Put All Audio Questions Here

Huh? An MP3/CD player can hold every piece of music ever created. It just gets tiresome carrying CD's everywhere you go.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Lady Miyomi

I've noticed that some sets of MINIGSF and GSF soundtracks are at a low volume when played. So when I go to use Winamp to encode it to WAV or MP3, the volume is still horribly low.

How can I fix this? All of the Sonic Advance sets have this problem as well as some of the Mega Man Battle Network sets.

Use foobar2000 and replaygain the files before diskwriting/encoding to WAV/MP3.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yes. But as long as the CD was in decent condition and not copy-protected, the differences between a rip from a good drive and from a lousy drive should be inaudible.

How ya doing, buddy?

Well, that question would best be answered at the CDFreaks forum.

In my opinion, optical drives are such small investments that you might as well always go with the best available to you.

For instance, check out the Plextor PX-716A (DVD±R/RW/DL) and the Plextor 52/32/52A.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by www.sega.co.jp

Not exactly what I'm talking about. If your plugins don't support a preamp in the plugins, just move all the sliders on your equalizer up evenly until you achive your desired loudness.

Not necessarily a good idea, as it can introduce clipping if you're not very careful about it.

Double Post:
To "replaygain" files in foobar2000, just select them from its window, right-click and go ReplayGain > Scan selection as…

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by www.sega.co.jp

Yeah, but Lady Miyomi's GSF files are only natively playable in Winamp (you can play them in foobar2000 0.8.3, but it requires a Winamp plugin wrapper). You could then edit the spit out wav files and apply Replaygain to them to delete the clipping.

Nope. Clipping in WAV files is unrepairable.

Double Post:

Originally Posted by Lady Miyomi

This is exactly what I've been doing and it works perfect! Thank you both!

If only it worked.

It doesn't - as I just posted above, replaygain won't fix clipped WAV files.

How ya doing, buddy?

That'll work.

FELIPE NO

From the soundcard, with cables? That can be done, but I guess that will give you an digital->analog->digital recording instead of a pure digital recording. It could sound pretty grisly. Worth a try though especially if you don't plan on sharing the recording.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by lion

I tend to think 'stereo' sounds better than 'joint stereo' but joint stereo is used when I rip using EAC (from that thread by Moguta)

You think, but can you tell? Have you tried blind testing J-Stereo vs Stereo vs the original?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I know. We all know. But he claims otherwise, so he's got to prove his claim.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by lion

maybe its my personal preference.

Yup, personal preference.

Once you know how it works in LAME, you'll see that Joint Stereo is superior to "Stereo", period.

Why? Because "Stereo" uses only "Left/Right Stereo" frames, but "Joint Stereo" chooses between "Left/Right Stereo" and "Mid/Side Stereo" on a frame-by frame basis for the best quality.

Joint Stereo: The Myths And The Realities

Anyway, I urge you to do that blind test. Depending on how good your hearing is, you'll find that either a) you can't tell anything apart or b) that Joint Stereo is better.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by www.sega.co.jp

Yes, but VBR does a better job of determining what's the best quality. CBR (for bitrates below 320kbps) is pretty much useless, it wastes too much potential quality. If one wants to use 128kbps, then all you need to do is supply an input filename, LAME automatically uses 128 CBR as the default. If you want a stable bitrate and the best quality, ABR @ 128kbps is the best way to go.

I think recent versions of LAME use -V2 as the default.

[Edit]Oh, you're right. It does use 128kbps CBR by default.[/edit]

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

44.1kHz, I think. Though I very easily could be wrong.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Use GoldWave to record WAV's instead of MP3's. Then you can encode the WAV's to MP3's with something like ALL2LAME.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Lady Miyomi

I'm wondering how would I go about removing lyrics from a song? A lot of songs I have, I'm only interested in the instrumental.

You don't. There are lyric removal plugins for WinAMP and probably for some sound editors, but they never do a good job - either not removing the lyrics completely or taking some of the instrumentals along with them, leaving the song distorted in either case.

If you want instrumentals, find an instrumental version of the song.

Most amazing jew boots

Originally Posted by Kaiten

a Blue-Book Audio CD, meaning a CD with the audio tracks and music videos, flash movies, wallpapers and *ahem* DRM software.

Yes, that's it. They can also be called "CD Extra".

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

WAV (PCM anyway) is uncompressed, so think of it like a lossless format. Sure, you can distribute a gamerip in a lossless format.

But let me just say this:
- If your recording setup is mediocre, you might as well use high-quality MP3 instead.
- If you're doing a gamerip from emulation (for example SNES .SPC music files) just share the original files rather than doing a conversion.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Blue_Kirby2

It might just be personal preference. That, or some people don't know how to rip CDs in VBR. Nonetheless, VBR is still better than CBR because of better quality, doesn't matter what case it is.

Wrong. 320kbps is technically better quality than VBR, for the very simple reason that the bitrate is nailed as high as it can possibly go.

Originally Posted by T1249NTSCJ

Question here for those listening to audio XP machines. What speaker settings should I use if I'm listening through headphones rather than speakers. Been meaning to set it up properly since last night but fell asleep listening to my batch of CDs through my HD595 headphones.

I'm not even sure if that really has any effect on anything. I have it set up for "desktop speakers" and I use the dedicated headphone output on my M-audio Revolution soundcard for my headphones.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by soniclover

So then, is there any area of quaility or anything that is a disadvantage of having it in VBR? Is there any reason to have an album in VBR as opposed to 320kbps? (Besides the massive amount of size)

Just the massive amount of size, yeah.

The way VBR works is by choosing a bitrate between 32kbps and 320kbps on a frame by frame basis. If the signal is simple then it doesn't need a high bitrate, so it gets a lower one. If it's complex, it will need a higher bitrat so it gets a higher bitrate.
CBR 320 just uses 320kbps (the highest possible bitrate, remember) for every frame.

Originally Posted by soniclover

So far I've heard that 320kbps doesn't have as good 'highs' and 'lows' as VBR does.

I really doubt that.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Long story short... making an MP3 from another MP3 will never improve the sound quality. It will always diminish it. Make the new MP3 from the original source instead.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Kaiten

Unlikely.

Unlikely or not, it's for real. The guys at HydrogenAudio have tested it MP3's shrunken with it give bit-identical input to their original copies.

Mind you, it typically only saves a few kB per minute.

Originally Posted by Kaiten

If you transcode 320kbps files to -V 5 (~130kbps VBR), you won't really hear any differences unless you have extremely good hearing.

You don't need "extremely good hearing" to tell the difference.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I use ALL2LAME or Multi Frontend (by the same author) depending on the situation.

Multi Frontend - Nice for encoding to lossless formats or transcoding lossless to lossy.
ALL2LAME - Can only encode to MP3, but gives you the ability to use LAME's --nogap command which Multi Frontend doesn't.

These programs are just "frontends", meaning that they are workable interfaces for CLI software. You can find just about all the CLI encoders and decoders you'll ever look for at RareWares.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by soniclover

Would anyone know a good program for converting file formats? I have to convert an album in .ogg format to Mp3 format and I'd like to know a good program that would do it well without lossing too much (or any, if possible) quality?

Originally Posted by ArrowHead

Multi Frontend, RareWares

:lolsign:

FELIPE NO

I use GEP (Game Emu Player). It's very accurate. It will not make your SPC's sound super fake and sparkly like Winamp's SPC plugins tend to.

Most amazing jew boots

Go into Preferences, and look at the input plugins' section. There should be a section for Game Emu Player where you can tell it which formats to handle.

Jam it back in, in the dark.