Quality loss converting wavs to mp3s

[mechanismo]

We?d be grateful if anyone could advise us on the following problem.
At the moment we export our songs from cubase as wavs (16 bit, 44khz) and then later convert them to mp3 in order to upload them to places like myspace.
This has has worked fine until recently when we discovered a dramatic loss in sound quality. Specifically, the percussion sounds such as hi-hat and tambourine become twangy and squilchy sounding. We have tried various alternative processes but can?t seem to solve the problem. Can any one help?

thanks everybody,
hope to hear from you soon!

[brandondrury]

Well, mp3s are compressed so you should expect some quality loss. However, I've never really been bothered by the sound of my mixes as Mp3s because I'm usually not happy with the wav files either. (In other words, I guess mp3s sound better than my mixes).

With that said, mp3 don't have to sound terrible. We've all heard mega compressed mp3s but these are usually 64kbs or less. Generally, I find that 128kbs is pretty good and 192kbs is hard for me to tell the difference when using my computer speakers. (On my studio monitors I can the difference between 256kbs and wav).

If you are hearing that dramatic of a difference, there are two possible issues.

#1 is your mp3 converter. I use Razorlame. It's an open source batch mp3 converter. I've never had issues with it's sound. I highly recommend it to everyone simply because it's free.

#2 is your mixes themselves. I've read that the frequency response curve of the mix itself can cause problems when converted to mp3. I can't remember the specific details, but I've heard stories of really bright hihats and cymbals turning into a chorusy mess.

Brandon

[richiebee]

Places like MySpace suck no matter how high a quality of MP3 you encode - they further compress it.

For your own web space 160kbs or higher should be good but there's no getting around the fact that MP3 is a compressed format. If it was as good as WAV, no one would use WAV!

R.

[AfaraWayland]

agree'd on the myspace music player...

[brandondrury]

The players suck, but everyone's music is going through the players, so I guess the playing field is leveled. I've found that some of my mixes end up sounding just as good as the big boys on Myspace even though they don't hold up against X platinum artist on cd.

Are you mixes sounding great on cd? If not, I wouldn't worry about Myspace and all that yet. I'd worry about getting your mixes sounding good on CD first.

Brandon

[mechanismo]

Once again thanks very much for the advice, it's all extremely useful. We do of course expect and accept quality loss upon compressing as an mp3 and this has never really worried us in the past, but recently something seemed to be happening during compression which caused sounds in a particular register (high percussive sounds) to become very distorted. We're going to try out all of your suggestions, first off by changing to the razorlame converter. Thanks again for all your help. Abrazos.

[brandondrury]

Let us know how it goes and if you solve the problem, please post what you did.

Brandon

[Futant55]

Myspace compresses it down to 96kbs. The high end of audio is what goes first because the sound waves of higher frequencys are smaller and the less samples per second you have the more inaccurate the compressed file becomes.

[richiebee]

I thought MySpace was at 128kbps. Well... I had this theory once which didn't pan out, but it could be because I thought MySpace encoded at 128. I wondered whether if you match their compression rate, they don't further compress it. If this is the case, presumably we can use better converters than they DO and make the overall thing sound better than if we leave it, say at 160kbps and let their crappy converter put it down to 96.

I dunno... just a thought. Might work.

R.

[brandondrury]

Are you guys sure about 96Khz? It sounds a little worse that than to me.

I find that 128K mp3s are fine on my crappy computer speakers, but don't make the cut in my car or on my home theater rig.

Myspace sounds WAY worse than 128K to me, but (as mentioned) that may be their poor conversions.

Brandon