Who can tell quality of mp3?

[Warthog]

Is there any way to find out the quality (kbps) of an mp3? I use Real Jukebox for that reason but I don’t like it too much cause it's kinda buggy. With that player, it simply lists the quality right next to the other stuff (album, length, genre, etc.). I like Music Match a lot. Does MM have some sort of setting that can tell me the quality? What about Winamp?

Thanks!

Warthog

[OuTpaTienT]

WinAmp displays the kbps as the tune is playing.

[Warthog]

Thanks! Winamp is so small, I didn't even notice. Also, as I said I primarily use MM. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Warthog

[mgordon99]

IMHO, Winamp is da best. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[jad1097]

I found that Music Match (http://www.musicmatch.com) is by far the best mp3 player and has the most features. It does show the bitrate of a song in the music library. Just right click on the menu and you will see it there in the options.

WinAmp just does not compare IMHO.

[Warthog]

jad - you're da bomb http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

I too enjoy Music Match MUCH MUCH MUCH more than winamp. I only have it installed to see the bitrate. Bye bye winamp.

Rock on brotha.
http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif
Warthog

[Gomer]

What is the big deal about seeing the bitrate? I don't understand. I just pay attention and don't download low bitrate ****. If it sounds like **** when I play it then I note the bitrate, and download a copy with the higher bitrate. If it sounds good what does it matter what the bitrate is?

[Warthog]

In my experience, the difference is the clarity. Just depends if you want the best sound or not. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Warthog

[Roy]

If you want the best sound, you don't mess with MP3. That's for budget, not quality.

[seti]

Winamp's functionality runs circles around ever player out there IMO. I think I've tried almost all of them. Too bad it lacks in the sound quality department. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/frown.gif

[Donkey]

This is slightly off topic i suppose but stil relevant.
I can't quite get into all this MP3 stuff! Do any of you guys actually have a portable MP3 player or are you just downloading them onto your PC? that i can understand but why would anyone want a portable one which needs to be plugged into a computer or whatever to change the music. Is the industry just trying to make a product where one isn't needed. They need to create Cd players that can read cds full of MP3 that would be better.

[krusty the klown]

Now that sounds like a good suggestion! It would be gr8 for the car, where there's road and engine noise and sound quality is not that important. (OK, so a lot of people spend a lot of money on car stereos, but if you want quality, you don't listen to your music whilst sat in a tin box).

If you have downloaded some MP3 and they've been compressed at a decent sampling r8 (I think you can just about get away with 128kbps), you can decompress the MP3 file back to .wav, then using e.g. Adaptec CD Creator, the .wavs can be burnt onto a CD-R as regular .cda files and played on a normal audio CD player. Neat eh?

[jad1097]

Sony has a portable cd player out that plays Mp3 CD's. It is only around a $100 or so. SO that has been done. It is only a matter of time before car stereos play mp3 cd's also, maybe this fall?


seti
You should really check out Music Match (http://www.musicmatch.com) it really has way more function that WinAmp ever dreamed of. I trashed winamp for it. chipbgt hooked me up with it a couple days ago. Just give it a try and I bet you will like it better than winamp.

[seti]

jad1097
I did try it, twice http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif. I think it would be a great program for people that took there cd collection and put it on their hard drive. But most of the cool extra features are heavily tag dependent...and I don't have the motivation to go through xxxx number of tags and fix them all to work with a new program. Ha, winamp is the lazy man's player. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[jad1097]

Yes but it does a great job of organizing all my mp3's I downloaded from napster. It can arrange songs by artist(about 70% are listed, by title, bitrate, album(about 40%listed)etc..
I just find it way easier to manage for my mp3 collection(5+ gigs right now and still growing). It just boils down to personal preference I guess http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif.

[NeilTrain]

Winamp is a cool player, and the later versions have improved sound quality, but when you start getting large amounts of mp3's, winamp really sucks at managing the playlist, giving you very few options. Have you ever tried to "add dir" to a playlist when you have 2000 songs? it takes about 10 minutes when you have it set to load song info.

I eventually kept winamp as a player, but wrote a VB program to maintain the playlist file myself. It reads either the playlist file or the directory of mp3's directly and making an entry into an access database, from which i can make much more detailed queries of what songs i want to hear, sorted by any category, or even search for keywords, certain length, quality's etc. then after searched and sorted, outputs all that back into a playlist format, and write it to the winamp directory, then when you fire up winamp, boom, your good to go.

With an easy to use interface the program will be kick @$$, but not as pretty as all the mp3 players you see out now. If i get all the kinks worked out one of theses days i'll release it as shareware.

[BBA]

May be a little strange to hear this, but MediaPlayer 7 beta kicks ***** and shows bitrate. It also comes with many preinstalled skins and visualizations...here's mine for example:

http://www.jacksonville.net/~rcrozier/MP7.jpg

[Joel Kleppinger]

For me, it's all about Winamp. There's nothing better... CPU utilization is also the lowest of anything out there, and if you happen to need a plugin, your odds are far greater with Winamp.

BTW, I CAN tell a difference in the sound quality, especially in portable or home audio situations (mp3 -> CD audio). That's why I only encode at High Quality Variable Bit Rate using AudioCatalyst. There's nothing better. I actually don't even worry anymore about re-ripping songs from CDs to create compilation CDs... I just convert the mp3s in my collection to wave and burn to CD Audio. It's completely indistinguishible from the real CD until it gets stuck in a real stereo and cranked really loud. It begins distorting at the low end a little before a normal CD would.

There is already at least one mp3 CD on the market, though I'm not aware of one by Sony. I'm currently working on a project to install a computer in my car solely for the purpose of playing mp3s. I expect it to be finished within the month.

[jad1097]

I think since it is has "Discman" in the name I confused it with a Sony.


Here is a link to it. (http://www.easybuy2000.com/store/products/mp3/mp3_discman.html)

MPTrip Discman
$115
Now you can record the MP3 files to a 650 megabyte CD-R or CD-RW and play them directly on our MP3 player. Each CD-R or CD-RW can hold more or less 160 songs, which can be arranged in different directories in the order that you want. Of course it plays regular audio cds.

Technical information:
disc format : ISO 9660 or Joliet
bit rate of Mp3 cannot exceed 196 bit/sec or be less than 32k at 44hz




[This message has been edited by jad1097 (edited 06-13-2000).]

[Warthog]

I didn't like Media 7 because of the way it organizes the music. Just too confusing.

And Joel, you're the one who got me hooked on high quality http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif.

VBR all the way, baby. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Warthog

[Warthog]

Sounds pretty cool, Neil. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Another issue I have with Winamp is simply the size of it on my 800x600 screen. I mean, I can see it but not all that well. I don't have any problems with my eye site whatsoever. I just want to be able to quickly look at the player and choose a song.

Warthog