Description

This article is from the Old Time Radio FAQ, by Lou Genco webmaster@old-time.com with numerous contributions by others.

43. I bought some CDs with OTR MP3s. Some of the programs sound pretty bad. Why is this, and how can I make them sound better? If I make an audio CD from the MP3s, will it be better?

Wow. The answer to that question could fill a whole FAQ by
itself. I'll try to keep it short.

Poor-sounding audio can be due to several causes. The audio on the
tape from which the MP3 was made could have been poor, or the person
that converted the analog audio to digital audio could have done a
bad job. The statement: "remastered to digital audio" doesn't mean
much, if the person doing the remastering does not pay attention to
enhancing the source material.

MP3 and other digital compression techniques are lossy. That means
the encoding process throws away data in order to make the file
smaller. Although digital copies may not have noticeable loss,
re-encoding, or encoding in a different digital format will lose even
more data. Example: If somebody took a 32/22 MP3 and encoded it as a
64/44, it would sound no better than the 32/22, since data was lost
in the original encode. Similarly, making a 128/44 MP3 out of an old,
high-compression RealAudio(R) file would not improve the sound. The
advantage to the higher bitrate is the possibility that the new
encode will play in a larger number of MP3 players.

Some people record their RAs or MP3s onto cassette, and then trade
the cassettes. At some time in the future, somebody else might try
making an MP3 from the cassette. This analog - digital - analog -
digital conversion results in a very quick deterioration of the sound
because of the lossy compression I mentioned before. The new encode
is a "sample of a sample". The sound deteriorates much more rapidly
than does the "generation loss" experienced when duplicating tapes.

How can one tell if an MP3 was originally made with a high bitrate,
or merely upsampled to a high bitrate? Listen to it, and compare it
with a low bitrate sample. After all, the objective is to get as good
an audio rendition as possible.

 

Continue to:

• prev: 42. Where can I find OTR to download?
• Index

Share and Enjoy

Tags

radio, nostalgia, collecting, entertainment, program, OTR