Karaoke Forums

Is there anything I can do or add to my system to get a beter quality of sound from my mp3's. When I say quality I'm meaning the volume of an mp3 compared to a cd at the same mixer volume. The difference is huge. Any help would be great.

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The quality of an mp3 file depend on the bit rate at which it is recorded/converted. If the original is from a cd then then vol of the mp3 should not be afected. If it is your own recording that you convert to mp3 then the vol should be the same as the original wav file vol. If your wav file has a low vol then the mp3 will have the same vol. Converting wav to mp3 does not reduced the vol of the music from my understanding of the process. Unless maybe you convert to an extremly low bit rate of say 32kbpm.

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

Chances are the playback setting for wav files is set much lower than your setting for the CD.

If you need to increase the volume level for the mp3 file check out MP3 Gain.  It's a program that uses some interesting audio tricks to increase the volume.  I've used it a little and plan to use it for volume leveling a lot of files in the near future.

What program are you refering to? Like to have a try on it.

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

No mp3 is going to sound AS good as the original cd.  Like stated, it all depends on what rate it was ripped at, the higher the better - but the higher also means a bigger file.  What is everything ripped at?

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There is a great shareware piece out there that let's user's record from a 96 bit rate all the way up to 320 bit rate.
Product is called Mp3MyMp3.
All the authors request is that if you like the program to send them a donation.
Current Version is 2.0
It's a fantastic program for several reasons.
It show's you the peaks of the music as you record.  As you know anything in the top red zone will not be appealing.

I use this program as the final piece of my online mixing.
Once I have everything as equal and level as possible, I turn to the .mp3 utility and record the output.  For submission to SS and others like it, your best bet would be to record at either 128 bit rate for songs over i would say 3:45 in length.  You can bump it up to 160 bit rate if it's smaller in length.  And you can definitely tell a difference between a higher bit rate and a lower bit rate stored online.  

Most submittal forums like SS limit the size of individual uploads to their server for obvious reasons.

Now, when you want to record to a CD.  Crank the bit rate up to 320 and my friends, you have an extremely nice output sound.

Just my two cents.

I was referring to MP3 Gain.

They're on sourceforge, but if you're not familiar with sourceforge you can go to them directly from this url: http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/.

A better quatily cd ripper might be your answer. I use PCKJ to ripp my karaoke. I use VBR 224k but if you constant I suggest 192k or higher.

A good quality sound card will make a world of differance if you have not upgraded you sound card I suggest that you do so. Echo Indigo Dj or Maya 44 are about the prefured.

Nornalizing you mp3's will also make a big differance.

LAME has been proven to consistently provide better results when enocding than many other encoders.  I personally use 192kbps VBR using the ABR method to encode my mp3's.  I typically use CD-EX and LAME which provides excellent results.

MP3Gain provides for normalization of your mp3 files by using a method other than basic db analysis and modifies the mp3 directly instead of decoding and re-encoding the file which degrades the quality.  It also works with AAC files (but this part is currently beta!).

I've read numerous studies that show most people cannot tell the difference between a good quality 192kbps vbr file and the original CD.  I've found that playback at this bitrate in a club environment and even at home is sufficiently high enough that I've never heard a complaint from anyone.  The only drawback to using VBR is that windows incorrectly reports the bitrate since it doesn't fully support vbr properly.  Playback is correct, but bitrate determination is nearly always misreported.

Totaly agree about LAME being the best around when it come to encoding. Bitrate of 192 is about the lowest one should go if audio quality is to be maintain. One need a very good system to hear any diff above that.

I use a dBpower AMP product to autocheck the file properties of my audio file. It does this better than window and give a more detail.

I'll check that Mp3 Gain for normalizing my mp3 songs; thanks

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott