MP3 - a perishable music format???

[Squawk7777]

it seems rather odd... :rolleyes: but I have noticed that many MP3 songs on my HDD and CD are not sounding as good as they were when I downloaded them. Checked in with the AME, nope my hearing hasn't gone totally bad ("...What?") :D

I recently talked with a friend of mine about it, who claims the same. Has anybody else experience a decrease in their MP3 quality?

(The music industry is happy to read this I suppose)

[stagger]

Unless the storage media develop errors, digital formats do not degrade with storage or repeated copying – unless you are decoding and then re-encoding the files using a lossy compression algorithm.

What you are experiencing is almost certainly a perceptual illusion.

Certainly I find that MP3s once decompressed, burned to CD and played on a decent stereo don't sound so good. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that a decent sound system shows up their flaws in comparison to normal CD formats.

The only software related explanation I can think of is decoding/re-encoding. What audio software are you using? I suppose it is conceivable that if you used some sort of editing suite to listen to tracks then they could get decompressed to WAV format only to be recompressed to MP3 format and saved like this when closed. Since MP3 (like JPEG and MPEG-2) is a lossy compression system repeated cycles would undoubtedly degrade quality – but I find it hard to believe that anyone could be doing this by accident.

[Squawk7777]

ok, I realize that the quality of digital music cannot degrade unless the medium (CD, DAT, HDD) does. I have listened to a few songs (MP3) format and noticed a few "scratches" for a split second that I did not notice before. Songs downloaded a while ago also seem to sound more dull. I checked the file size and date and nothing has changed. I am mainly using Winamp and Sonique.

[stagger]

So you checked the file size and date and nothing has changed - so that's my decompression/recompression theory out the window - so all that leaves is perceptual illusion. Have you recently listened to high quality (CD) versions of the same tunes?

I suppose if you're getting skips and clicks it could be that you're processor is being overworked and decompression is being interupted by other processes. The original file wouldn't have changed though. The pops/skips/clicks would't be in the same place each time though - it would depend on what you were doing. Are you running loads of other stuff at the same time on a relatively slow system?

In Winamp under Options > Preferences > Plugins > Output > Nullsoft waveOut you can adjust the Priority that Winamp processes are assigned. Do you get less pops/clicks/skips when it's set to "Time Critical"? Have you changed this recently? I have mine set to "Highest" which is 2nd from top.

[FL310]

When next flying your aeroplane use some decent headsets to protect your ears :D , sorry, couldn't resist.

If you did not alter the files and just burned them on a cd, there should not be any change detectable, unless you leave the cd in bright sunshine on your dashboard and it transformes in some cheeseburger style topping....

When you download MP3s from the net, the quality of the each file is only as good as the ripper produced the file, often there are some individuals who "play" too much with all the available settings which in turn results in some "strange" effects. I am very sure that the file you used to burn sounds exactly as the one on your cd, unless your cd-writer got problems but, you should have noticed that straight away while listening to it the first time.

[RadarContact]

Have you upgraded or re-installed your player lately? If so, go and check the settings (all of them) again to see if there have been any changes in the playback codecs or CPU usage priority setings...

Also, the quality does depend on the hardware it is used on...

[Squawk7777]

The skips and clicks always happen at the same place or should I say time. I checked the settings and it does not appear that my processor is overworked.

Now I am all curious though. I'll create my own MP3s and if it happens again, I will bring it up. Thanks again for your advices! :)