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

Tom-eg · 03-08-2008 01:47AM #1

And if so what are the differences?

tman · 03-08-2008 01:50AM

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 · 03-08-2008 12:14PM

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

Anima · 03-08-2008 02:04PM

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

raindog.promo · 03-08-2008 07:22PM

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 · 03-08-2008 09:05PM

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 · 05-08-2008 02:43PM

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 · 05-08-2008 08:43PM

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 · 05-08-2008 08:58PM

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 · 05-08-2008 11:06PM

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 · 05-08-2008 11:24PM

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 · 06-08-2008 09:11AM

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 · 06-08-2008 09:15AM

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 · 06-08-2008 09:23AM

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

Obviously the bitrate makes a difference too

Mike.

teamdresch · 06-08-2008 09:43AM

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 · 06-08-2008 09:46AM

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 · 06-08-2008 09:48AM

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

Mike.

PaulBrewer · 06-08-2008 09:50AM

mike65 wrote: »

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

Mike.

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

mike65 · 06-08-2008 10:05AM

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 · 06-08-2008 10:22AM

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 · 06-08-2008 10:27AM

Shouldn't you use OGG?!

Mike.

teamdresch · 06-08-2008 12:11PM

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

Tom-eg · 06-08-2008 02:22PM

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 · 06-08-2008 04:00PM

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 · 06-08-2008 04:58PM

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 · 06-08-2008 05:14PM

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 · 06-08-2008 05:47PM

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 · 06-08-2008 06:02PM

cornbb wrote: »

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

Except Apple Lossless, that is.

cornbb · 06-08-2008 06:28PM

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 · 06-08-2008 08:15PM

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 · 06-08-2008 09:01PM

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...

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

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