Hello! This is probably stupid.
So I have recently gotten rid off my streaming services to save money and I have been into transferring my new and old CDs into MP3 form (320 kbps) and listening to those either on my Sony Walkman (NWZ-B162F or something) or on my PC with the Windows Legacy Media Player/VLC and now the music sounds so, so different than the same songs sounded from Spotify or YouTube Music. (Official apps on Android, iOS and PC or the web version on PC while having the “HD Settings” on.) Headphones and the soundbar is the same as before, no changes there.
Like the MP3 form, that should be much more poorer quality and inferior in all the ways, but it sounds “deeper”? The streaming services have sounded so… flat? Sorry, English isn’t my native language but yeah, flat or shallow? Empty even? Hollow?
Is this because of I now “own” the music and possibly respect it more and that makes it sound better? Am I turning into an audiophile, which I have never had any interest in before? Or is there something real in this? Not complaining really, just been pondering this a while and my fiancé agrees on this as he’s been doing the same on his old iPod…
Thanks in advance or anyways. :)
That’s 64 kbits, or about a 25% boost in bitrate.
If you’re ripping the music yourself, you’re going to be hard pressed to be able to tell the difference between 256kbps and 320kbps. Both are essentially indistinguishable from lossless.
If the streaming service is actually using 256kbps, then they must be transcoding them or using a really shitty method for encoding.
… Welp, that’s a whole lot more! Thanks for this correction!
Just to not sound like a complete asshole… ofc the 25% boost does not depend on bits/kbits, the difference is still 256 vs 320, but I just wanted to emphasize that the expected result is 25% bigger in all terms.
If it helps to imagine, the space needed to store a 256k 5 minutes song will store a 320k 4 minutes song. Then, you are already relying on a quite decent quality beforehand so it’s all extra quality and details.
I usually hear the difference in the high frequency sounds, which is exactly what is otherwise sacrificed in low bitrate compression formats.
FLAC will produce an even better sound, as it’s lossless, but for most songs I couldn’t justify the file size difference.
Not asshole-y at all, I’m real grateful and learning a lot today! :) I have never really even thought about these things.
I haven’t really listened to my songs in FLAC, but the MP3 already sounds very, very good and it takes such a tiny space, so it could be enough for me. For now…?