Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests MP3 encoding, computer as music source for home

Ok I think maybe I'm not quite normal but I do all my music listening using the PC as a source. I got rid of my home CD player which was a decent Yamaha unit. I'm just wondering out there if anyone has done some real testing to see how close MP3 quality comes to CD. I did some of my own listening tests and found it close enough that I can dump the CD player.

Just today I have decided to convert all my CD's to MP3. My choice of software was AudioGrabber. I also got the latest reliable version of the lame DLL which Audiograbber will use to encode with. I decided that space is not as much of a concern as quality so I set it to 320KBPS with Stereo (not joint stereo). I used to use Blade for encoding before and it was good to but most people seem to feel that LAME is better so I switched to that.

As for sound card, I have an OEM version of the Audigy which seems good. Its not as good as my old ISA card which was a Guillemot Maxisound Home Studio 64pro (long enough name?). That one seemed just a tad better for music playback but new MB does not have ISA..oh well.

The soundcard feeds an old Rotel RC-870BX pre-amp which in turn goes to an old Soundcraftsmen PM860 205wpc power amp. The speakers are ones that I built myself which turned out very nice. Vifa 1" silk domes, Vifa 5.25" woofer. The crossover is a simple 6db/oct. The thing is damn heavy because I went mental and built the cabinet out of 1" MDF except for the front which is two layers of 1" (2" total). Its also braced internally. Didnt want resonance. Anyway it was my first attemt at a full range speaker (not just a subwoofer) and I didnt want to comprimise. Anyway it turned out great. I had a pair of Sound Dynamics speakers which these replaced.

So now I'm just wondering if all that was worth it. I mean now that I have the better speakers, if I was to get my Yamaha CD player back, would I really hear a difference at 320 KBPS?

Does anyone else have a high end sound setup which they use their computer drive and how close is the output from a quality soundcard to being anywhere close to audiophile levels?

Wow that was a long post. Sorry guys. Anyway give me some opinions.

Although I don't have it here at home I had a pretty good SQ setup at school in my room. I was using a Sound Blaster AWE 64 Gold (had seperate left and right RCA jacks on the card). Output was fed through Monster Cable Interlink 250's to my Marantz SR-68 stereo receiver which in turn goes through Straight Wire speaker cable to my PSB Century 500 speakers. Even at 320kbs ripped from my own CD's it wasn't quite CD quality. The only complaint that I had was the S/N ratio didn't seem to be as good overall. If only I could get most of my downloaded mp3's sounding as good as my ripped ones.

On the CD end I am using a Marantz CC-48 changer fed through Straight Wire Level 2 analog interconnects to the Marantz receiver.

When I upgraded my motherboard in Feb I had to get rid of the AWE 64 (I still have it in a box) because it was ISA and the new board didn't have any isa slots. Being fed through a SB live value the SQ has dropped, although I attribute it to the fact that I am now using hair-thin Radio Shack cable as the link between the sound card and the receiver

Pete

Actually, I the three soundcards that I have used that I liked most for having a decent S/N and low noise were (in order of preference)

1. Guillemot Maxisound HSP 64 Pro
2. Soundblaster Audigy
3. Diamond MX300

The worst thing I have used for background noise was a soundblaster 16 and AWE32. God the noise was terrible.

Anyway I want to rip a CD track to MP3 @ 320Kbit then burn it back to CD as a wav file then take that to a high end shop and play it back on expensive equipment to see now noticable the encoded song is vs the original.

I have the 400 watt logitech 5 piece computer speakers in my computer room, and an X10 audio/video sender which pipes the signal to my living room.

I got this back when decent DVD players where expensive to play DVD's in my living room. Now I use it to pipe Mp3's to the living room...

http://www.x10.com/products/x10_vk57a.htm

There is a lossless compression codec called Monkey Audio. It's file extension is ".ape". It is the compression method of choice for audiophiles. You get zero signal loss, and you can re-inflate it to a .wav with zero loss. It compresses the .wav files about 50%. If you got plenty of space, I would choose this.

http://www.monkeysaudio.com

You can get a plugin for Winamp to play it.

To get the best possible .wav file, use EAC (Exact Audio Copy). It will even save some scratched CDs from the dumpster.

The CD sampling rate is 44100 using 16bits (for stereo).
16 bits = 65536 bytes
65536 bytes per 1 sample = 2890137600 ~2.9Gbs.
this is the rate at which mp3 needs to be sample to be an exact recreation of CD quality audio.
Can it be done, no, computers aren't fast enough.

Thanks Guys for the input. I'm going to try that Monkey audio compression and see how it compares. Right now an average song @320kbps is about 12megs. I've got about 140 CD's with an average of say 10 to 12 songs per CD. No problem

As for Monkey Audio, I'd have to double the drive space. I think that would be ok because my server has a dedicated MP3 drive so thats fine. I'll let you guys know how it turns out. I wish I never threw away that really old oscilliscopet (dual channel 15Mhz - old and buggy but worked).

Let us know what you think of Monkey's Audio. I love it, and I can't tell the difference. Actually, the sound should be identical to the CD, since there is no signal loss.

The CD vs. MP3 quality is not a factor any longer on the decision making for which one to use. As of now, there are CD's on the market that cannot be played by a PC, which means you will not be able to rip them. This is the route that all the music labels will be taking in the near future. A work around for this was actually to take a black marker (thin one) and run it over the silver looking ring on the CD.

Anyhow, it seems to be that the future of digital music is growing thin. They are trying to put a lock on music duplication as well as movies. A good source for this is the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before you go throwing out your CD player, look into this site. You may change your mind.

If it can be recorded on to a media, it can be recorded from that media. Plain and simple.