File sizes - .WAV

Norm Vogel · Joined: Feb 20, 2003 Posts: 157 Location: Central NJ

Hi! I just got back from a Vac in Fla (!), and am as sick as a dog. Both of my ears have been blocked for a week now, and all music sounds distorted!
I can't even record the latest composition i was working on before i left.....i can't HEAR it well! Crying or Very sad

Well, enuff of that. I've been experimenting with converting wav files to different formats, and here's what i've come up with.

A 10 min wav file is about 62 mb. Converted to MP3 format, it's 9 mb ("fixed" or "variable" bitrate doesn't have much of an effect on it.

This same file converted to realaudio (56kbs) is about 2 mb. So, if you have a lot of server space, i feel it pays to go with MP3, as the sound quality is MUCH better!

Norm

elektro80 · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 3:43 pm Post subject:

I recommend mp3 too.

The sound quality is acceptable. There are some problems though. This has to do with mp3 - I have given up real audio and other formats a long time ago -.... most mp3 encoders and mp3 playback apps do not like too much bass. I have had to make special eq of songs in order to get a bass end that does not distort when encoded to mp3. -And it is smart to use the bass cut filter many of the encoders have. A weird issue is also that some playback apps can give a rubato feel to certain VBR encoded files. the song sounds.. out of time... rubato.. weird.. the timing of the events is slightly odd.. - Played back on a fast mac or pc .. the file will sound ok.. but certain systems do have timing issues. This is very odd.

When it comes to file size it has all to do with the bitrate/samplesize settings. SOunds like you might have used 128k bitrate which is cool. Anything less usually sounds rather uncool.

mosc · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 3:47 pm Post subject:

Welcome back, Norm.

I haven't gotten much response to my posting of example files on this forum. However, on other forums there have been lots of discussions. It seems to be a moot point because mp3 has become the defacto standard.

I've tried the .ogg files from the Vorbis project. In my opinion this is the best from the file size and quality. However, very few players support this format, which makes it impractical for us.

elektro80 · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 4:02 pm Post subject:

Ogg Vorbis is quite OK. Nonstandard though. MP3 is the way to go.The audio layer in MPEg4 is cool too.. - but most media players think of this as a video file with no video.. which is something else than treating it as a music file..

elektro80 · Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 7:42 am Post subject:

This might be of interest to you, Howard..

The Artekopia Netjuke is a Cross-Platform & Web-Based Audio Streaming Jukebox powered by PHP 4, an increasing choice of databases and all the MP3, Ogg Vorbis and other formats files that constitute your digital music collection. The Netjuke aims at enabling small organizations or communities to run a private "mp3.com-like" Web site to access the music they legitimately own, distribute or are granted access to. It supports most audio players, language packs (English, French), optional file downloads, media protection schemes, multi-level security, shared and private playlists, random playlists, images, etc. Also features an unusual, easy-to-use installer module to get you started in minutes. See http://netjuke.sf.net/ for support and more information.

Josh Hunsaker · Joined: Jun 08, 2003 Posts: 1

goods points about mp3,
another thing mp3 encoding does (in order to compress the file in such a way) is dump the frequency data of exactly 16khz and above, getting rid of all the potent treble information. This cutoff is what gives it that resonance effect, esp present on high hats and flanged sounds. This means that editing the data afterward is not a good thing to do because it can make the limitations even more obvious. 128kbs is a little under cd quality and 192kbs is basically transparent. Strange about the whole bass issue though, bass information is what mp3 stores most effectively in theory, encoding files at 16khz(rate) and 24kbs (very low quality) still provides extremely good response for bass. The best app for mp3 i believe is probably winamp, free too.

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2003 4:13 am Post subject:

Agreed.
MP3 is OK and quite useful but it does of course have issues because it is a lossy format and the scheme used does affect soundquality a lot.

I have done more testing of the aac format using the encoding options available in iTunes and QT Pro 6.x recently and I am pretty impressed. But.. I did used the "best" settings .. which turns a 44.1khz 16 bit aiff file of 120 megs into a 15 meg file.. 15 meg is still a pretty huge file but the sound quality is decent compared to "similar" settings using MP3.
(BTW, this format is also lossy. )

I guess aac will soon show up on the PC platform bigtime pretty soon and playback will pretty soon become transparent for ordinary users. So.. I do recommend checking out aac. For those who haven´t heard abot aac yet... it is the sound media layer of mpg4 and as a standalone audio file it has the extension .m4a

Johan Zwart · Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 5:43 am Post subject:

Well, for me it is the first time I posted MP3's and I was surprised, (or better, disappointed) how big the MP3 files are. I never payed much attention to filesize, because for me, it wasn't a problem.
I did mine at 96kbps, and that was the limit. Lower bitrates gave to much aliasing. Aspecially when the music has a high harmonic content. (like No Exit)
My question is, how many people can (or cannot) actually download such big files. Not everybody has broadband connections.

Maybe a poll could give some incite?

mosc · Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 8:49 am Post subject:

Wow, a great topic comes back to life.

We could take a poll, but what would you do if it turned out that 20% of the people were on dialups? Just keep posting your music and if people are frustrated they can upgrade their connections. What else can we do?

Since those posts of about a year ago, ogg files are becoming more popular. Also encoding at 192 Kbs is a good way to meke mp3s sound better. Laughing

Norm Vogel · Joined: Feb 20, 2003 Posts: 157 Location: Central NJ

It's for that very reason that i STREAM the music on that site.....people don't want to wait a "jillion years" for something that big to download......even with the faster systems..................

..............I DO notice, tho, that some people who use AOHell can't play these files....nothing happens when they click on the icon. But...some CAN!

I guess it's how your system is configured.

Norm

Norm Vogel · Joined: Feb 20, 2003 Posts: 157 Location: Central NJ

jkn · Joined: Mar 14, 2004 Posts: 469 Location: La Porte, IN, USA

I almost never stream - I'd rather download the file. That's just me.

mosc · Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 9:16 am Post subject:

Well, I use the QuickTime plugin for Mozilla and IE. It will automatically start playing the mp3 when it figures there is enough data in the buffer. It's a great feature but the rest of the player sucks.

The Flash player does this too, acctually better, but it only supports mp3 at the moment. I'm still working on the electro-box which I think will use Flash to play back the audio. It'll be a few weeks before I get a new version though - life steps in.

Johan Zwart · Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 11:24 am Post subject:

blue hell · Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 12:18 pm Post subject:

play · Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 2:29 pm Post subject:

If I had dial-up, which I don't, I would still rather take the time to download a big file than end up listening to a 96khz or worse mp3. To me it is pointless to share music that is that low quality and I won't bother even if it's a song I really want to hear.

regarding ogg vorbis: it kicks ass. smaller file sizes for the same quality mp3. winamp can read ogg and most other players are coming out with ogg plug-ins slowly but surely. the other (imo) huge advantage to using ogg is that it's an open format. The creators of the mp3 encoding algorithms have copyrighted them in the U.S. meaning that if you live here it's illegal to download such tools as the LAME encoder because the makers of the program never bought rights from the fraunhofer people. I think this is despicable but I'll save my opinions on intellectual property for a different post. Ogg is completely open source, on the other hand and this means that most likely the quality and file sizes will keep getting better whereas mp3 will eventually die due to it's proprietary nature.

Norm Vogel · Joined: Feb 20, 2003 Posts: 157 Location: Central NJ

zynthetix · Posted: Fri May 14, 2004 6:44 pm Post subject:

play · Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 12:27 am Post subject: Re: I have to disagree......