Can you tell the difference between an mp3 and a wav file?

Tom-eg

And if so what are the differences?

tman

Depends on the bitrate of the MP3 and how well it was encoded really.

I honestly can't tell the difference between 320Kbps and a wave, and tend to always purchase mp3s over wav files for DJing use
192K is a whole different story thoug...

Vague answer for a vague question...

teamdresch

First place I tend to hear an mp3 is in the spitty, distorted high frequencies - cymbals, hi hats etc.

Anima

If you had a good enough speaker set up you could tell the difference, especially on lower bit rates.

raindog.promo

Cymbals on drums tend to sound like they're being put through a flanger on some tunes.

Wav's tend to be a lot bigger in MB compared to MP3.

PaulBrewer

Anima wrote: »

If you had a good enough speaker set up you could tell the difference, especially on lower bit rates.

It should be easy enough to tell the difference but it does depend on a couple of things.

If the original material is high quality and has lots of 'delicate' elements - say a soft Vocal and piano piece, so you're using WAVs qualities, the difference will be quite noticeable, especially on a reasonable listening system.

The differences may be less audible on a dirty electronic track.

However even on my Laptop if I copy a Wav from the studio into iTunes and convert it to 128 MP3 the quality difference is loud and clear.

Having said that if you played me the MP3 only through my laptop the following day I might be hard pressed to tell you if it was the Wav or the MP3.

johnnylakes

To my limited ears... you get less of a sense of dynamics with mp3..the high end also can sound overly 'compressed' ... but then again..if you never listened to CDs, or cassette or even vinyl and get all your music from itunes etc like most of the 'record' buying public do, then you probably wouldn't know or care about the difference....
I think sound quality is becoming less of an issue in the 'digital age'...which is a damn pity IMO..
But that may be for another day....

trackmixstudio

I can tell the difference between MP3s and WAVS no problem. MP3s have a grainy quality and, as already mentioned, phasing in the high mids to highs.
If you are converting a wav to mp3, a subtle low pass at about 15k before conversion makes a huge difference to the mp3.
I think mp3s will go the way of the cassette tape in the next couple of years.
With memory coming down in price and capacities increasing rapidly there will soon be an ipod "hd" that will have a capacity in terabytes rather than gigabytes so all your music will be back to 16/44.1 cd quality. The sooner the better!

PaulBrewer

trackmixstudio wrote: »

I
I think mp3s will go the way of the cassette tape in the next couple of years.
With memory coming down in price and capacities increasing rapidly there will soon be an ipod "hd" that will have a capacity in terabytes rather than gigabytes so all your music will be back to 16/44.1 cd quality. The sooner the better!

Good Point! I think the last part of the equation will be Broadband quality -downloading those big ole files.

Neurojazz

There are a few encoders also... free ones (like LAME) cause artifacts/crap - there are encoders that mean a better quality, but you pay for them (like Fraunhofer) which makes it very hard to tell between wave/mp3...

The Fraunhofer one is very, very cool - used to be free then snapped up and peeps now pay through the nose for it.

PaulBrewer

Neurojazz wrote: »

There are a few encoders also... free ones (like LAME) cause artifacts/crap - there are encoders that mean a better quality, but you pay for them (like Fraunhofer) which makes it very hard to tell between wave/mp3...

The Fraunhofer one is very, very cool - used to be free then snapped up and peeps now pay through the nose for it.

Never heard of either of them! I was aware of the effect of different encoders though.

I think I mentioned before about the idea of Mastering for MP3 .
If that's how me track is going to end up I'd like a say in the process.

Neurojazz

Because of the problem with digital overs (i can explain again if mystified) MP3 become 'tinny/phased/distorted' at the top end more than waves.... why? - because the mp3 encoder doesn't have a great sound if your mix had many digital overs in the first place and then put through the encoder that basically averages out sound to create the impression of your original 44k...

The trick is... render your mp3 with -6db and you won't get as many (if any) problems with the sound.... a good test is too render a wav at 0db pumped really hard, you then render into mp3 and you hear the crap... now do the same with wave at -6db - hey presto, nice sound (if you have nice encoder)

If your selling to iTunes i recommend the Fraunhofer as it's like a standard... very, very, very nice.

eoin5

trackmixstudio wrote: »

I can tell the difference between MP3s and WAVS no problem. MP3s have a grainy quality and, as already mentioned, phasing in the high mids to highs.
If you are converting a wav to mp3, a subtle low pass at about 15k before conversion makes a huge difference to the mp3.
I think mp3s will go the way of the cassette tape in the next couple of years.
With memory coming down in price and capacities increasing rapidly there will soon be an ipod "hd" that will have a capacity in terabytes rather than gigabytes so all your music will be back to 16/44.1 cd quality. The sooner the better!

I think well see a rise in lossless encoding. I see pearl jams 08 tour will be available in FLAC and MP3.

mike65

It depend on the material - analogue (!) strings and tampani are usually the giveaway.

Obviously the bitrate makes a difference too

Mike.

teamdresch

trackmixstudio wrote: »

there will soon be an ipod "hd" that will have a capacity in terabytes rather than gigabytes so all your music will be back to 16/44.1 cd quality. The sooner the better!

Funnily enough, everything on my iPod is in wav or apple lossless already.

PaulBrewer

eoin5 wrote: »

I think well see a rise in lossless encoding. I see pearl jams 08 tour will be available in FLAC and MP3.

What's A FLAC?

mike65

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

Mike.

PaulBrewer

mike65 wrote: »

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

Mike.

Is it being used much? Is it a new (ish) codec?

mike65

No idea to be honest its been around for a good while now. Its got plenty of player software support now. So should be more used.

Mike.

ogy

FLACs really good. very crafty too.

it works by just remembering delta values. instead of using all the bits a wav does, it just remembers the information in the first bit, that just stores the difference of each consecutive bit, like:
the first number is 10, then 2 higher, 1 lower, 5 higher, 8 lower, 3 lower, 4 higher ...

100% the same as wav sound quality wise, and about 1/3rd of the size i think. definitely should be the standard is these days of 160GB ipods, except its not supported by apple!

mike65

Shouldn't you use OGG?!

Mike.

teamdresch

FLAC is great for sending mixes to clients, too.
Assuming they can figure out the decoding at the other.

Tom-eg

What mp3 encoder does cubase sx use?? Also isn't FLAC compressed? So wouldn't it still lose quailty? What is the standard format for audio files when recording?

cornbb

The sooner we see more lossless encoding the better. Digital technology should make it possible to make more pristine recordings than ever but funnily enough we haven't chosen to use it that way. I blame Apple

PaulBrewer

cornbb wrote: »

The sooner we see more lossless encoding the better. Digital technology should make it possible to make more pristine recordings than ever but funnily enough we haven't chosen to use it that way. I blame Apple

Ah.... didn't they introduce/embrace the AAC format? Surely superior to MP3s?

cornbb

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Ah.... didn't they introduce/embrace the AAC format? Surely superior to MP3s?

The codec is a little more efficient but in the grand scheme of things I don't think it makes much of a difference. And besides, its a proprietary format which owes its existence to Apple's desire to use their own DRM (another technology that is detrimental to music, IMO). iTunes/iPod/Quicktime provide little or no support for lossless or open formats. One of the few things I miss about switching to Mac is the inability to easily play the few FLAC and APE files I have.

PaulBrewer

cornbb wrote: »

The codec is a little more efficient but in the grand scheme of things I don't think it makes much of a difference. And besides, its a proprietary format which owes its existence to Apple's desire to use their own DRM (another technology that is detrimental to music, IMO). iTunes/iPod/Quicktime provide little or no support for lossless or open formats. One of the few things I miss about switching to Mac is the inability to easily play the few FLAC and APE files I have.

Ah Jaysus? What da feck is an Ape file - are ye lads winding me up?

teamdresch

cornbb wrote: »

iTunes/iPod/Quicktime provide little or no support for lossless or open formats.

Except Apple Lossless, that is.

cornbb

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Ah Jaysus? What da feck is an Ape file - are ye lads winding me up?

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

teamdresch wrote: »

Except Apple Lossless, that is.

True, but again they have a tendency to push proprietary formats instead of at least giving people the option to use open formats in Quicktime and iTunes.

eoin5

Tom-eg wrote: »

Also isn't FLAC compressed? So wouldn't it still lose quailty?

Its a more efficient way of registering all the information, think of it as zip files for audio.

af_thefragile

I can tell absolutely no difference between a 320kbps mp3 and a wav file.
I can tell if the bitrate is less than 256kbps though...

PaulBrewer

af_thefragile wrote: »

I can tell absolutely no difference between a 320kbps mp3 and a wav file.
I can tell if the bitrate is less than 256kbps though...

Listening to what on what?

JC 2K3

V0 (VBR) MP3s are the way of the future.

WAVs should be obsolete, FLAC is half the size for the same quality.

I can't tell the difference between 256KB/s MP3s and FLAC, but any lower than that and depending on the track I'll start to hear compressed drums etc.

PaulBrewer

JC 2K3 wrote: »

V0 (VBR) MP3s are the way of the future.

WAVs should be obsolete, FLAC is half the size for the same quality.

Says who?

tweeky

Guys,
Mac OSX will play almost any file;
flac
http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html
(roxio toast will burn flac direct to cd or convert to wav etc)
ogg
http://www.vorbis.com/setup_osx/
Windows Media
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/flip4mac.mspx

2 second search in google!!!!

Apart from listening to an ipod on a train/bus etc or posting a cassette quality
demo by email why would anyone want to compress a music file.... after all memory is cheap thesedays.

PaulBrewer

JC 2K3 wrote: »

V0 (VBR) MP3s are the way of the future.

WAVs should be obsolete, FLAC is half the size for the same quality.

It only goes to 65k sampling rate so it's not a wav replacement yet, I'd have thought.

PaulBrewer

tweeky wrote: »

a cassette

Hey Gramps! What's 'a cassette' ? Shouldn't you be in bed this late?


(by the way SSLs demo rooms are done, say the word and we'll tip over)

JC 2K3

PaulBrewer wrote: »

It only goes to 65k sampling rate so it's not a wav replacement yet, I'd have thought.

From wiki:

It can handle any PCM bit resolution from 4 to 32 bits per sample, any sampling rate from 1 Hz to 1,048,570 Hz in 1 Hz increments, and any number of channels from 1 to 8.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC

PaulBrewer

JC 2K3 wrote: »

From wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC

Aha! That's why I asked 'Who says?'

http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html

says different!

I dunno ...

cornbb

af_thefragile wrote: »

I can tell absolutely no difference between a 320kbps mp3 and a wav file.
I can tell if the bitrate is less than 256kbps though...

Same here

tweeky wrote: »

Guys,
Mac OSX will play almost any file;
flac
http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html
(roxio toast will burn flac direct to cd or convert to wav etc)
ogg
http://www.vorbis.com/setup_osx/
Windows Media
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/flip4mac.mspx

2 second search in google!!!!

Apart from listening to an ipod on a train/bus etc or posting a cassette quality
demo by email why would anyone want to compress a music file.... after all memory is cheap thesedays.

I know! Where there's a will there's a way and all that. But the lack of iTunes/Quicktime support irks me. I listen to most of my music on my laptop, through a fairly decent audio interface and monitors. Having to use VLC or whatever to listen to FLAC files is a pain in the arse.

PaulBrewer

cornbb, Listening to what on what?

cornbb

Ok, I did kind of a (not very scientific) test last night after reading this thread. I had a lossless rip of some Beethoven symphonies (the APE format I mentioned). So I then converted the opening movement of the 6th to 320kbps and 256kbps mp3s using a utility called Max: http://sbooth.org/Max/

I could spot the difference between APE and 256k mp3 but not between APE and 256k mp3. I happened to have APE files but this should be identical to any lossless format (like FLAC, WAV, or straight off the CD).

I listened with Quicktime for the mp3s, VLC for the APE files, and I'm using an Edirol UA25 interface and Yamaha MSP25A monitors (and before you say anything, this is half-decent equipment - by my standards! :pac:)

Would be interesting to see who could start to notice differences at what levels in a proper blind test! Most people couldn't give a rats ass I guess.

JC 2K3

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Aha! That's why I asked 'Who says?'

http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html

says different!

I dunno ...

Odd, but still, big difference between 655KHz and 65KHz.

PaulBrewer

cornbb wrote: »

Ok, I did kind of a (not very scientific) test last night after reading this thread. I had a lossless rip of some Beethoven symphonies (the APE format I mentioned). So I then converted the opening movement of the 6th to 320kbps and 256kbps mp3s using a utility called Max: http://sbooth.org/Max/

I could spot the difference between APE and 256k mp3 but not between APE and 256k mp3. I happened to have APE files but this should be identical to any lossless format (like FLAC, WAV, or straight off the CD).

I listened with Quicktime for the mp3s, VLC for the APE files, and I'm using an Edirol UA25 interface and Yamaha MSP25A monitors (and before you say anything, this is half-decent equipment - by my standards! :pac:)

Would be interesting to see who could start to notice differences at what levels in a proper blind test! Most people couldn't give a rats ass I guess.

I guess there's an obvious typo there?

I don't know, I've never done an A/B re wav/mp3, certainly higher rates.

I'd have guessed using that type of material would make it as easy as it would be to hear the difference.

PaulBrewer

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Odd, but still, big difference between 655KHz and 65KHz.

Ah the extra digit! 655 khz? What da feck runs at that I wonder? That's hardly right?

cornbb

PaulBrewer wrote: »

I guess there's an obvious typo there?

Oops

cornbb wrote: »

I could spot the difference between APE and 256k mp3 but not between APE and 320k mp3. I happened to have APE files but this should be identical to any lossless format (like FLAC, WAV, or straight off the CD).

af_thefragile

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Listening to what on what?

Hmm... maybe i do need to be more specific.
I can tell the difference listening to some well produced bands like Tool or NIN on my headphones (which are pretty decent ones). The little details and higher frequencies like cymbals stand out much more clearly in the wav file or a 320kbps mp3 file than it does in a 192kbps or lower mp3 file...

But if its an old school punk band or some other not well produced band, there's a very little difference. Difference is mostly in the clarity of the track and how the instruments stand out much better from each other...
The wav file is more clear and is a slight bit louder too.

le_tigre

Some friends and I ran an ABX test last year, comparing lame -V2 and .wav. We used tracks by Autechre, Panda Bear and a Mozart symphony and compared each track's wave and mp3 files. You have to make an attempt at least 16 times per track to make it statistically viable - with few passes, it's easier to get a higher score by guessing.

Anyway, with at least 16 comparisons per track, covering a reasonable stylistic range, about 11 of 13 listeners scored pretty close to 50% accuracy, which was about the same as guessing. Of the remaining two, one was slightly below average, and one slightly above.

This is easy to do on your own. You'll either vindicate your ears or learn that compression has come a long way in recent years.

le_tigre

af_thefragile wrote: »

Hmm... maybe i do need to be more specific.
I can tell the difference listening to some well produced bands like Tool or NIN on my headphones (which are pretty decent ones).

Try comparing compressed and CD audio by bands with greater dynamic range and timbral variety and you'll really hear the difference {when you can hear the difference}!

af_thefragile

le_tigre wrote: »

Try comparing compressed and CD audio by bands with greater dynamic range and timbral variety and you'll really hear the difference {when you can hear the difference}!

I feel Tool is one of the best composed band out there. They've got an absolutely trully amazing dynamic range and although they're a metal band, their music has multiple layers to it. There's really a LOT that goes into Tool's music. You'll discover new things every time you listen to their songs. Especially from their new album 10,000 days. You should give it a listen. I believe the song 10,000 days (Wings for Marie pt.2) is one of the best produced song ever made, it is the best produced song i ever herd. The whole 10,000 days album of theirs is one of the best produced albums ever made. The clarity, the dynamic range, the depth in every instrument is just amazing. You really need to give this a listen. All tracks recorded at 96khz sample rates.

And for NIN, Not all of their music is harsh n distorted. The album The Fragile is a production masterpiece. Its multi instrumental. It has multiple layers. Just Like You Imagined is quite a popular song from that album (the one featured in the 300 trailers) and its pretty rich. Every instrument has been layered multiple times to create really rich sound scapes and timbres. Again highly recommended for some good produced and rich music.

Another really really rich (probably the richest) album is BT's This Binary Universe. This one is just mind blowing. The sound scapes, all the different instruments, all the little details you really can't get better than this. Check of The Anhtkytheria Mechanism. The track goes from little piano and chimes to a full 110 piece orchestral explosion with break beats n all. In terms of production, dynamic depth and timbral variety this will blow away any recorded classical or dance/trace piece.

So yeah, i do make my judgement listening to the appropriate music and not through just a couple of Green Day tracks!!

But if you've got any more recommendations, i'm open for it!