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Ok so its the bitrate yeah? How is a tune produced in one or the other?

usually mixdown to wav or aiff then compress to either 320 or 128 mp3

Ruskie wrote:Ok so its the bitrate yeah? How is a tune produced in one or the other?

Yeah, dubstep is all about 320 kbps. Most techno is done in 192, whereas jungle is known for that special 256 sound. My guess is that the next big thing will be some kind of freaky 512 music with short beakdowns into 64.

inspector wrote:

Ruskie wrote:Ok so its the bitrate yeah? How is a tune produced in one or the other?

Yeah, dubstep is all about 320 kbps. Most techno is done in 192, whereas jungle is known for that special 256 sound. My guess is that the next big thing will be some kind of freaky 512 music with short beakdowns into 64.

If you want to get nerdy about mp3 encoding, you are just as good off - if not better, considering the smaller file size - using a very high VBR rate.

-V0 or -V1 in lame is very very good, and indistinguishable from 320 CBR files except in very rare cases.

CBR is old-school.

Recommended Lame settings

It'd be cool to start using FLAC or wavpack more generally.

I've heard that the practitioners of Swiss bum step prefer 24bit, 192k files. I've been told that they manage to compress these down to 1 bit, regardless of how long the track actually is. I read somewhere that most tracks are around 3 days in length, if they're any good.

in a blind testing by an esteemed Audiophile magazine nobody could tell the difference between 128 & 320 kb, about 10 testers of varying backgrounds with a diverse range of music played.
interesting...

be nice ya cnuts

Dirtycash - that survey is bollocks mate 128's sound shit, they've a nasty digital swoosh that floats about like a badly mixed flanger and the sub or bass nearly always sounds muffled. No ones ever gonna sign a tune based on hearing a 128 cos you genuinely can't tell how good the production on it is.

people put 128's up cos its pretty safe that no one will try and play it out, they put 320kps up if they want it playing, if you're cutting a dub or getting a tune pressed you want a wav or flac file cos they're higher resolution again.

a 128 will sound ropey cos the logarithims [been up all night and can't spell] don't map the sound as accurately, in the same way that a 2megapixel image looks wack when its bigger than a postage stamp whereas a 16megapixel image can look good when projected onto the side of a building.

hope that explained it a bit....

narcossist wrote:be nice ya cnuts

Dirtycash - that survey is bollocks mate 128's sound shit, they've a nasty digital swoosh that floats about like a badly mixed flanger and the sub or bass nearly always sounds muffled. No ones ever gonna sign a tune based on hearing a 128 cos you genuinely can't tell how good the production on it is.

people put 128's up cos its pretty safe that no one will try and play it out, they put 320kps up if they want it playing, if you're cutting a dub or getting a tune pressed you want a wav or flac file cos they're higher resolution again.

a 128 will sound ropey cos the logarithims [been up all night and can't spell] don't map the sound as accurately, in the same way that a 2megapixel image looks wack when its bigger than a postage stamp whereas a 16megapixel image can look good when projected onto the side of a building.

hope that explained it a bit....

exactly!

people generally use 128 for ipods coz you can't really tell the difference on headphones.

narcossist wrote:be nice ya cnuts

Dirtycash - that survey is bollocks mate 128's sound shit, they've a nasty digital swoosh that floats about like a badly mixed flanger and the sub or bass nearly always sounds muffled. No ones ever gonna sign a tune based on hearing a 128 cos you genuinely can't tell how good the production on it is.

people put 128's up cos its pretty safe that no one will try and play it out, they put 320kps up if they want it playing, if you're cutting a dub or getting a tune pressed you want a wav or flac file cos they're higher resolution again.

a 128 will sound ropey cos the logarithims [been up all night and can't spell] don't map the sound as accurately, in the same way that a 2megapixel image looks wack when its bigger than a postage stamp whereas a 16megapixel image can look good when projected onto the side of a building.

hope that explained it a bit....

All it needed an answer without sarcasm. Cheers.

Ruskie wrote:

narcossist wrote:be nice ya cnuts

Dirtycash - that survey is bollocks mate 128's sound shit, they've a nasty digital swoosh that floats about like a badly mixed flanger and the sub or bass nearly always sounds muffled. No ones ever gonna sign a tune based on hearing a 128 cos you genuinely can't tell how good the production on it is.

people put 128's up cos its pretty safe that no one will try and play it out, they put 320kps up if they want it playing, if you're cutting a dub or getting a tune pressed you want a wav or flac file cos they're higher resolution again.

a 128 will sound ropey cos the logarithims [been up all night and can't spell] don't map the sound as accurately, in the same way that a 2megapixel image looks wack when its bigger than a postage stamp whereas a 16megapixel image can look good when projected onto the side of a building.

hope that explained it a bit....

All it needed an answer without sarcasm. Cheers.

Innit. It seems a straight forward way of finding out stuff you want to know. You'd think anyway...

DIRTY wrote:

narcossist wrote:be nice ya cnuts

Dirtycash - that survey is bollocks mate 128's sound shit, they've a nasty digital swoosh that floats about like a badly mixed flanger and the sub or bass nearly always sounds muffled. No ones ever gonna sign a tune based on hearing a 128 cos you genuinely can't tell how good the production on it is.

people put 128's up cos its pretty safe that no one will try and play it out, they put 320kps up if they want it playing, if you're cutting a dub or getting a tune pressed you want a wav or flac file cos they're higher resolution again.

a 128 will sound ropey cos the logarithims [been up all night and can't spell] don't map the sound as accurately, in the same way that a 2megapixel image looks wack when its bigger than a postage stamp whereas a 16megapixel image can look good when projected onto the side of a building.

hope that explained it a bit....

exactly!

people generally use 128 for ipods coz you can't really tell the difference on headphones.

i render my tunes as 128's 2 go onto my iPod, just cause the files a bit smaller

If you want lower bitrate but high quality, encode as 160-190 VBR, which brings you pretty close to 320 CBR but alot smaller files.

A tip is to also encode mp3's from 32-bit float exports also, since mp3 is a float format. Alot of peeps mistakenly think mp3 is a 16-bit format, like CD.

If you first render to 24 or 16 bit WAVs, you're doing unnecessary dithering and shitting all over your mix for no reason and questionable pleasure.

For dynamic bass, this matters. We care about bass.

you CAN go to mp3 from a 24 bit mix but there's not a huge point to-- once you got to MP3 you're losing more than what you gain from using 24 bit.

if you're going down to 16 bit, you've gotta dither... if you don't, you're losing the clarity of that bass. w/o the dither you get that nasty, digital sheen.

TeReKeTe wrote:you CAN go to mp3 from a 24 bit mix but there's not a huge point to-- once you got to MP3 you're losing more than what you gain from using 24 bit.

Possibly, but that depends on your target mp3 quality. Dithering (or *ick* just truncating) down to 16-bit can be audible in high quality VBR or 320k CBR files. so there's really no point in going that route when there's nothing to gain from it.

It's also not a good idea to use 16 bit audio as archive format for your finished tracks. Always save 32-bit floats or 24-bit for mastering (Note: there's no need to dither when going from float to 24-bit). From these you can then master 16-bit CD's, mp3s (without going to 16 bit first) and plates.
This leaves headroom for processing during mastering, and leaves media-specific details like dithering (for CD) to the mastering process.

For archiving, using a lossless format like wavpack, monkey's audio or flac is a good idea if you want to save space.

For more useful info mp3 settings, check out the LAME wiki.