A while ago, I decided to switch to MP3 music instead of CD’s, so I painstakingly ripped all my CD’s (500+) onto my computer. It’s much easier finding albums on a computer than it is sifting through piles of CD’s only to find out that I put the wrong CD in the case that I was looking for. Plus, I really love “super random” play.
Anyways, I did all my encoding at 128kbps. After I finished (a week later!), I was talking to a friend of mine who had just finished doing the same thing with all of his CD’s, except he did then at 320kbps.
He and everyone I spoke with told me that at 128kbps the audio is pretty much garbage and that I needed to do it all over again.
I thought to myself: Why didn’t I rip them at 320kbps? Now I have to deal with inferior quality music or go through the entire ripping process again!”.
Can you hear the difference?
In any case, I have a fun test for everyone: Listen to these 2 clips. One is encoded at 128kbps and the other is encoded at 320kbps (over twice the bit rate). Can you tell the difference?
Clip 1:
Clip 2:
Listen carefully
If you liked this post, you should also try our online hearing test.
MP3 is garbage. Always rip to flac or another lossless codec. I convert my flac to 320 mp3 for convenience but if you are going to take the time to rip a collection of cds why not do it right and have a lossless archive.
I even heard it with my laptop speakers, with my actual sound system its way more easy. I normaly listen to well mastered house music, and I can tell if its 320 or 128 at the first beat. It really makes a different, but the audio source (youtube or cd..) is way more important.
I picked the 320, but it was not way better than the 128 which has more votes! The more sound sources you have in a song the more bitrate is better. Your typical song is vocals, percussion (drums), strings (lead / rhythm guitar & bass) & piano/keyboard. So 5/6 sources & 128kb/s is enough even 112kb/s, with less sources say just vocals & guitar it’s fine at 96 or 80 be cause it actually has more bitrate allocated to it’s sources than the 5/6 at 128.
It’s when you get to music played by orchestras with dozens of sources that more bitrate doesn’t downgrade it. Usually 256 is enough, people go on about 320 just because it’s the highest setting. If there was 480 they’d say that was best rate.
Okay I have an HD 555 (not your avg headphone) and a Titanium HD (high end sound card)
and I cannot hear the difference…I don’t call myself an audiophile but I do like great sound and both sounded the same. I guess i don’t have trained ears.
whats with all the noobs posting spoilers jeez!
320 kbps makes sense only in metal & hard rock..
This clip here was blues.. which do involve less sound from instruments hence even on a lower bitrate they sound almost same..
but u can tell the difference in rock which make heavy use of distortion & drumming…
i too like u had all my songs in 128 kbps.. then had to convert to 320 kbps & then to FLAC format to gain a richer music experience…
FLAC & APE although having bigger file-size are a treat to the ears & sometimes u can also hear some background sounds unnoticed before!!!
What about the difference between 256kbps AAC vs 320 MP3? Can someone tell me pros n cons?
I use $250 headphones and the difference is MINIMAL. Most of you guys definitely are lying. Only 47% got it right. The sample isn’t very good for comparing 128 and 320 anyway because there’s like 3 instruments and the recording isn’t phenomenal. Try some correctly recorded classical music or rock, and there will be a difference (not huge still… you guys should check the dictionary for the meaning of huge, seriously).
guys,
it all comes down to the source quality. How can one compare two 128 or 320 kbs samples of cr@p quality source sound bite. useless !
Noobs, don’t do the test unless you have HQ speakers or headphones. You won’t hear any difference with bad speakers, but you will hear a huge one with good ones.
there’s totally a difference. also, way to go with the Cymande tunes.
[…] is a comment by ProDigit in response to Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? […]
You can hear the first one is a bit louder and the sound is played at more levels.
I picked the higher quality file without even looking at the buffer time ha ha.
The artist is Cymande a U.K band from the early 70’s – The track is the ‘message’ and one of the weaker tracks on the album, but cool they most certainly are 🙂 peace ….
Can you please tell the song’s name and the artist too?
The 2nd one has to be the 320 one because it took longer to load. Can not tell a difference other than that, they sound the exact same. 128 files are a third of the size of 320 ones, so to me 128 files are better.
Too easy! It took slightly longer for clip #1 to buffer 😛
Took me about 5 listenings for each clip, but then I got it correct. Stil not sure if it would be worth the extra storage space.
I found fun that i heard more mic noise in the 2nd and it appeared clearer to me… for this reason i tough it was the 2nd one… but its not really the type of music to compare, the recording is already kind of bad in itself and dont really use a large dynamic range of frequence…
The Perfect Music For Sound Quality Test is The Eagles – Hotel California
It took me a few seconds to tell which was which, even though I’m in my late forties and have hearing loss.
Where I did have trouble was in deciding whether the difference really mattered. I listened to them repeatedly but gave up: neither sounded anywhere near what I would expect from CD. The claim by many sellers that 320 kbps is CD-quality is dishonest “marketing speak”.
This whole MP3 thing was initially about storage space, and the fact that this was the format chosen to sell songs online. Realize that the original CD you have there at home plays at 400-900 kbs, or 5-7 megs per minute of music. Compressing these files made downloading viable, although sound quality is thrown out the window. It’s one thing to use desktop speakers for playback, but if you have real Hi-Fi equipment and are routing music through an external D/A converter, then you must use the Lossless or Wave format or the sound difference will be extremely different….in a bad way. Don’t worry about loading your Ipod with music…it will do the formatting for you and the originals in the computer will stay intact.
I wonder what results we would get if you test between 128, 900, and 1400 (MP3/AAC, FLAC, and PCM)
I can’t sing and can’t play any instruments. Matching some sounds to notes is impossible to me. But i got the difference the second i played the second clip. But to be honest i have a X-Fi Titanium and Sennheiser HD 558 headphones so…
Obvious diff if you got a semi decent pair of headphones
what I wanna know, is what song that is! also, yeah its kinda obvious for someone who has listened to both 320 and 128
Cymande -Brothers On The Slide
Actually there is a difference, one is slightly crisper and clearer. I’m a musician and it took me a minute to hear the difference so don’t feel bad if you couldn’t.
clip 2 is a little bit harsh, i listened it with my grado.
I use FLAC for all the tracks I rip, so I don’t have to worry about lossy quality tracks.
Hi,
There is a blog post that also claims that one can achieve higher compression preserving the quality:
http://blog.sevana.fi/optimize-bitrate-and-size-preserving-high-audio-quality-in-tracks-podcasts-tunes-with-aqua-wideband/
I believe it’s possible as humans may not percept over 22kHz, besides actual perception depends at least on a human (age, hearing, training etc) and surrounding – in a car I get car noise in the street – street noise and even my PC produces extra noise that provides impact to the overall quality.
I could tell the difference the first time I listened to them.
This particular test is easy, especially if you know what to listen to.
This is with cheap integrated audio (at work) & PL30 in-ear phones.
160-192kbps & beyond, however – I can’t tell the difference at all, with this setup.
128kbps MP3 is insufficient in some cases (can’t honestly say most cases). I bet Vorbis and AAC could do much better at this bitrate.
It may not be very noticeable for all types of songs and especially at low/normal volumes. I find that in my car, I achieve louder volume limits with higher bit-rate music and that the higher bit-rate music does not break up and become distorted at louder outputs.
Contrary to a lot of the comments, this is one of the easiest ABX tests I have taken. Clip 1 immediately sounded much more “full”. This is just from a Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio directly to Shure SRH440 cans.
Yeah but the problem is that it has to be encoded into 320 from the main source, you can convert a 128 kbps into a 320 kbps track through a converter but all that will do is take up extra space and still keep the quality at the same level
I think this is a good point.
It makes sense that 320 kbps quality can only be heard if you record it at 320 kbps from the main CD or DVD source directly.
If you are converting something that was originally 128 kbps to 320 kbps, it just doesn’t work.
Correct me if I am wrong please.
yep, right on the button
I heard the difference quite clearly and chose right – but without a really good Sound System the files are really sounding the same.
If you aren’t using high-end sound systems/headphones, then I doubt that you would notice the difference; there is a difference, though.
I noticed right away on my ghetto speakers that come on my computer screen. Nice test.
Where you will hear the difference between a 128kbp track and a 320kbp is on a PA sound system.
128 is unplayable pretty much on a larger system as it exposes the compression.
On cheaper smaller lower quality hi-fi it is hard to tell the difference.
I ended up binning all my earlier purchased 128 tracks once I realised this. Call me a music snob but I prefer to buy recordings that resemble how the artist would want you to heart them.
these days I buy WAVS only.
Compression is only necessary if you don’t have the bandwidth or diskspace – for that reason compressing audio tracks will soon be a thing of the past as disk space and internet usage becomes cheaper.
Cheers.
Adam
well, maybe in this song is no difference, but in one that cymbals (of drums) are more “pronunced” there´s a lot of difference, for example in rock, hard rock or heavy.
its a trap! they are both the same.
there is a noticeable difference between 320 vs (any lower bitrate) in highs. if you think your ears are untrained; set up a stereo system on max and play a low bitrate file then, a 320 file. you should be able to hear the difference then.
I could not tell which was better (at simple netbook with low fi audio).
I felt like there was a slight hint of difference, but not big enough to pick a winner. I just guessed and got it wrong.
Normally, when listening to something like trance, with lots of high frequencies, the difference is beyond obvious.
I feel like this audio didn’t come from a master with very good highs in it. Eg. the muffled cymbals in both tracks – which usually are THE dead give away (when one is muffled and the other isn’t). It simply means that the original didn’t have much high in it.
To compare 320k to 128k, the song should have at least 320k worth of frequency to it. Otherwise it’s not a real comparison.
I would re-do the test with something that has loud and clear high frequencies that go well beyond what 128k can reproduce. I bet the results will be different.
That’s bad-ass. See, I worried for a while because I bought music at 128 kbps, thought I had messed up big time, but turns out, there’s really not all that much of a difference anyway. So if I can, I will always shoot for 320 kbps, but if necessary, 128 won’t kill me. If those were really encoded the way you said they were, then this is a genius test.
At first I thought #2 might be 320, but I quickly reminded myself NOT to be fooled by loudness, cuz #2 is just plain noiser than #1. When listening for depth & presence, I eventally chose #1.
good test, thanks, not as obvious as you would think given the difference between the numbers, a lot of this is just to get people to buy more expensive hifi equipment im sure, i put it to anyone to find a difference between 256Kbps and 320Kbps.
I could tell from the shaker that the second was 128. I first realised the quite substantial difference between 128 and 320 when I started DJing with mp3s: depending on the original recording, the hi-hats are always more crisp in a 320.
OK GUYS… I TELL ABOUT THE DIFFIRENCE OF 128 AND 320 BIT RATE…. IF YOU ARE LISTENING IN YOUR HEADSET OR EARPHONE, YOU CANNOT IDENTIFY THE DIFFERENCE… 128 BIT RATE SONGS CANNOT HOLD A HIGH VOLUME UNLIKE IN 320 BIT RATE… TRY IT IN PLAYING IN A HOME THEATER OR ANY LOUD SPEAKERS WITH A HIGH VOLUME… SO YOU CAN IDENTIFY THE DIFFIRENCE… EMAIL ME FOR MORE INFORMATION….
The second one is the 128kbps version – I can tell because of the hihats, they sound liquidy and undefined in the second one. The compression artifacts are noticeable.
The first is obviously the 320… oh and can you tell me what song this is?
ya you can tell the difference if you are a sound nut. Its small but different. you just have to learn how to listen better. For a second when i was switching back and forth between the two sounds i thought, i dont tell the difference, but then i payed attention and realized i was trying to “look” at the music with my eyes, and not listen with my ears. It takes practice to exercise that “muscle”. But once you do, you will ‘see’>hear the 320 as “warmer” and less forced/grainy. If you dont hear a difference it is because you dont have a sick obsession with sound.