MP3s, Hifi, Archos and stuff!

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R2D2

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I currently have an Archos AV400 which has 20GB of music on it and which I connect to Comand by the Aux in. This arrangement works well although obviously you still control the music from the Archos not comand.

When at home, I have recently taken to wiring my Archos to my Bose Companion 3 speakers which produce an excellent sound (To my ears, better than most "Hifis"). My question is the Archos with Bose option is showing up the "noise" on some MP3s and I wondered are their devices or mixers etc that can, clean, or mix or improve the quality of the sound yet further.

Comments and experiences welcome!
 
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What bit rate are you using.

I've tried 128kps and when I play MP3's through my hifi (albeit from a Nomad thingy) it sounds just awful. (I have Cambrige Audio 640R amp, Monitor Audio Gold Series and a JPL (?) sub.

Compared to audio CD's run off a Cambrigde Audio 640 C the sound is appalling.

I realise the source might have a lot to do with it but my bro-in law always encodes at the highest bit rate he can (340 kps/s??).

Which means he then needs a massive server.

Which IMHO negates the advantage of MP3.

I've gone back to buying CD's - a lot less hassle and great sound quality.
 
I experimented a few years ago with MP3s.
Using Variable bit rate gives a great sound, and of course a saving in space, I experimented with mainly pop music, and tested the sound back to back using Beyerdynamic DT331 headphones.
Couldn't hear a difference between tracks.
 
The first thing you have to remember is that mp3 is a lossy, compressed format, so if any of the noise is a by product of what was "Thrown away" during the compression process, you're out of luck.

Secondly, mp3s are created at various bitrates, and it could just be that the noisy ones are low bit rate compared to the rest, in which case the answer is get better copies of those songs.

Because you don't say, I'm going to assume you are using windows.

So, recommended windows software.

1/ Winamp, pref an early version from http://www.oldversion.com/

2/ Psychic mp3, now abandoned but a useful tool nonetheless

3/ Flash file renamer. Not just for mp3 collections

4/ MP3gain essential tool

5/ DB poweramp for ripping, though Audigrabber and Lame is as good, but Db has some other mass file uses.

6/ streamsicle - streaming mp3 jukebox, also pretty much abandoned.

I run an mp3 library in excess of 150 gigabytes, and these tools are all I need.

BUT, at the end of the day once data is thrown away in any "lossy" compression process it can never be gotten back, you have to go back and get a better quality copy, or make one.

HTH etc
 
What bit rate are you using.

I've tried 128kps and when I play MP3's through my hifi (albeit from a Nomad thingy) it sounds just awful. (I have Cambrige Audio 640R amp, Monitor Audio Gold Series and a JPL (?) sub.

128k is, to be fair, a very highly compressed mp3 format that nobody really uses for their own audio, its ok for dialup.

192k is fairly good, more than good enough for background and more than good enough for ridiculously noisy listening environments like a car.

256k is good enough that in a blind test few people, even audiophiles, can tell the difference, except perhaps on a single personal favourite track.

320k is good enough for anyone, really, unless you're into gold plated mains plug pins and similar crap.

The various mp3 codecs, even at the same bitrate, produce differing levels of quality and compression, before you get anywhere near constant versus variable bit rate.

There is also of course the lossless codecs such as FLAC

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Red Book CD audio format isn't actually that high quality, certainly not compared with good vinyl or 3.5" per second pro tape speed, most of the standard is to do with error correction and skipping.

Red Book, so named because the book containing the written standard was red, and being digital it is 16 bit, so tracks like the 1812 lose a lot, LONG BEFORE THE STUDIO RECORDING ENGINEER started messing with the gain etc.

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It is worth noting that an all solid state music player has no need of jitter correction, skipping, seek errors, etc etc etc.

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it is also worth noting that the actual data held on the medium is digital, a series of 0 and 1

ALL audio amplifiers, without exception, are analogue, so at some stage the digital audio data, whether it be Red Book or Lame mp3, has to be converted to analogue, and it is probably at this stage that the greatest signal degradation occurs.

HTH etc
 
Thankyou for those answers. I checked in Windows Media Player and the bit rate varies from 96kps to 1.41mps!! Hence why some tracks appear noisier than others! I have upped my rip bitrate. I think I get away with it as well as I do because the Bose processes the sound and uses the sub woofer to boost the bass.
 
Agree with a lot of what's been said here. I use the following tools:

CDex for ripping. Can use CDDB for automatically getting track/disc titles, can use pretty much any MP3 encoder you wish, and has a "paranoia" mode for ripping from scratched CDs.

I use the Lame MP3 encoder (v1.32 engine 3.97 beta 2 MMX), using variable bit rate with a minimum bitrate of 128kbps and a maximum of 320kbps.

If I need to mess with ID3 tags afterwards, I use Magic File Renamer which is an immensely flexible and quite powerful renaming program that deals with ID3 tags amongst other things. It can batch rename - I sorted out all my MP3 ID3 tags some time ago and would routinely sort the tags of over a thousand MP3s at once (I ripped my entire CD collection some time ago).

And of course, Winamp 3 for playing them. I have Winamp 5 installed as well as very occasionally I find a file that Winamp3 won't play. Also, 5 has a nice plugin that lets you convert an MP3 to a WAVE file if I need to edit something. W2 had that, but it never made it into 3, annoyingly. CDex can also do it, but if the MP3 is damaged, I have to use Winamp.

My PC is hooked up to a Technics SA-DX930 amp, a pair of pretty decent Technics speakers and an REL Storm subwoofer. Also got an Altec Lansing 2.1 system hooked up there - the two sound systems compliment each other quite well, filling in gaps in the other's sound spectrum.
 
What a fantasic set of replies.

Now I know how complicated it is to do it properly I'm definitely going to stay with good old CDs :)
 

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