4 ms·

> Unless you want to mix/remix/etc. Changing the pitch brings out the artifacts. Certainly, you probably need lossless if you're going to do any sort of editin

> Unless you want to mix/remix/etc. Changing the pitch brings out the artifacts. Certainly, you probably need lossless if you're going to do any sort of editing.

squarefoot 5y ago
Lossless, and possibly upsampling before editing, but high end gear probably does that by default. As for bitrate compression, although I have a good musical ear, I can't find any appreciable difference from a high bitrate (320) mp3 and the corresponding lossless track, so no problems using mp3s to listen to music. I also managed to resample my entire portable playlist (yeah, making mp3s out of mp3s, I know in some circles I could be killed just for thinking about that:*) to overcome that dreadful loudness craze that makes pretty much every track produced in the last 20-25 years destroy your ears if you happen to listen to it just after something 10 years older. Unfortunately all methods to level the tracks (mp3gain, replaygain etc.) don't work properly because they should analyze all tracks dynamic content, not just the average/maximum level, then first adjust their dynamics and later normalize their level. In other words, level compression should be applied more to softer tracks and not the other way around. So I faked a solution to the problem by reconverting my playlist after applying compression to an extremely low threshold, making clear to myself that none of those tracks would ever leave my player. Some sound really horrible, but I spared my ears.
- StavrosK 5y ago
  As far as I know, mp3 frames have a "volume" field, which is what mp3gain changes to losslessly change the volume of the entire track. Could you not take advantage of that too?
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    The problem is the huge difference in dynamics between "old" and "new" recordings (that is, not just their maximum level) which makes really hard if not impossible to have more tracks sounding near the same level. This Wikipedia article about loudness wars explains the problem in details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  Not sure you're saving your ears by doing this compared to say, turning the volume down. You can't 'uncompress' an MP3 back to having the dynamic range it had before.
  - realo 5y ago
    Well… maybe some cool AI would help here… We already have it for images!
    - breakfastduck 5y ago
      We can take a jpeg and run it back to RAW? Because I don't think we can.
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    "You can't 'uncompress' an MP3 back to having the dynamic range it had before." True. In fact I would rather compress old music to bring it to the same dynamics of the new one, then and only then normalize everything. I know it's almost a crime; I did it just on my player and would never give these tracks to anyone.

> Unless you want to mix/remix/etc. Changing the pitch brings out the artifacts. Certainly, you probably need lossless if you're going to do any sort of editing.

squarefoot 5y ago

Lossless, and possibly upsampling before editing, but high end gear probably does that by default. As for bitrate compression, although I have a good musical ear, I can't find any appreciable difference from a high bitrate (320) mp3 and the corresponding lossless track, so no problems using mp3s to listen to music. I also managed to resample my entire portable playlist (yeah, making mp3s out of mp3s, I know in some circles I could be killed just for thinking about that:*) to overcome that dreadful loudness craze that makes pretty much every track produced in the last 20-25 years destroy your ears if you happen to listen to it just after something 10 years older. Unfortunately all methods to level the tracks (mp3gain, replaygain etc.) don't work properly because they should analyze all tracks dynamic content, not just the average/maximum level, then first adjust their dynamics and later normalize their level. In other words, level compression should be applied more to softer tracks and not the other way around. So I faked a solution to the problem by reconverting my playlist after applying compression to an extremely low threshold, making clear to myself that none of those tracks would ever leave my player. Some sound really horrible, but I spared my ears.

StavrosK 5y ago
As far as I know, mp3 frames have a "volume" field, which is what mp3gain changes to losslessly change the volume of the entire track. Could you not take advantage of that too?
- squarefoot 5y ago
  The problem is the huge difference in dynamics between "old" and "new" recordings (that is, not just their maximum level) which makes really hard if not impossible to have more tracks sounding near the same level. This Wikipedia article about loudness wars explains the problem in details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
breakfastduck 5y ago
Not sure you're saving your ears by doing this compared to say, turning the volume down. You can't 'uncompress' an MP3 back to having the dynamic range it had before.
- realo 5y ago
  Well… maybe some cool AI would help here… We already have it for images!
  - breakfastduck 5y ago
    We can take a jpeg and run it back to RAW? Because I don't think we can.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  "You can't 'uncompress' an MP3 back to having the dynamic range it had before." True. In fact I would rather compress old music to bring it to the same dynamics of the new one, then and only then normalize everything. I know it's almost a crime; I did it just on my player and would never give these tracks to anyone.