RE: First MP3 results in - Tim eats his words!

["Graham Howe" <graham@xxxxxxx>]

Several people have heard my 192 joint stereo mp3's via my DDAR and
reasonable hifi (not quite in TIms league but above average I would guess)
and all have agreed they sound very good. Infact I have not played a CD
since getting this setup and on buying a new CD now, my first job is to
convert it to MP3 and put it on the server (my last few purchases have
never
been listened to on a CD player).

Graham
-----Original Message-----
From: nick broughton [mailto:mail@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 07 May 2001 21:18
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] First MP3 results in - Tim eats his words!


NOOO.  I can't wait.  I want to start ripping so I can buy one of Grahams
DDAR's.  How can I justify one of them without an MP3 server (with some
MP3's to serve of course)!!!

Ho hum, perhaps I'll really on my own ears for now.
----- Original Message -----
From: Timothy Morris
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2001 4:16 PM
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] First MP3 results in - Tim eats his words!


I haven't Nick, but it is on the list of things to do. I now have found a
way to set the output on the DV88 so that it decodes the mp3 and then sends
the output as PCM to the 561s DACs which levels the playing field somewhat.

Don't hold your breath, but I do plan to get something done by the end of
the year latest:)

Tim.
-----Original Message-----
From: nick broughton [mailto:mail@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 06 May 2001 21:54
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] First MP3 results in - Tim eats his words!


Tim

Did you get round to 'playing' with different bit rates yet?  As I said
earlier, I'm particularly interested in any results with regard to VBR.

Keep us posted, I know I'm not the only one interested.

Nick
----- Original Message -----
From: Timothy Morris
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2001 5:09 PM
Subject: [ukha_d] First MP3 results in - Tim eats his words!


First thanks to Phil Harris for connecting up the analogue cables on the
back of my DV88 yesterday. I had hoped to use my Meridian 561 to do the
decoding for both CD and MP3, but while the Meridian will decode 5 channel
mpeg (the original standard for PAL DVDs), I've since found out that .mp3
is
a different thing!

I've been doing some reading, and have used a separate ripper, and encoder
-
both free.

For ripping I used Exact Audio Copy, which recognises errors in the
bitsream, and re-reads the CD until it gets a perfect copy. All of my CDs
(with a few exceptions which have been "borrowed" by young hands)
are in
pristine condition, so It may be overkill. It takes longer, but at least
I'm
guaranteed that the .wav files on the hard disc are a perfect
representation
of what was on the CD. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

For encoding I have used the latest LAME encoder (3.88), together with a
windows front end (Razorlame).
For some reason the files were unreadable when using high bit rates unless
I
selected ISO compatibility.

Razorlame is available from http://www.dors.de/razorlame/ and
the Lame DOS
executable from http://dkutsanov.chat.ru or http://www.jthz.com/~lame/

The first thing I discovered is that the type of source material makes a
vast difference (I know you all already know this, but for me it is a
voyage
of discovery!) I encoded "Miss Otis regrets" from the "Ella
Fitzgerald sings
the Cole Porter songbooks" boxed set, which is vocals plus light piano
accompaniment, and that sounded quite respectable down to 128K. I then did
a
quick an dirty test on some material with wider dynamic range that I've
been
listening to quite a lot recently - the 4th track on Whoa Nelly by Nelly
Furtando, and with this one compression was fairly obvious at the same bit
rate.

Overnight I set up the whole Nelly CD to be encoded at 320Kb/s, and have
just finished an A/B comparison with the original CD switching back and
forth between the two. There is a very slight muddiness to very low bass,
but you really have to try hard to hear it, and to be fair I think that has
as much to do with the fact that the DACS in the Meridian are superior to
those in the Arcam as anything else.

I realise that 320Kb/s is too high a bit rate for ripping an entire CD
collection - so now that I have found (for myself) that .mp3 can produce
very good results even when played through a very transparent HiFi, I'll
experiment with various encoding settings to find the best trade-off over
the next couple of weeks and post the results.

Many of you may be thinking that it is all irrelevant, as your
HiFi/listening room is not capable of revealing the difference. Well your
current set-up might not, but what if you splash out further down the line?
Do you really want to go through the hassle of re-encoding all of your
material?

I'm not going to go through the process of ripping my entire CD collection
purely because I'm happy changing a CD every hour or so, and I live in a
single story open plan building so there is no need for multi-room audio -
I
just turn up the volume, but it has given me food for thought!

See Mark, I said I'd be honest!

Tim.




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