On Sun, 04 Feb 2018 11:38:40 +1030
Tim <ignored_mailbox(a)yahoo.com.au> wrote:
Allegedly, on or about 4 February 2018, Ed Greshko sent:
> I've found that folks have a tendency to overvalue lossless formats
> but in fact their ears aren't up to the task.
That's often true (but I frequently find MP3 encoding is noticeably
awful). And the converse is often true, that people rip down to a
really crappy bitrate, thinking that saving space is more important
than it is (producing what sounds like compact cassette recordings from
shortwave radio).
I think it's true, that it's possible to encode to crappy mp3 quality.
But it's definitely true that with fine tools you can encode to mp3's with
a quality so high that for me at least it's difficult to find a difference
to the wav's they were encoded from, even with decent stereo
equipment. Also true, I'm old, so I might have ruined ears enough
to be unable to hear differences where they actually are.
Easy test: try this in a dir with wav's, and the command below will
(should) code them to mp3's. With the resulting mp3's I'd bet
anyone will have difficulties to find a remarkable difference
between the wav's and the mp3's ...
for f in *.wav; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -codec:a libmp3lame -qscale:a 0
"${f/%wav/mp3}"; done
For a quick check about what ffmpeg is actually doing here:
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/MP3
Feeling challenged, anyone? ... ;)
Regards
--
Wolfgang Pfeiffer