Karaoke Forums

Don't like to do Tecky.
When mp3's were introduced it was as said to help speed up transmission and conserve disk space.
An MP3 is a bit like television or the movies.
They are still pictures one after another so it appears to be moving.
An MP3 is the same thing.
Pictures of the sound one after another.
Nowdays we take lots more pictures a second than what we did previously.
The quality is much better.

But you already knew this.

If given the choice between a MP3 ripped at 320 and not having the song the singer wants to sing I am willing to bet over 99.9% of the singers will choose the MP3. That last person in a 1000 can go home as far as I care.... If they are just that hard to satisfy, they will find some other minor detail to gripe about.

Personally I rip all my CDs to Wavs but that is not saying that 320 mp3 is not acceptable, just that hard drives are cheap.

Oops! was in a rush.
Should have read:

When mp3's were introduced it was as said to help speed up transmission and conserve disk space.
An MP3 is a bit like television or the movies.
They are still pictures one after another so it appears to be moving.
An MP3 is the same thing.
Pictures of the sound one after another.
Nowdays we take more DETAILED pictures a second than what we did previously.
The quality is much better.

(The detail being the sample rate.)

Um, no. An MP3 is still an MP3, made the same way, with the same faults ( remember I said try putting them on a scope?), random junk, and no quality control.

I'm an EE and ET, but don't take my word for it. Do the tests yourself.

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

That's nice. I did. Unfortunately, neither CB nor any other mfr. has the right to make downloads LEGAL. They are illegal because U.S. law has yet to draft a combined ( and CB posted all the different types of licensing that must be included such as Synch, Digital, Recording, Commercial, etc...) license for them. THAT was also in Chartbuster's posts.

If the tracks were LEGAL for commercial use in the U.S., then there would be no problem including a small .txt file with each track so the KJ would be covered- would there? See any?

Chartbuster never said that they are LEGAL for commercial use, only that they would not pursue it. They also were kind enough, and TRUTHFUL enough to explain WHY they didn't have the right to grant commercial usage.

You ARE right about SC's reasoning, however. Kind of hard to coerce settlements based on 1:1 if no discs are required- though they offered downloads at one time before thinking better of it.

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

Sorry, Lon. I rarely disagree with you on technical matters, but if you mean electronically and accoustically indistinguishable, you are incorrect for two reasons:

1) MP3s simply do not carry the same amount of information as a CDG, or or even a .WAV file. It's not there- it doesn't exist in the file. This lack of information not only affects musical range, but transitions as well. This is one of the reasons for all the bad scope readings, along with consumer error.

2) There is no consistant QC for MP3s. Each consumer handles the files with whatever skills and equipment that they have available. That's not even including upload/download mediums. One never knows what will come out of a consumer's speakers, even if SC produced the MP3s with strenuous QC.


On the other hand, if you mean that people won't hear the difference, well then I agree that the majority won't- they don't now. By majority, I mean around 80% of the genpop, of which I am not one.

Of course, this only would be if the end user hasn't screwed up the process badly.

Keep in mind that hearing the difference between MP3s and CDs is not based on hearing ABILITY, but on hearing range. Most hear best in the midrange. However, those who hear very well in the lower ranges perceive MP3s as tinny, and without depth.

Those who hear best in the higher ranges perceive MP3s as flat and undefined.

Additionally, those with a strong sense of rythm and pitch WILL notice those random compressions and key changes.

To be clear: I'm not knocking those who use MP3s. I just can't because they drive me nuts to listen to. This means that even if I were an SC user, the GEM set would be useless to me. On top of that, since MP3s are inferior, whether they are noticed by the genpop or not, I see no reason to pay more for less.

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

Some people have twenty years of experience, some have one year of experience 20 times over.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Attaboy, Mick.

Anyway, I'm one of the over 20 years people. Gotta do a lot of meth to accomplish your statement, I guess.

On the other hand, you are one of 2 people here I can be sure will either refute anything I post, or attempt to discredit it. If I said the ocean is wet, you would ask me to define "wet", tell me my definition was wrong, then explain that since my definition was wrong ( in your eyes), the ocean couldn't be wet....

That's OK. At least you're consistent. I tell you truthfully that I respect that...

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

Joe It sounds like that 80% would be far closer to 99.9%.
You must be a rare breed.

So you don't use MP3+G man? You're still old school disc based?

A strong argument could be made that a .WAV doesn't have as much as.. say.. a live band in the room. That two speakers in stereo simply cannot re-create the same sound as a live band.

So we should just tell SoundChoice and the other Manu's to pound salt, and hire a 7 piece cover band to play all the music?

Put the music on a scope.. is this guy for real?

Well.. after exhaustive testing of the two audio sources here at Cheese Labs using a wide variety of recently calibrated Spectrum analyzers and oscilloscopes, i've concluded that anyone who can tell the difference between the two without aid of such a device has no business attending one of my shows.

my library is ripped in .wav and when i did that, only a few people mentioned that it sounded "bigger" (odd that they all used that word) but a vast majority will never know. personally, i seem to have an easier time getting the vocals mixed in since i went to .wav, but it may just be some sort of placebo effect. my wife loves to remind me that most people wont notice the difference, but if i do, and i am going to hear it night after night, it's worth it to me for my own enjoyment.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

OK we are talking about a mainstream karaoke enviroment ???
Not a STUDIO or RECORDING atmosphere ?
We are NOT listening through EARPHONES and with our ears ?

AND WE ARE ARGUING ABOUT WHAT ACTUALLY SOUNDS BETTER ?

You techie guys can talk all you want about what actually is better
but come on ..to refuse to use MP3's because of the sound quality is CRAZY

What sounds better a cdg played through a voco pro system or an mp3 played thru a high quality sound card and sound system.

MP3 ......USE THEM OR LOSE

Actually, most people *can* hear the difference at lower stream rates ( 256kbps or lower ), IF it's a head to head comparison of short excerpts, and the specific things to listen for are pointed out ( smeary sounding cymbals, muddy undefined bass, etc). Most people simply aren't listening that closely, and don't really care enough to listen.

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Dave's not here.

7 piece? Pfui. I've got a trio I'll hire out at karaoke show prices. Sound Choice has presented us with a great opportunity to make live bands a whole lot more attractive as weeknight entertainment here in Richmond, and I'm going after it with both bands.

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Dave's not here.

And you are talking about headphones or another great acoustic environment. Not a club with scads of background noise.

At 192K in a bar environment, I am guessing that well over 90% of self-professed experts are not able to tell the difference in a blind test.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

As for MP3 vs wav there are differences and not just the bit rate. Some of the ways of sampling can be better than others, not all MP3s sampled at for example 192 are equal in quality.

That said after some reading on the subject no blind test that I have seen out of several dozen had individuals reliably picking the .wav files and 320 MP3s as any different to the human ear, or even at 256 for that matter.

Now most of the tests show that the 128 and 160 MP3s are noticably worse than .wav files. However for some songs it has been argued by some audiophiles that the MP3 actually is BETTER than the .wav because it can smooth out some parts of the songs. The arguement is similar to those that believe a tube based amp can be better than a solid state system for some songs because of smoothing out the music. The tube based system is going to be less faithful to the origional than a solid state amp but may be more pleasing to the ear.

Regardless I challenge anyone to find a study out there where anybody was able to distinguish 256 or 320 MP3s from the WAV with any better than 50% reliablity (chance) in a blind test. Yes 128 is going to be noticably worse but not 320...

We can all agree that at some point the limiting factor is going to be the human ear and the brain. Everything I have read is that it is not the 20% or even the .1% that can distinguish wavs and 320 MP3s, it is far beyond human ablity to detect the difference at that level.

I would agree with the 99.9% of most people would not be able to tell the difference between a 320 ripped file or the original cd - even in a side by side comparison.
I even did my own tests when I started using Hoster, and these only rip at 192 through a WMA based file. We - me & the crowd, played for almost a 1/2 hour before the show started & I was asking if everyone could vote on which sample sounded better - most said they just had to guess as they could not tell any difference at all, most of the rest firmly believed the computer files were the original. 1 person was able to distinguish 4 out of 10 samples given that night (but I believe he was guessing as well). Maybe because it's going through a very nice pro-audio I/O that makes the difference rather than just plugging the computer to the mixer via a headphone jack.
So yeah you might have to have a scope to distinguish the difference, I will stand by my statement, a file ripped at 320 is virtually indistinguishable from the original source.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Oops... Sorry guys.
I did not mean 99.9%
I meant to type 99.999%.

While most of us can't tell the difference,
it is quite possible that a few do have amazing hearing.
They would consider their hearing to be normal.
No wonder Joe is against it.

I would hate to have hearing that good.
Radio & TV, DVD films etc. must sound strange to them.

When I have my hearing aid in I can't tell the difference.

What's funny is that Joe C does have hearing issues. On line he can pretend to be lots of things....one of the things that he is.......is full of hot air.

not trying to fuel the fire, but i just had a thought. i switched from cheap cables to all live wire elite. lower capacitance than mogami and better shielding more appropriate for live use instead of studio. big sound difference? eh, i heard it, but no one else seemed to. changed from internal sound card to native instruments audio 2 DJ. huge difference? definately noticable, even had some singers comment on it. ripped everything to .wav format. huge difference? i hear it, and singers have also mentioned it (refer to previous post). each one made a small improvement, but collectively, they made a massive improvement. so, i agree, 320mp3 or .wav, hardly noticable in and of itself, but if i had not made all the individual "not noticable" changes in my system, the collective result would not be as great as it has been. kinda like changing your air filter in your car to a K&N. noticable difference? yup. but add in new plugs, higher octane gas, and higher performance tires, and the collective makes a bigger difference than any 1 change.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens