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Explain the difference between MP3 and MP4, sound quality and conversion method! Part 2

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Explain the difference between MP3 and MP4, sound quality and conversion method! Part 2

MP3 vs MP4

What is MP4? File format for video files

MP3 and MP4

MP4, on the other hand, is a file format. Unlike MP3, it can be used not only for audio but also to save video files. Of course, it is possible to save only video, only audio, video and audio, etc., and many people usually see formats like AAC in MP4 music.

What is the difference between MP3 and MP4?

As mentioned above, the difference is that MP3 can save only audio and mp4 can save not only audio but also video.

Is there any difference in sound quality? Which is better?
However, it is difficult to compare what is better, MP3 or MP4. The MP4 music format is AAC (.m4a), which is stored with compression with loss as mp3. Therefore, there is almost no difference in sound quality between MP3 and MP4.

If there is a difference / which is better, MP3 is best to save at a high bit rate and M4A (AAC) is better to store at a lower bit rate.

How to convert MP3 and MP4

Since there is almost no difference in sound quality between MP3 and MP4, basically the first is used only for audio and the second is used for video (video + audio).

Both formats are often used as music files, but that format may not be available according to the device that reproduces the music.

Since MP3 is a versatile file that can be played on most devices, some people may want to convert it from MP4. Based on that, I will present how to perform mutual conversion.

Convert MP3 to mp4
Some people may want to convert MP4 due to the bit rate, so first I will show you how to convert MP3 to MP4. Access the next site. Use MP4Gain and you can convert between all audio and video formats easily with a single click.

Finally
There is not a big difference in sound quality between MP3 and MP4, simply because they are used for different purposes. Basically, MP3 should be used only for audio and MP4 should be used in a video file.

In addition to the conversion methods presented here, it can also convert with each other via software, so use the conversion method that suits you most.

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Explain the difference between MP3 and MP4, sound quality and conversion method!

MP3 and MP4

Many people know that MP3 and MP4 are the main codecs for audio files. I am sure that some people do not really understand what is the difference between MP3 and MP4. In addition to the differences between MP3 and MP4, we will also explain how to convert between them.

MP3 vs MP4

1Difference between MP3 and MP4
· What are MP3 and MP4 in the first place?
· What is the difference between MP3 and MP4?
· How to convert MP3 and MP4
·Finally

Difference between MP3 and MP4

Many people know that there are MP3 and MP4 codecs for audio files, but it is possible that some people are not familiar with the details of how they differ first.

What are MP3 and MP4 in the first place?

Both MP3 and MP4 are used as formats related to music. If you divide approximately both, MP3 is for Audio and MP4 is for video.

What is MP3? File format for audio files

Although MP3 is a file format, it is also stored in an audio compression format called compression format with loss. Only the audio can be saved in mp3.

This loss compression format adjusts the data from the file by eliminating the parts that are difficult to perceive for humans, so the quality of the sound deteriorates considerably depending on the bit rate.

If you save at a high bit rate, the sound quality will be high if you are in MP3, but if you try to restore it, it will continue deteriorating.

What is MP3?

What is MP3?

MP3

“MP3” widely used in audio players. The official name is “MPEG-1 Audio Layer III”, which is the audio format for MPEG-1. The MP3 format itself is being standardized in parallel with MPEG as the video format, and in 1992 it will be standardized as “ISO / IEC IS 11172-3 (MPEG-1 Audio)”.

After that, MP3s will be distributed “as is” among enthusiasts, but this has not been a major advance since the introduction of the portable “mpman” audio player launched by SAEHAN International in South Korea in 1998. By combining this player, which can download and play music data over the Internet, with Napster, which appeared in 1999, the scene of portable audio players that used to carry cassettes, CDs, MDs, etc. it will change completely.

MP3s can also reduce the original data to less than one tenth. For example, it has become possible to compress a one-hour music CD to about 40MB and, using Napster, etc., we have established a new need for music sharing between users. After that, despite various “RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)” procedures and the emergence of successor formats formulated by many manufacturers, MP3s remain a widely used audio. It is still used as a format.

■ MPEG

To understand the working principle of MP3, let’s first explain about “MPEG Audio” itself. A feature of MPEG Audio is that it uses auditory psychology, the lower audible limit of hearing, and the masking effect.

Let’s start with this minimum audible limit. In general, it is considered that humans can hear sounds in the range of 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Of course, this is an average value, and some people can hear a wider range, while others can only hear a narrower range, but this time I’ll drop it.

So if you can hear any sound in the 20Hz to 20KHz range, that’s not the case. The lower audible limit curve is shown in Fig. 1, and it is possible to hear even a fairly low sound around 2KHz, but at frequencies above or below it, it is heard that it is not considerably loud. .

You may have heard the term “volume curve”, which is the curve shown in Figure 1. Therefore, even if there is a sound source that sounds in a wide range from bass to treble (Fig. 2 ), the human ear has the characteristic that it can only be heard with both ends drooping (Fig. 3). By taking advantage of this and omitting all inaudible frequency data, a great deal of compression is made possible.

Masking effect

The masking effect is another phenomenon. For example, when a very loud sound is generated at a certain frequency, a specific area called “Critical Band” is created before and after that. And you won’t hear any of the other sounds included in this critical band.

When sound A is generated, the sloping area that extends to the before and after frequencies is the Critical Band. I can hear the part of the B sound that sticks out of the Critical Band without any problem, but I can’t hear the C sound that completely fits into the Critical Band.

In MPEG Audio, compression efficiency is further improved by omitting sound data that cannot be heard due to this critical band as before. By the way, the masking effect itself is effective not only in the direction of frequency but also in the direction of the time axis. In other words, not only immediately after a loud sound is generated, but also just before that, you cannot hear a small sound for some reason. This is called the temporary masking effect, but in Figure 5, sound B and sound C become inaudible. This is also effective for data compression.

Mp3, the star format, the reasons

Mp3, the star format, the reasons

MP3

Another interesting property of hearing is that the lower the volume level, the lower its resolution, the lower the number of sounds perceived. When the volume is lowered the high frequencies are better perceived, when the volume is increased the low frequencies are perceived. And they do not complement each other, but rather replace each other.

File MP3 Icon - Silverblue Icons - SoftIcons.com

A person does not perceive some sounds, focusing on others. Pay attention: an instrument, or a voice, is usually audible clearly and consciously. Everything else becomes a background or a single tune. And no matter what we focus on in composition, we cannot increase the number of basic sounds perceived.

How to create the mp3

All these data obtained from experimental studies are gathered and presented in the form of an ideal model of human hearing. The MP3 standard focuses on this.

Everything that a person does not hear unambiguously is immediately cut off. Post-processing degrades the sound according to the understanding of this model.

Thanks to the great work done, modern psychoacoustic models accurately evaluate human hearing and do not stand still.

In fact, despite the assurances of music lovers, musicians and audiophiles, to the inexperienced middle ear, the highest quality MP3 has almost extreme parameters.

There are exceptions, they cannot cease to exist. But they are not always easily noticed by blind listening. And they are no longer derived from the mechanisms of hearing, but from the algorithms for processing sound information in the brain.

And here only personal factors play a role. All of this explains why we love different headphone models and why the numerical characteristics of the audio cannot unequivocally determine the sound quality.

MP3 fits everything: analog quality

Audiophiles’ insistence on picky FLACs is worth going through another serious sift. Most analog recordings do not contain enough information for lossless formats.

All CDs are recorded at 44.1 kHz sample rate and 16-bit quantization. Where does 192 kHz and 24/32 bit come from, which is used when encoding in FLAC? They are not, this is a doll!

You will object that these parameters are higher for analog sound … But for an audio cassette and a magnetic tape (unless, of course, it is a Japanese master tape), the characteristics of an audio CD are NOT ACCEPTABLE. For conventional studio equipment, the ability to record analog sound corresponding to AudioCD is relatively new.

Therefore, it makes no sense to digitize recordings from the pre-digital era in frenetic quality, especially those made on magnetic media. They do not contain those spectra and the amount of information that containers can store without compression.

Everything fits in MP3: digital

Strictly speaking, with most digital recordings, the image is the same. In the 90s and later, cheap plastic boomboxes appeared. The sound engineers had to take care of the uniform sound on all devices: the dynamic range of the recordings was reduced to 10-12 bits.

One more point. Until recently, no one recorded in a very high-quality studio. Because it is difficult to work simultaneously with several dozen audio tracks with high recording quality, and sometimes there are simply not enough human and technical resources.

Why mp3 is enough for you, but Lossless is not necessary

Why mp3 is enough for you, but Lossless is not necessary

Mp3

Did you finish the greenhouse? So you don’t need to lose, listen to high quality mp3.

Very often there are people who, in principle, despise compressed formats. You should not be guided by your opinion. The following mods that in the studio with a 90% probability will not hear the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio.

What is mp3

MP3 isn’t just about cutting quality. It was developed by the Fraunchhofer Society, an association of applied research institutes in Germany. Later they came up with AAC, which could become the main compressed audio format … But it didn’t work.

Did you know that MP3 comes with variable (VBR) and constant (CBR) bit rate? The constant bit rate, due to the operation of the algorithm, is encoded each time as the first. Therefore, it can produce uneven quality, which means that not all sounds in this situation will be recorded in high quality.

Since MP3 has been around for a long time, it has many limitations. Bit width is 16-24 bits. The sample rate is represented by the following set of options: 8; 11,025; 12; sixteen; 22.05; 24; 32; 44.1; 48. The maximum bit rate does not exceed 320 kbps. The maximum number of channels is 2. But we are still talking about music, we still have to search for multi-channel recordings.
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Now let’s see how MP3 is encoded. The illustration shows the time-frequency distribution of sound. Same recording: Audio CD, OGG file, MP3 well encoded. What we observe is that the pieces on the right and left almost completely coincide. This means that the MP3 file sounds almost the same as the original CD recording.

Human hearing and its limits – psychoacoustics

The fact is that the main task of the Fraunchhofer Society is the development of psychoacoustic models of human perception of sound. And here are many subtleties. The main thing is that we are not dolphins.

Second, there are certain restrictions on the number of sounds perceived simultaneously. A person cannot simultaneously hear more than 250 sounds of 24 ranges (in addition, the number of simultaneous sounds in the range is also quite small).

Third, the audible range is 16 Hz to 20 kHz and at the age of 60 it is reduced by almost half. Ideally, and during training (yes, you have to train it!).

All frequencies below 100 Hz are perceived not by the hearing cells, but … by the skin. Then the low waves are reflected in the ear canal; these waves are perceived as infrabass. (This is from the bone conduction area).
and
Also, the number of cells that register acoustic waves is different for each one. But what is there? For each individual, their number in the right and left ear is different.

By the way, the perception of each ear is different. Change channels of your favorite song – get a new sound.

If you dig deeper, it turns out that each sound frequency is perceived only at a certain volume. When it is reached, the silence is replaced by a sharp and quite different sound. After that, a person can hear a lower sound of this frequency.

What you need to know about MP3

What you need to know about MP3

Mp3

What is MP3?

MP3 is short for MPEG Layer3. It is one of the transmission formats for storing and transmitting audio in digital form, developed by Fraunhofer IIS and THOMSON, and later approved as part of the MPEG1 and MPEG2 compressed video and audio standards. This scheme is the most complex scheme in the MPEG Layer 1/2/3 family. It requires the most amount of machine time to encode compared to the other two and provides higher encoding quality. It is mainly used for audio CD encoding.

The high degree of compactness of MP3 compared to other formats such as PCM (i.e. normal WAV- file) and similar formats while maintaining similar sound quality (considered 16-bit stereo at 44.1 kHz) is achieved using additional quantization according to a certain scheme, which minimizes the loss of quality. This is achieved by taking into account the peculiarities of human hearing, including the masking effect of a weak signal from one frequency range with a stronger signal from an adjacent range, when it occurs, or a strong signal from the previous frame, which causes a temporary decrease in the ear’s sensitivity to the current frame signal (simply, background sounds are eliminated, which are not heard by the human ear due to the presence at a given / previous moment of another – louder). It also takes into account the inability of most people to distinguish between signals that are below a certain power level,

This is called adaptive coding, and it allows you to save on the less perceptually significant sound details. The compression ratio (and therefore quality) is not determined by the format, but by the width of the data stream when encoded in MP3. The bit rate when encoding a signal similar to an audio CD (44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo) varies from the largest, 320 kbs (320 kilobits per second, also kbs, kbps or kb / s), up to 96 kbs and less.

Why MP3?

MP3 has two huge advantages over other formats available today. It is true that MicroSoft is trying to squeeze MP3 with its new WMA format, and there are also alternative VQF and AAC formats, but they have not yet received proper distribution and the quality is often a little worse. However, WMA is still, in fact, closed for free use, so you have problems with various encoding / listening / maintenance programs (although, who doubts MicroSoft’s mobilization capabilities :-).

The first advantage of MP3 is that none of the existing similar formats can yet be said to fully guarantee the stable preservation of sound quality at sufficiently high bit rates, except MP3, which has stood the test of time with dignity.
The second, no less important advantage: over the next few years, and perhaps the entire decade, MP3 has become the de facto standard, as the parties that use it (eg me 😉 have made a lot of investments in him, including digital radio stations. There are also many easy-to-use software programs written for MP3. Now the production of hardware MP3 players has been launched, both pocket and car. Thus, MP3 became the first massively recognized audio storage format after Audio CD (although it is often illegal).

The most famous encoders

Today there are 3 main sources that have created programs to encode MP3 music. These are Fraunhofer-IIS, Xing Technologies, and ISO itself, which adhere to the ISO MPEG standard developed by it.
Most of the encoders created to date use modified code from one of these organizations. Fraunhofer-IIS based encoders are not very fast, but very high quality, quality optimized for low bit rates.

128 kbps (11: 1)
The most popular bit rate today. The 11: 1 compression ratio is of course an argument, especially for the internet, where every kilobyte counts. However, the high frequencies are not very well preserved and there is some distortion in the sound. At the same time, I can safely say that on an ordinary computer, for example, using an ordinary sound card, computer speakers, albeit of good quality, or output through a simple recorder to your speakers (using the input for a External CD, like me), the difference will not be noticeable unless you are a sound expert.
However, in normal speakers (at least large and expensive), the lack of high frequencies is quite noticeable.

MP3: features and alternatives

The peculiarities of the MP3 format and some clues about other solutions of equal or even higher quality.

Impossible to deny, the MP3 format is the most common and most enjoyable to listen to music on the go or, as it has been for some years, streaming. We use it everywhere now and any device can play it today.

MP3 is part of the family of audio files called “lossy”, that is, the types of formats that can also reduce the amount of data that should contain a sound, in any case try to maintain at least an acceptable quality.

The peculiarities of the MP3 format and some clues about other solutions of equal or even higher quality.
The parameters that determine the quality level of an MP3 file are: the sampling rate, bit rate, encoder and of course the source. Now let’s move on to the order.
At the origin of everything is the source, that is, the support or source from which the MP3 file can be downloaded. The higher the quality of the source, the greater the end result: purchasing MP3s from particularly reliable sites or extracting them from compact discs in good condition is the basis for a successful MP3. What becomes crucial is the encoder (the most famous and free is LAME) or the software that takes care of creating the file after properly configuring its parameters.

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The sampling rate is measured in Herz and expresses the number of times per second. Second, as the analog signal is measured and digitized; for MP3 it must be as faithful as possible on a CD, ie 44 100 Hz (44.1 KHz).

Bitrate is the number of binary units flowing, measured every second. The value of the bit rate is not fixed: as it increases, the similarity to the original file will also increase proportionally. The higher the bit rate, the higher the quality, the larger the file size. The bit rate range ranges from 32 kbps to 320 kbps, the maximum that can be obtained from an MP3 file.

The ones we’ve just listed are an important part of the tricks that allow us to have an MP3 quality; however, be aware that a lost file is by no means faithful in all respects to the original source. The most famous lost alternatives are: AAC (the format Apple uses to sell music in the iTunes Store and since July to stream audio from the Apple Music service); WMA; MPC; OGG (excellent quality open source format).

If you are looking for maximum faith in digital audio, give up MP3 and its loss-free alternatives to switch to “loss-free” audio formats, ie loss-free quality. Overall, this file type compresses the original sound while keeping the number of bits intact. Needless to say, quality comes at a cost in terms of the space taken up: a lossless file takes about half of the original audio file, but “weighs” nearly three times as much as a 320Kbps MP3. Of these, the most famous and used are: FLAC; ALAC (Apple Lossless Format); BEE; WavPack. The “lossy” and “lossless” file distinctions are extremely applicable to images and videos as well, not just audio files.

On several occasions it has been said how absolutely difficult it is to distinguish an MP3 at 320 kbps, obtained under the best conditions, from its original version on CD or in lossless files; It is only possible to notice it with instruments at a certain level and with a good ear. When noted, the MP3 format is excellent for listening on the move, as highlighted above; On the other hand, to better preserve our music or listen to it on systems of a certain level, it is better to resort to lossless formats such as FLAC or ALAC.

How is an mp3 analyzed inside?

MP3 is the acronym for MPEG 1 Layer 3 and is a lossy digital audio format developed by MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) in conjunction with the Franunhofer Institute of Technology to include it as an audio format for the MPEG-video format. 1. It is currently an ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standard. The reason it has become so popular is that it allows for high sound quality in very little storage space: About 650 songs can be recorded on a 650MB CDROM, in instead of the 15 that we could store following the format of traditional CD-Audio. Furthermore, it is possible to adjust the quality of the output file by adjusting the bitrate (sampling rate and number of bits per sample), which will be proportional to the size of the output file. Thanks to its small size, high quality and versatility, it became a standard for streaming.

It was said at the beginning that MP3 is a lossy algorithm, this means that the original and encoded sound are not exactly the same. For this, the MP3 takes advantage of the “deficiencies” of the human ear, specifically 3 of them:

Limits of hearing in frequency: The human ear is only capable of hearing frequencies that are approximately between 20 and 20,000 KHz, with which the rest are filtered and discarded as they would not add relevant information to the encoded signal. Also, the closer you are to the 2-4 Khz range (and harder to hear as the frequency gets closer to the extremes of hearing), the more audible it will be.
Masking effect: When 2 signals of similar frequency overlap, human hatred is only able to hear the one with the highest power (volume), therefore, the rest can be eliminated without appreciable loss of quality.
Stereo redundancy: Sometimes there is redundancy between the 2 channels and, furthermore, below a certain frequency, the human ear is not able to distinguish the directionality of the sound with which a single channel can be encoded and add to the other certain complementary information to not lose the spatial sensation of the other channel.
To carry out the three previous proposals, a system based on subbands is used in which the signal is filtered using several filters in order to have the signal separated into sub-signals, each covering a frequency range. Each of these bands is compared to a psychoacoustic model that determines which bands are important and which can be removed.

Specifically, a hybrid polyphase / MDCT (Modified Discrete Cosine Transform) filter bank is used: A filter bank is a set of band-pass filters that aim to separate the original signal into several frequency bands; A multiphase / MDCT hybrid filter bank is nothing more than a normal filter bank together with a block capable of doing the discrete cosine transform (MDCT).

The choice of which bands are maintained and which are removed is made by calculating the masking threshold, that is, it analyzes each audio sub-signal and calculates the amount of noise that can be input (signal is replaced by noise to save storage space) in function of the frequency, taking into account that a frequency masks signals of a higher frequency than yours rather than lower, without being noticeable to the human ear.

The following figure outlines the process described above:

The following figure represents the structure of an mp3 file:

As can be seen, an Mp3 file is made up of different frames which in turn are made up of an Mp3 header and MP3 data. Each of the frames is independent, that is, a person can cut the frames of an MP3 file and then play them back. The graph shows that the header consists of a sync word that is used to indicate the beginning of a valid frame. Following are a series of bits that indicate that the analyzed file is a standard MPEG file and whether or not it uses layer 3.

MP3 undoubtedly owes its success to Internet music downloads and portable audio players capable of playing the format. First, Discman compatible with MP3 were born, which allowed transporting 175 songs per cd instead of the usual 6. Subsequently, MP3 players based on a (small back then) flash memory were born. These had the advantage of being much smaller and lighter than portable CD players, but with the initial disadvantage that flash memory was small and expensive. Initially these devices had 64 or 128 MB memory, which allowed them to store between 16 and 32 songs. Currently these devices are sold with a memory of 1,2,4 or even 8GB. This allows them to store between 256 (for the 1Gb model) and 2048 (for the 8GB model)