First of all, sory for the re-post, but the previous one was html-formatted and didn't include any line breaks. I'm relatively new here. Please limit your hazings to 1 a person and mod the other post down.
I have a unique setup, but my mp3's sound better than anybody else's, heh.
1. Good mp3's. 128k isn't going to cut it. 160k minimum, 192k if you can get it. Napster's filter is a godsend. Hallelujah.
2. For those of you that are (unknowingly) using Xing encoders, I'll say a little prayer. They sacrifice high-end for size, and suck, making cymbols sound like running water. Tip: use Fraunhofer's encoders. I've got the codec (the C source is avaliable somewhere) so even audiograbber uses them. See? It's right in my media control panel.:)
3. Good soundcards now have digital audio output. Mine has optical digital output. Besides the cool factor (mp3's x-fered via light!) the quality doesn't diminish, you bypass the DAC on the soundcard (which is usually really crappy), plus it is very electrically noisy inside a PC. Digital bypasses that. For those of you using analog, another prayer.
4. Outboard DAC/Pre/Pro. This is a beauty. I've got a pre/pro that decodes the following data:
A. CD digital audio B. DTS CD audio C. PCM digital audio (mp3/wav/midi/any other file format) D. AC3 (Dolby Digital) 5.1 audio E. DTS 5.1 audio
And guess what? The soundcard's digital output passes all of this info. D&E requires DVD decoding software. It's hard to distinguish mp3's from CD's if ripped right. And the added plus is that you now have a decent Home Theater (at least from the audio standpoint).
5. A good Amp. I use a Carver. Very good for the starving college student, which I am.
6. Good speakers. Paradigm Atoms do very well, thank-you-very-much. Also a bang-for-the-buck must-have (sorry for all the hyphens). And a 12" sub.
Voila! These "digital" speakers sound great, I now have DTS in my dorm room, and mp3's are good. I may have lost 30lbs in the process, but I needed to cut back on my food budget anyways.
This post is longer than I thought, but I just get a little aggravated when people comment on how crappy mp3 is. It's just a format, like wav. Just compressed. Dolby Digital is compressed too, 384k/s. So is DTS, with a higher bit-rate. I think they use ATRAC or ATPCM algorithms, I can't really remember.
However, there's a reason I'm not converting all my cd's to mp3 and selling them back to the record store for $5/ea.
Kind of hypocritical, but you like listening to DVD's loud (so do I) but won't listen to mp3's on a equally-configured system. They both use psyco-acustic methods of eliminating redundant info. My mp3's are at 192k for a stereo file, Dolby Digital uses 384k (usually, can be 640k on rare demo dvd's) for 5.1 channels, and that info is bit-pooled. DTS uses 1.44m for their encoding. Newer DVD's (Saving private ryan) use half that, around 700k or so, and not bit pooled. Give a good listen, or read my post above about quality.
I have a unique setup, but my mp3's sound better than anybody else's, heh. 1. Good mp3's. 128k isn't going to cut it. 160k minimum, 192k if you can get it. Napster's filter is a godsend. Hallelujah. 2. For those of you that are (unknowingly) using Xing encoders, I'll say a little prayer. They sacrifice high-end for size, and suck, making cymbols sound like running water. Tip: use Fraunhofer's encoders. I've got the codec (the C source is avaliable somewhere) so even audiograbber uses them. See? It's right in my media control panel.:) 2. Good soundcards now have digital audio output. Mine has optical digital output. Besides the cool factor (mp3's x-fered via light!) the quality doesn't diminish, you bypass the DAC on the soundcard (which is usually really crappy), plus it is very electrically noisy inside a PC. Digital bypasses that. For those of you using analog, another prayer. 3. Outboard DAC/Pre/Pro. This is a beauty. I've got a pre/pro that decodes the following data: A. CD digital audio B. DTS CD audio C. PCM digital audio (mp3/wav/midi/any other file format) D. AC3 (Dolby Digital) 5.1 audio E. DTS 5.1 audio And guess what? The soundcard's digital output passes all of this info. D&E require WinDVD or PowerDVD. It's hard to distinguish mp3's from CD's if ripped right. And the added plus is that you now have a decent Home Theater (at least from the audio standpoint). 4. A good Amp. I use a Carver. Very good for the starving college student, which I am. 5. Good speakers. Paradigm Atoms do very well, thank-you-very-much. Also a bang-for-the-buck must-have (sorry for all the hyphens). And a 12" sub. Voila! These "digital" speakers sound great, I now have DTS in my dorm room, and mp3's are good. I may have lost 30lbs in the process, but I needed to cut back on my food budget anyways. This post is longer than I thought, but I just get a little aggravated when people comment on how crappy mp3 is. It's just a format, like wav. Just compressed. Dolby Digital is compressed too, 384k/s.
In a sick and twisted irony, My last name Lowney.com is a lawyer company. And we Lowney's are a very small group, all of us can be traced back to massachusetts in the 1900's.
"Now, I'm not saying that I want all of those people that do have these problems to die -- that's just plain immoral." I think that speaks for itself. We are the only species that is moral. Very rarely do mothers and fathers eat their offspring when starving or threatened. It is also rare that females decapitate or eat their mate. If all the other gazelles felt sorry for the slower, fatter gazelles and tried to help them out, they would be screwed. Of course, natural selection and evolution have a lot to do with who their natural enemy is, and either hiding from them (moths that look like tree bark, chamelons, etc) or running away (gazelles, etc) or making themselves poisonous (various insects and frogs) or taking flight, or growing lungs, or mass-producing, etc. Just about every species has devices for this. The thing is, we don't really have a natual enemy, except for maybe disease. We humans only have intelligence and morality. The fact that I'm typing this thought into a computer speaks volumes. My cat doesn't give a shit about this thread and is trying to hunt a bird. He has very keen ears and can notice slight movement in the dark, but he doesn't have a MBA from Harvard (from the dilbert cartoon about ratbert and his external brain pack). Since our only enemy is disease, the only way to fight it is to become intelligent enough to kill it. Or, leave it up to the %5 of us that survive to reproduce like rabbits. Perhaps morality doesn't foster evolution. We can help out our slower, fatter brethren and not have to worry about being eaten. Of course, in a very Shakespearean (sp?) way we lose morality when it comes to large crowds and our own life and death. When someone yells fire in a theater, you'd run over someone's grandmother to get out. And if you're small and weak, yer already screwed. I just saw on VH1 a story about the Who concert where (I believe) 11 people were either injured or killed. Or, if you believe every scene in the movie, Titanic showed how one would rather be labeled weak, inferrior, a pussy, etc just to get in the lifeboat with the women. You'll do anything to survive, it's instinct. So morality only exists when we're all rational.
I really can't believe labels charge stations for air play. If anyhting, I thought it was the complete opposite (from reading Courtney Love's essay posted somewhere on news.com and other places). If a top40 station had to pay for every song it played, it would be out of business or very poor. And if all the radio stations decided not to play music backed by such a policy, labels wouldn't make ANY money since this is their most successful form of advertising. From CLove, labels pay a 3rd party to promote music, and promotion usually implies free.
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First of all, sory for the re-post, but the previous one was html-formatted and didn't include any line breaks. I'm relatively new here. Please limit your hazings to 1 a person and mod the other post down.
:)
I have a unique setup, but my mp3's sound better than anybody else's, heh.
1. Good mp3's. 128k isn't going to cut it. 160k minimum, 192k if you can get it. Napster's filter is a godsend. Hallelujah.
2. For those of you that are (unknowingly) using Xing encoders, I'll say a little prayer. They sacrifice high-end for size, and suck, making cymbols sound like running water. Tip: use Fraunhofer's encoders. I've got the codec (the C source is avaliable somewhere) so even audiograbber uses them. See? It's right in my media control panel.
3. Good soundcards now have digital audio output. Mine has optical digital output. Besides the cool factor (mp3's x-fered via light!) the quality doesn't diminish, you bypass the DAC on the soundcard (which is usually really crappy), plus it is very electrically noisy inside a PC. Digital bypasses that. For those of you using analog, another prayer.
4. Outboard DAC/Pre/Pro. This is a beauty. I've got a pre/pro that decodes the following data:
A. CD digital audio
B. DTS CD audio
C. PCM digital audio (mp3/wav/midi/any other file format)
D. AC3 (Dolby Digital) 5.1 audio
E. DTS 5.1 audio
And guess what? The soundcard's digital output passes all of this info. D&E requires DVD decoding software. It's hard to distinguish mp3's from CD's if ripped right. And the added plus is that you now have a decent Home Theater (at least from the audio standpoint).
5. A good Amp. I use a Carver. Very good for the starving college student, which I am.
6. Good speakers. Paradigm Atoms do very well, thank-you-very-much. Also a bang-for-the-buck must-have (sorry for all the hyphens). And a 12" sub.
Voila! These "digital" speakers sound great, I now have DTS in my dorm room, and mp3's are good. I may have lost 30lbs in the process, but I needed to cut back on my food budget anyways.
This post is longer than I thought, but I just get a little aggravated when people comment on how crappy mp3 is. It's just a format, like wav. Just compressed. Dolby Digital is compressed too, 384k/s. So is DTS, with a higher bit-rate. I think they use ATRAC or ATPCM algorithms, I can't really remember.
However, there's a reason I'm not converting all my cd's to mp3 and selling them back to the record store for $5/ea.
Kind of hypocritical, but you like listening to DVD's loud (so do I) but won't listen to mp3's on a equally-configured system. They both use psyco-acustic methods of eliminating redundant info.
My mp3's are at 192k for a stereo file, Dolby Digital uses 384k (usually, can be 640k on rare demo dvd's) for 5.1 channels, and that info is bit-pooled.
DTS uses 1.44m for their encoding. Newer DVD's (Saving private ryan) use half that, around 700k or so, and not bit pooled.
Give a good listen, or read my post above about quality.
I have a unique setup, but my mp3's sound better than anybody else's, heh. 1. Good mp3's. 128k isn't going to cut it. 160k minimum, 192k if you can get it. Napster's filter is a godsend. Hallelujah. 2. For those of you that are (unknowingly) using Xing encoders, I'll say a little prayer. They sacrifice high-end for size, and suck, making cymbols sound like running water. Tip: use Fraunhofer's encoders. I've got the codec (the C source is avaliable somewhere) so even audiograbber uses them. See? It's right in my media control panel. :) 2. Good soundcards now have digital audio output. Mine has optical digital output. Besides the cool factor (mp3's x-fered via light!) the quality doesn't diminish, you bypass the DAC on the soundcard (which is usually really crappy), plus it is very electrically noisy inside a PC. Digital bypasses that. For those of you using analog, another prayer. 3. Outboard DAC/Pre/Pro. This is a beauty. I've got a pre/pro that decodes the following data: A. CD digital audio B. DTS CD audio C. PCM digital audio (mp3/wav/midi/any other file format) D. AC3 (Dolby Digital) 5.1 audio E. DTS 5.1 audio And guess what? The soundcard's digital output passes all of this info. D&E require WinDVD or PowerDVD. It's hard to distinguish mp3's from CD's if ripped right. And the added plus is that you now have a decent Home Theater (at least from the audio standpoint). 4. A good Amp. I use a Carver. Very good for the starving college student, which I am. 5. Good speakers. Paradigm Atoms do very well, thank-you-very-much. Also a bang-for-the-buck must-have (sorry for all the hyphens). And a 12" sub. Voila! These "digital" speakers sound great, I now have DTS in my dorm room, and mp3's are good. I may have lost 30lbs in the process, but I needed to cut back on my food budget anyways. This post is longer than I thought, but I just get a little aggravated when people comment on how crappy mp3 is. It's just a format, like wav. Just compressed. Dolby Digital is compressed too, 384k/s.
In a sick and twisted irony, My last name Lowney.com is a lawyer company. And we Lowney's are a very small group, all of us can be traced back to massachusetts in the 1900's.
"Now, I'm not saying that I want all of those people that do have these problems to die -- that's just plain immoral." I think that speaks for itself. We are the only species that is moral. Very rarely do mothers and fathers eat their offspring when starving or threatened. It is also rare that females decapitate or eat their mate. If all the other gazelles felt sorry for the slower, fatter gazelles and tried to help them out, they would be screwed. Of course, natural selection and evolution have a lot to do with who their natural enemy is, and either hiding from them (moths that look like tree bark, chamelons, etc) or running away (gazelles, etc) or making themselves poisonous (various insects and frogs) or taking flight, or growing lungs, or mass-producing, etc. Just about every species has devices for this. The thing is, we don't really have a natual enemy, except for maybe disease. We humans only have intelligence and morality. The fact that I'm typing this thought into a computer speaks volumes. My cat doesn't give a shit about this thread and is trying to hunt a bird. He has very keen ears and can notice slight movement in the dark, but he doesn't have a MBA from Harvard (from the dilbert cartoon about ratbert and his external brain pack). Since our only enemy is disease, the only way to fight it is to become intelligent enough to kill it. Or, leave it up to the %5 of us that survive to reproduce like rabbits. Perhaps morality doesn't foster evolution. We can help out our slower, fatter brethren and not have to worry about being eaten. Of course, in a very Shakespearean (sp?) way we lose morality when it comes to large crowds and our own life and death. When someone yells fire in a theater, you'd run over someone's grandmother to get out. And if you're small and weak, yer already screwed. I just saw on VH1 a story about the Who concert where (I believe) 11 people were either injured or killed. Or, if you believe every scene in the movie, Titanic showed how one would rather be labeled weak, inferrior, a pussy, etc just to get in the lifeboat with the women. You'll do anything to survive, it's instinct. So morality only exists when we're all rational.
I really can't believe labels charge stations for air play. If anyhting, I thought it was the complete opposite (from reading Courtney Love's essay posted somewhere on news.com and other places). If a top40 station had to pay for every song it played, it would be out of business or very poor. And if all the radio stations decided not to play music backed by such a policy, labels wouldn't make ANY money since this is their most successful form of advertising. From CLove, labels pay a 3rd party to promote music, and promotion usually implies free.