128kbps MP3s were fine

[Pissmaster]

The music piracy scene sure used to be autistic, didn't it? It probably still is, but I haven't paid it any mind in ages, now that everything I could ever want is either on Soulseek or YouTube.

I remember reading a lot about how to properly rip a CD. Exact Audio Copy, VBR, blah blah blah. Eventually FLAC came along, because I guess 320kbps MP3s were still missing a teeny tiny little sliver of data? Maybe? If they were, I couldn't ever hear it.

At one point, I finally bought a nice, high end pair of headphones. The classic Sennheiser HD 280 Pros, which ironically cost a little more nowadays than I paid probably fifteen years ago. I remember being interested to see the difference between those dreaded 128kbps MP3s and those of higher quality, and what I found was that... uh, well, there was an ever-so-slight difference, but it really didn't change anything. Any talk of a magically different soundstage, or depth, or whatever those audiophiles were on about really didn't happen.

Now it's the future, and my way of listening to music on-the-go is by way of a pair of Bluetooth headphones, synced to my phone, running Grayjay, which lets me listen to music from YouTube while my screen's locked. But muh audio compression? But muh YouTube compression? It's fine. If it weren't for those, I'd just drag-and-drop a bunch of music files to my phone, and just play those. Some are FLACs, some are Napster-era 128kbps MP3s. They're all fine. And all that learning about the proper standards of ripping your music turned out to be just a whole bunch of useless bullshit that will rattle around in my brain forever.

 

[BrodyDaMan]

I think it depends on the music too, for most stuff it doesn't really matter, but I really noticed a difference when listening to Queen II on flac vs 128 kbps, a lot of subtle instruments were lost in smaller file size. 320 kbps is a perfectly fine compromise for 99% of music IMO

 

[Cedric_Eff]

Ween’s Craters of the Sac, didn’t that come out as MP3?

 

[Jeff Q. Anime]

my problem with downloading mp3s is that you have no idea if retards have re-encoded it x number of times before it reaches you

i always download guaranteed untouched flacs or isos and then re-encode them myself (in opus, of course) for funkwhale

mp3 encoders have also gotten better than they used to be. the difference between a 128k mp3 in 2005 and a modern vbr 128k mp3 is night and day.

 

[rebel]

I ripped some old rock CDs in FLAC for the first time in awhile after I canceled my Spotify, and I noticed zero sound difference compared to MP3, and it also did not have the metadata or play in my car. Im sticking with MP3 FLAC is a forced meme

 

[wry wrangler]

YouTube to MP3 master race.

 

[Spungus]

• 128kbps is tolerable but anything is better
• 320kbps mp3 is all I need
• FLAC if I really enjoy a song and want to make sure it's maximum quality
• OPUS for anything voice based. I encode anything that's like a radio show or podcast as 32kbps OPUS. It sacrifices some quality for massive space savings in comparison to other codecs

 

[Spasticus Autisticus]

A lot of the conventional wisdom around MP3s and bitrate is based on the shitty encoders of the late-90s and early-2000s. You needed a high bitrate to compensate for their trash psychoacoustic modeling. LAME has made the old encoders obsolete, but these days there isn't much reason to use MP3 except in situations where something more modern like Opus isn't supported.

Hard drive space is cheap and I have gigabit Internet so I download lossless whenever I can. There's basically no downside. I can always encode to lossy for putting my music on my phone or elsewhere. If you archive in a lossy format, you're stuck there.

 

[zyclonPD]

The ever evolving faggotry of better formats and endless tech spergery has convinced me that nerds should be enslaved and forced to code actual useful stuff instead of engage in Internet arguments about which format is better.

I still don't have functioning and useful software for a litany of issues and faggots with a modicum of experience are wasting Years of my life not making me a functional software and instead debating which format is best to listen to niggers rap nigger with nigger. You don't deserve freedom.

 

[Bullet Club]

Nah, 128kbps mp3s were shit.

196kps were OK though.

 

[ZipDisk]

I never liked VBR, it dumps some shit it shouldn't.

If you ever get really bored, the 1996 "Scene" guide to ripping MP3's was funny, there were some CD-rom drives that couldn't do it. You got nasty clipping no matter what you did. [edit it was mitsumi]

I use 128kbps mp3's for my phone, but I don't use VBR.

Bullet club, do you mean 192kbps? I don't remember 196, but 160 sucked for some specific reason I can't remember.

Found it, it was DAC

https://www.mp3scene.info/files/42/dac-mp3-mini-how-to-v401/

 

[Cat tit bingo]

It depends on what hardware you have. If your just listening to regular 20$-100$ headphone 320kbps mp3 is the way to go, anything higher is basically wasting space. Lossless is for when you got a really great sound system or 500$ up high quality headphones like good sennhaisers or old kgbs, and don't forget your half a grand dac too. I'm a simple man, my modded 500gb 5.5 gen ipod is good enough for me, it has 6k mp3s and sounds great, plus it didn't cost a few grand.

 

[Jeff Q. Anime]

It depends on what hardware you have. If your just listening to regular 20$-100$ headphone 320kbps mp3 is the way to go, anything higher is basically wasting space. Lossless is for when you got a really great sound system or 500$ up high quality headphones like good sennhaisers or old kgbs, and don't forget your half a grand dac too. I'm a simple man, my modded 500gb 5.5 gen ipod is good enough for me, it has 6k mp3s and sounds great, plus it didn't cost a few grand.

192k vbr mp3s with modern encoding are auditorially lossless no matter what equipment you use to listen to it btw

 

[JohnnyG]

Eventually FLAC came along, because I guess 320kbps MP3s were still missing a teeny tiny little sliver of data? Maybe? If they were, I couldn't ever hear it.

The point of lossless encoding wasn't to sound infinitesimally better than high bit rate compression, it was to preserve 100% of the original info, which would let you reencode to whatever you wanted later without the photocopy-of-a-photocopy effect. Even compressing to 320kbps throws away some info, and a probable reason for the wide variety of qualify in 128, 160, 192kbps files was people re-encoding files multiple times, losing info at each pass.

And I think the move from fixed bit rate to VBR is another reason some early mp3s were so spotty...it's just much less efficient to waste the same bits on quiet parts of songs and then being capped during dynamic ones. I listened to files years later that had a definite compression sound, usually noticeable as slithery SSSSS sounds in the highs, vs. more modern files at similar bitrate that sounded ok.

which lets me listen to music from YouTube while my screen's locked

Brave browser will let you do that if you enable it in the settings screen.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

Honestly, the older I get, I come to realize the only actual thing i give a shit with music files is if it's 44100htz. Anything lower and it's a deal breaker. It's such a noticeable difference between low and high quality sounds, and it's why trying to get high quality chiptune and/or old console music rips that isn't redbook audio a pain in the ass.

For example, if I want a Sega Genesis song, I have to record the audio directly from GensGS set at 44100htz because the actual vgz files are set at 22000htz or somewhere around that and the difference is really noticeable, especially if you're listening to it in the car at full blast.

 

[Caesar]

No 128kbps VORBIS or OPUS are fine. 128 will do for music but I don't think it's that hard to hear distortion. I always had a personal minimum of 192kbps for CBR, although I prefer V0, V2 or 320kbps.

I try and collect as much as I can with FLAC now, as sometimes I transcode to OPUS, and lossy ---> lossy is bad.

Everyone's ears are different but I don't think 128kbps and 320kbos are that hard to tell apart if you try hard with LAME MP3s

If it's just voice, I don't mind 96kbps. 64kbps is a bit low.

 

[analrapist]

By the end of the 90s, I was reliably ABXing (automated double-blind testing) 320kbps MP3 on problem samples and I'd hear it on random tracks outside of those too. I'd ABX to be sure.

Opus has alleviated most of that. But I use FLAC because that way I have the bits that were on the disc, or the bits that were sent from the mastering company, or whatever the equivalent is in the album's production line. I'm currently using Opus at 128k, but I recently had something make me think it wasn't enough, so at some point soon, I'm going to test and see. It might need closer to 160. I used to run Musepack files on Rockbox, so I've never had concerns about what normies do.

 

[Urotsuki]

If it's something like archiving an artists discography I tend to like FLAC whenever possible, otherwise 320kbps mp3s are an acceptable substitute. Whatever I don't have to stream from my media server I just rip off of youtube at 128k and that works for me while at work.

 

[MrTroll]

Never settle for anything less than 192kbps.

 

[Grub]

As long as the drums don't have that muddy tinkling sound old mp3s I used to get off frostwire had I'm good. Generally I do like 320 mp3s or flac or wav files best and for any kind of sound file I actually want to work with in a sound editor should be wav format.