Seeking info for Sound quality(Music)

[jayavardhanarao]

Hai,
I am a big fan of quality music. I have one doubt that When we use compressed music i,e we have various bit rates of music available is there any quality difference between 128-bit and 320-bit. And which bit of music gives us best quality and is MP3 music gives us 5.1 channel output?

[ring_wraith]

First off, very few people can actually distinguish between 192 kbps and 320 kbps MP3. Apart from the fact that you need to have good ears, you also need reasonably high quality equipment before bitrate becomes a bottleneck to SQ. 192 kbps, is therefore the optimal size-SQ bitrate.

And, no, MP3 is not 5.1. That would be DVD-audio. MP3 is stereo.

[zyberboy]

One can feel difference frm 128 and 320kbps mp3 if he is using right equipement such as a good speakers setup or wen using good Headphones frm Sennheise/Koss costing above 1k and more.....
Best bitrate is 192kbps in CBR or 128kbps VBR.
320kbps will be waste of space, becoz no difference frm 192 kbps mp3.

[raksrules]

MP3 files (irrespective of bitrate) do not have 5.1 channel sound, they only have stereo.

I have seen (never heard) lossless music in wav containers encoded with flac codec at bitrates of 1400 kbps (approx)

@Off topic:
Why we don't have mp3 bitrates above 320 kbps? Any particular reason ?

[alok4best]

I think, if you have good speakers then even 128 Kbps is good enough, these days multimedia players have so many DSPs and other enhancements that they will make files even with lower bitrates sound good.

[krazzy]

Originally Posted by ring_wraith

And, no, MP3 is not 5.1.

As a matter of fact it can be. Behold!

Fraunhofer IIS and Agere Systems have developed a multi-channel MP3 format that produces 5.1 sound at bitrates comparable to those used today to encode stereo sound in MP3 format. In addition to offering multi-channel sound at low bitrates, the MP3 Surround -format is also fully backwards compatible with all existing MP3 players.

MP3 Surround technology encodes multichannel sound by transmitting a stereo audio signal that carries a compatible stereo down mix of the multi-channel material. The multi-channel sound image is created by additional side information, that characterizes the spatial distribution and attributes of the sound. Since the channel information is not discrete, the format cannot be compared to, for instance, Dolby Digital multi-channel audio.

"Enjoying personal multi-channel audio has been on the wish list of the MP3 user community for quite some time. This is exactly what MP3 Surround has to offer -- and it does so at astoundingly low bit rates", says Jürgen Herre, Chief Executive Scientist of the Audio & Multimedia departments of Fraunhofer IIS, Erlangen.

The most obvious solution for multi-channel, low-bitrate MP3 audio is in network distributed movies. First software implementations are expected to be available by mid 2004. Until then we can only guess how well MP3 Surround can perform.

Originally Posted by rak007

@Off topic:
Why we don't have mp3 bitrates above 320 kbps? Any particular reason ?

Because then the file size would be enormous and it would beat the very purpose of compressing the file. If someone wants quality higher than what 320 kbps MP3 offers, then it would make sense to just listen to the uncompressed music.

[alok4best]

though it is not so popular as most of the handheld players can't play it, but I have always felt that at the same bitrate aac sounds way better than mp3. More crisp bass and clarity.
So if you are a person who plays music only on pc or has a player which can play aac, then its gud alternative.