj/view?usp=sharing
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I can for sure hear the difference in 320 and flac on those samples. I use a Sony 5.1 DAC with fiber optic/digital out on my PC so sounds are very clean going into the amp. The deeper more defined bass was very apparent in flac and not too bad at 320. Flac punched very nice on the sub woofer, so nice that I had to give that a couple more plays against the 320 to confirm.