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An mp3 is 320kbps, 44100hz, what does this mean?

44100Hz represents the sample rate of the signal. The so-called sampling consists of obtaining the value y of the sound wave at the current moment every unit of time. Sampling is the process of discretizing continuous data (converting an analog signal to a digital signal).
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The sampling method mentioned above is called PCM (Pulse Code Modulation). According to the Nyquist-Shannon sampling law, the sampling rate must be at least twice the highest target frequency. The hearing range of the human ear is about 20Hz-20,000Hz (if you’re curious how loud you can hear, you can click here to test your ears), although recording software often has a 48,000 option Hz, but we can safely conclude: 44100Hz can meet almost all our needs, higher is just a waste of your memory and CPU. More than 48,000 samples are meaningless to the human ear, which is similar to 24 frames per second on a movie. 44100Hz happens to be the standard sample rate for almost all music released. In fact, for vocals and many instruments, high-frequency sounds are noise, so high sample rates can sometimes worsen sound quality (which is why we need to adjust the equalizer).

320 kbps represents your bitrate/bitrate, which is shorthand for kilobits per second, which represents the size of the data used to describe sound. In CD (uncompressed audio file), the bit rate is 1411.2kbps, and the mp3 sound quality to achieve CD quality should be higher than 128kbps/44100Hz (128kbps can be said to be the most common bit rate). Generally, a higher number means better quality. The quality depends on many factors (such as the encoding algorithm). Many times we don’t need too high bitrate: our device can play mp3 and CD without difference (sound/sound card is normal).

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What is bit rate? Knowledge of the MP3 audio format. Part 2

Bitrate is a benchmark indicator of the efficiency of digital music compression.

The bit rate represents the number of bits bps (bit per second, bits per second) transmitted per unit of time (1 second). We usually use kbps (in simple terms, it is per second) clock 1000 bits) as the unit. The bit rate of digital music on CD is 1411.2 kbps (ie recording 1 second of CD music requires 1411.2 × 1024 bits of data). The higher the bit rate of the music file, the more data (Bit) must be processed in a unit of time (1 second), and the better the sound quality of the music file. However, when the bit rate is high, the file size increases, which will occupy a large amount of storage capacity. 8 to 320 kbps.

1. WMA (Windows Media Audio, Windows Media Audio)

As a Microsoft media compression method, it is a part of the technology that only compresses audio data in Windows Media Technologies. The sound quality is similar to MP3 and can be compressed with half the technology of MP3. It has the copyrighted Windows Media Rights Manager and can be played by installing it in WMP (Windows Media Player, Windows Media Player). Due to the strong influence of Microsoft and Windows, as well as major copyright reasons, the major American record companies, EMI and BMG, officially confirmed that they use the WMA method developed and produced by Microsoft. It is believed that this advanced method will become even more popular in the future.

2. MP3 (CBR, VBR, ABR)

MP3 is currently the most widely used and widely used lossy compressed digital audio format. It has been explained above and will not be repeated here.

CBR (constant bit rate)

CBR is the oldest and simplest MP3 encoding (compression) method. When this method is used for encoding, the bit rate of the entire file is the same, in other words, the bit rate used by the MP3 file per second is the same. Although the music file has sections of varying complexity, the encoder always keeps the bitrate constant, unless you use the highest sound quality; otherwise the sound quality of the different sections of the MP3 file will vary. The more complex the passage, the worse the sound quality. Its biggest advantage is that the file size is fixed, which is convenient for calculating storage space.

VBR (Variable Bit Rate, Variable Bit Rate)

VBR is a variable encoding rate MP3 compression method. Its principle is to encode the complex part of a song with a high bit rate and the simple part with a low bit rate. Through this dynamic adjustment of the encoding rate, the sound quality can be improved. additionally obtained and the size of the file. Its main advantage is that the entire song can approximately meet our sound quality requirements, but the disadvantage is that the size of the compressed file cannot be estimated during encoding.

Most MP3 players released now support VBR, but although some machines can play songs in VBR format, they can’t display the playing time correctly. Nowadays, a lot of high-quality MP3 music is encoded in VBR.

What is bit rate? Knowledge of the MP3 audio format.

Digital audio formats are audio signals that are recorded, processed, and reproduced in digital form.

The emergence of digital audio formats is to meet the needs of high-fidelity playback, storage and transmission. Simply put, early analog audio formats had issues with playback distortion and glitches due to media wear. Since the advent of the CD, digital format audio files have become popular, but another problem has arisen: the limitation of the storage volume, and the CD still has the phenomenon of wear. Saving to hard drive (relatively longer storage time) is not a good solution when storage media (mainly hard drives) are still expensive at the time. The rise of the Internet has created a requirement for long-distance file transmission. Under the restriction of bandwidth, the demand to reduce file size has become more intense. All this has led to the generation of lossy compressed digital audio formats from external factors!

In terms of internal factors, with the improvement of computing and coding capabilities, the progress of various acoustic psychological models has promoted the emergence of various lossy compressed digital audio formats. Some of the most commonly used audio formats in MP3 players are briefly introduced below: MP3 (CBR, VBR, ABR), WMA, WAV, ADPCM, and the emerging audio formats AAC, ASF, and OGG.

Before introducing various digital audio formats, let’s clarify one concept: bitrate.

In the field of computing, all information is digitized. Bit is the smallest unit of data in a computer, it refers to a number of 0 or 1, which is a mathematical binary number, a “0” or “1” , is a bit. For example, when we say a 2-digit number, it means that it is a two-digit binary number, and there are 4 combinations of “00”, “01”, “10” and “11”, which represent 0, 1, 2 and 3 is four numbers.

How to distinguish the sound quality of Mp3 songs?

Mp3 quality

Factors that affect audio quality are the number of channels, the sampling rate, and the number of quantization bits.

Mp3 Quality

It’s not directly related to file size, I think friends who have used Audition or play more music will be more familiar with it.

-Number of channels

Channel count is easy to understand and is often referred to as channel count. Usually we talk about left and right channels, single and double channels, which refers to the number of channels.

The music that we listen to often in life is basically two-channel, that is, the left and right channels. Generally speaking, the higher the number of channels, the better the audio quality. Then the stereoscopic feeling of the sound will be stronger. It will feel more real. When a person speaks or an object makes a sound, the sound also spreads in all directions, and of course there are more than two channels. So, in fact, it is difficult for digital audio to achieve real sound realism.

-Sampling frequency

For example, when Audition exports audio files, there is a sample rate option. What exactly is this sample rate?

Sampling rate is explained in official words: the number of samples per unit of time (within 1S). The higher the sample rate, the more data it collects and the better the sound quality.

But you will find that music in real life is generally 44100HZ sampling rate, like the lossless music in the picture above. So there are so many miscellaneous sample rate options in the image below. What does this mean? The reason is that the audible sound range of the human ear is between 20 and 20,000 Hz. Even if you increase the sample rate, it will still sound the same to ordinary people, so there is no need.

-Quantization bits

This is also very understandable. It’s like the number of bits that people often say about the computer. Audio also has the concept of bits. A common number of bits for audio is 16 bits. Generally speaking, the higher the number of bits, the better the sound quality. The popular understanding of quantization is to digitize the sampled value, that is, in the binary form recognized by the computer.

The property display in Windows may not display these parameters intuitively, but you can see them with the help of tools. Sound quality is determined by the above three aspects. Instead of looking at the size of the file. Of course, the audio is basically compressed and transcoded when it is broadcast to the audience. After all, high volume digital audio is not conducive to broadcasting.

FAQ

How to distinguish the sound quality of an mp3?

It is important to look at several elements to distinguish its sound quality. Of course, first is the quality of the recording, then the bitrate and samplerate.

Your can improve the sound quality of an mp3?

It is possible, using Mp4Gain, to improve the perception of the quality of an mp3 or any other audio or video format. In addition to modifying the bitrate and sample rate, we can modify the “color” with an equalizer and even slightly modify the pitch and of course normalize the audio.

Music producers: iPod and MP3 ruin sound quality

Hi-Fi is no longer a sales pitch: “Quality is determined by consumer demand.”

“Meanwhile, each band listens to the music on the iPod immediately after completing a piece.”

The proliferation of the MP3 standard and the success of the iPod have led to a deterioration in audio quality standards in the music industry. Music producers, sound engineers and artists are increasingly complaining that they have to assume in the recording studio that later music will be heard in poor quality through poor quality headphones. “Now all bands listen to the music on their iPod as soon as they finish a song,” Alan Douches, who has worked with Fleetwood Mac in the past, told the Wall Street Journal. “Today, young musicians believe that MP3 is a high-quality medium and iPods are the latest in technology.”

“But quality is determined by consumer demand”

“The sound quality of MP3 is not good and from the audiophile point of view I agree,” says Peter Rantasa, Director of the Austrian Music Information Center (mica). “But the quality is determined by consumer demand. The different applications of modern use, for example, when moving with the iPod in a noisy environment, do not require the highest quality of sound. The same applies when I let the music plays in the background as background music. ”

Noisy

Another concern of producers is volume. Assuming loud music sells better, current productions would be released at a higher volume, which would also affect sound quality. “Quality is important to me, even if young people on the street like what they hear on MySpace, which is still below MP3 standards,” said Stuart Brawley, who recorded for Cher and Michael Jackson. “We try to offer the best quality possible, but we have to be realistic about how much time we can spend.”

Important for music distribution

However, opponents of the MP3 standard also admit that they own iPods and appreciate how they helped spread the music. It is unfortunate that the devices set technical standards for music production. Today, however, the higher audio quality is not a competitive advantage, Rantasa explains. “I think it is very difficult to find audiophile consumers. The media time budget is used differently today. Hardly anyone finds time to listen to a record for hours at home.”

MP3: quality standard?

For many, dematerialized music rhymes with illegally downloaded MP3.

If this comment is often true, since illegal music sharing platforms have made mp3 the primary format for music playback, you obviously need not limit yourself to the single mp3 format.

Mp3

MP3: birth of a format

The MP3 was democratized on the music exchange platforms of the time like Napster, Kazaa, Emule … in the late 90’s and for good reason they allowed you to download an entire album in a few minutes by compressing the music and thus shrinking the files.

Therefore, it is the need to exchange files and shorten the download time (remember we were paying the internet at that time according to your connection time …) making the development of mp3 essential and for many synonymous with dematerialized music.

The MP3 principle is therefore simple and attractive on paper: enable file sharing by drastically reducing the weight of files (more than 90%), and only by keeping what the human ear can do. listen, that is, the frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz.

MP3: bad reputation

Unfortunately, the main consequence of this thin race is that the quality deteriorates: every mp3 has a compression level. The higher it is, the more the musical signal is cut off: this is called destructive compression: we eliminate all information that is considered useless and impossible to return.

Mp3

Therefore, during this period there was the spread of the famous 128 kbps MP3: this figure indicates the amount of information in the file and therefore its quality, the higher and better the sound will be. Therefore, some sort of standard has gradually been established around this bit rate of 128 kbps (kilobits per second), since it is inseparable as the quality of the CD at 1411 kbps.

mp3 – Napster

The Napster interface, one of the first illegal music sharing programs. Note the music ratio at 128 kbps (see less …)

It is clear that we do not reduce the amount of musical information by 90% with impunity and the results are often poor, the quality of the mp3 with 128 kbps is much lower and perfectly noticeable from the original CD. Then the new bit rates of 160 kbps, 192 kbps, 256 kbps and 320 kbps came to maximum, then “VBR” formats for “Variable Bit Rate” and against CBR (constant bit rate)) used earlier: we decreased the bit rate at rest and increased if necessary.

Therefore, we can see that it is difficult to pronounce the MP3 format in general: the results will be very different between a 128 kbps CBR mp3 and a 320 kbps VBR and, to a large extent, for the latter, for the price of one double weight.

Alternatives to MP3

MP3 is not the only dematerialized music format, it is first necessary to divide the compression formats into two categories:

Destructive Compression Formats: We remove content to reduce its size

MP3: the readable standard for 100% of music devices released in 20 years

AAC: Used by Apple in the iTunes music store (Apple Audio Codec), almost as universal as MP3

Ogg Vorbis: a free, efficient yet non-standard format

WMA: Microsoft format, not very standard either, except on Windows PC (can Microsoft have anything to do with it?)

Non-destructive compression formats: we compress the data for storage and decompress it when reading, therefore the sound reproduction is lossless, but it generates files 3 times larger:

FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Codec, it is somewhat the equivalent of Ogg in that it is royalty free and has established itself as the current standard for non-destructive formats (lossless in English)

ALAC: The Apple version of FLAC, which has also been in free form for some time, has the advantage of being compatible with the brand’s products and computers and offers the same benefits as FLAC.

What exactly is an MP3 music file?

Mp3 is a method of compressing digitally stored music. Uncompressed storage of a stereo digital music file takes up a lot of disk space. An average of 10 MB of disk space per minute of recorded music.

However, if you compress a music file and save it as MP3, only a tenth of the original file size remains.

mp3 quality

Since the introduction of the CD, music has been digitally recorded in the form of samples or measurements. Sound is no more or less than vibrating air. These vibrations are also known as sound waves. Sound waves can be measured, recorded and stored.

However, when creative sound waves are produced, there is music.

The number of vibrations per second determines the pitch of the sound. A large amount of vibration produces a high tone, a small amount of vibration produces a low tone.

The number of vibrations per second is expressed in Hertz. Human hearing can perceive sounds between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz.

Once it has been scientifically established that to capture the highest tone, a measurement must be taken 44,100 times per second. Therefore, the number 44,100 is the sampling frequency expressed in hertz needed for a good quality recording.

In addition to the high and low tones, a piece of music also contains hard and smooth passages. The difference between the highest and smoothest passage is called the dynamic range. For dynamic range on a digitally recordable track, you can choose 256 steps (8 bits) between the softest and loudest part, or 65536 (16 bits).

The dynamic range is highest when recording with 16-bit samples or 65536 steps.

If we then add a calculation to this data, we see that it takes 44,100 measurements for a second of music. Each measurement (sample) is 16 bits (2 bytes) in size. That means that 1 second of music takes up 88,200 bytes or 88 KB of disk space.

But since we like to listen to music in stereo, we can multiply that number by 2. For example, a second of music in stereo already takes up 176 Kb of disk space and, as said, 10 MB per minute.

When a compressed MP3 file is made from an original music file, it is done with a lossy compression method.

Data is lost on lossy compression. With an MP3 file, this means that the information is outside the file that is beyond human hearing range.

For example, people are more sensitive to sounds between 2 kHz and 4 kHz. And we can’t hear loud, soft sounds at the same time. Therefore, only loud sound needs to be preserved. In technical terms, this is called psychoacoustic masking.

What determines the quality of an MP3?

The MP3 format was developed by the German research institute Fraunhofer ISS. In addition to taking advantage of the limitations of human hearing just mentioned, the format consists of a series of mathematical formulas. This allows you to reduce the original file by a factor of 3 to 12.

The amount of compression is related to the bit rate. Bit rate is the amount of data processed per unit time. This means, among other things, that the more data there is in a second, the larger the MP3 file will be. But also the sound quality of the mp3 will be better.

For speech, a bit rate of 64 to 96 kbps is sufficient. A bit rate of 128 kbps is used for a good quality music file. Excellent quality can be achieved with a bit rate of 192 kbps or higher, with a maximum bit rate of 320 kbps.

A bit rate of 192 kbps or higher is useful only if the recording quality of the track is also excellent.

Check the quality of an MP3

Unfortunately, the quality of MP3 music is not always good. This applies, for example, when an MP3 comes from a somewhat unknown source. But of course you can also make an MP3 from a recording that is not very good in itself.

Generally, if you create MP3s from music on your own CDs or other sound media, you can guarantee the quality of the MP3s simply by choosing the appropriate settings in the software you are using.

However, if you get MP3 music in other ways like downloading from the internet for free, it will be a slightly different story.

Then you have to settle for what you get. With the knowledge of this article, it is already much easier to distinguish a low quality MP3 from a good quality MP3.

Something that can be useful. Because there is not much good to do of poor quality.

In summary, we can say that a good MP3 meets the following requirements:

-The MP3 file must have a bit rate of 128 kbps.
A higher bit rate is only desirable for excellent recordings.
-The recording quality must be good.
-The recording quality can be checked by listening to each MP3 before buying and / or downloading it. Preferably with headphones. This gives you the best impression of sound quality.

The MP3s that you buy online, for example at the Apple Store, are usually of good quality. Usually, it is the MP3 files you download from other sources that you should carefully check and listen before using them.

Music you download from sources other than online stores will definitely end up in the Downloads folder.

You can check the MP3 music downloaded from the Internet as follows:

Launch File Explorer and navigate to the Downloads folder.
To display only MP3 files in File Explorer, type: * .mp3 in the search box. This search will show you all the files in the Downloads folder with the extension .mp3.
Right-click on the MP3 file you want to check and click Properties in the context menu that opens.
The [Music file name] property window is then displayed. The Details tab shows the exact bit rate of the MP3.

When you close the Properties window and double-click the selected MP3 file, the corresponding MP3 file will be loaded into your PC’s MP3 player and played.
That’s basically all you can do. A bad MP3 is impossible to improve on. Converting music to an MP3 file not only compresses but also removes data from the music file that you have been able to read.

And the lower the bit rate, the more data is generally lost and impossible to recover.

This means that when you have downloaded a low quality MP3 file, you have no choice but to search for a better quality MP3. The same goes for an MP3 whose recording quality is not very good.

Collecting the best possible MP3 files takes some effort. But this effort will be amply rewarded once you start listening to your favorite music, and the sound quality will certainly contribute to the actual enjoyment of the music.

Mp3: Advantages of MP3

MP3 refers to an encoding format that is formally referred to as MPEG-1 Audio Layer III for digital audio. Designated MP3 or MP3 data that stores basic MPEG-2 audio data or MPEG-1 audio data that is encoded. They do not contain any completely different complexity than the format. Find out more about the MP3 file format and its benefits.

As worrying as audio compression is, MP3 is a lossy compression module for encoding data with the expectation of partial rejection and inaccurate approximations of the data. And this ends with a noticeable reduction in file size, now no longer like with uncompressed audio.

The small size and excellent audio quality led to the provision of song data on Highway Records in the 1990s. MP3 served as expanded storage capacity and bandwidth in these hardly expensive times.

In about a year, the MP3 format has addressed controversy surrounding song piracy and copyright infringement. Instead, this file format became a custom format with the advent of avid portable gamers, including smartphones.

How does this compression work? This compression reduces the precision of the explicit parts of the sound that people can no longer hear. This method is ceaselessly referred to as perceptual coding or psychoacoustic modeling.

Then the free time of audio knowledge is recorded with the extraction of the allocated memory. FFT and MDCT algorithms are used here. Unlike CD audio, this audio compression design can reduce file size by up to 95%. Every time you document a conversion at a fixed bit rate of 128 kb / s, the file size is 9% more realistic than the audio on the actual CD.

Advantages of MP3

Here’s a hint about one of the benefits the MP3 audio file format offers. For these benefits, you can also lift whenever you can safely move around in this format, or opt for a lossless option.

One of the main advantages of this file format is that you can document songs, speeches or conversations for hours without affecting the allocated storage space. Basically, up to 95% of the allocated storage space is allocated. And the most important thing is that fine audio is identical with completely different codecs that take a lot of assignment.

The small size of such audio data allows you to map hundreds of data onto a small memory card or memory card. In other words, you can also save more than 170 songs on a CD with a storage capacity of 700 MB. On the other hand, the CDDA option does not mean that more than 15 tracks can be saved.

Instead, due to the logic that the file size is extremely small, you don’t have to spend a lot of bandwidth every time you get a lot of songs. Therefore, MP3 is a great wish for all types of users.

The best thing about MP3 is that you can change the audio level you want based on the available memory allocation. It can also rise between 32 kbps and 320 kbps. On the other hand, indicate that the higher the bit price, the larger the file size.

Audio quality: Bitrate in MP3 files

In many cases the term Bitrate is used, which is the bit rate per second that a multimedia file (Audio or Video) has. Currently the MP3 music format is one of the most widespread (Although there are currently other more current formats such as OGG Vorbis, AAC, Flac, Monkey Audio, …) however the audio quality is variable, this is due to the characteristics with which the MP3 in question has been compressed, including:

Mode: It can be of two types mainly:
Mono: With a single channel (The right and left channel go together, not separated which gives worse audio quality).
Stereo: Two channels (Right and Left, improve audio quality).

Sampling frequency: Audio CDs use 44,100 Hz (22,050 Hz per channel), although there are higher frequencies such as 48,000 Hz used in DVDs and lower, the higher the frequency, the higher the quality.

Bits: Audio CDs have 16 Bits (Although MP3 can be compressed at a lower quality such as 8 Bits).

Bitrate (Bit Rate per second): Audio CDs have about 1,400 Kbps (44100 Hz * 16 Bits * 2 channels), meaning that an Audio CD would have a bitrate of 1,400 Kbps (In MP3 format the maximum Bitrate is 320 Kbps, however, it is assumed that an MP3 with a 128 Kbps Bitrate has a quality similar to CD, although in many cases to achieve a quality similar to CD it is necessary to use a Bitrate of 192 Kbps, and to obtain CD quality it is necessary use 256 Kbps or 320 Kbps).

Some of the most common Bitrates are:
8 Kbps Mono: Telephone Sound.
16 Kbps Mono: Better quality than shortwave.
32 Kbps Mono: Better quality than AM.
64 Kbps Stereo: Better quality than FM.
112 – 128 Kbps: Quality close to CD.
160 Kbps: Quality closer to CD.
192 Kbps: Virtually CD quality.
256 Kbps: Quality CD practically undisputed from an original CD.
320 Kbps: CD quality.

Coding method: It can be of two types:
VBR (Variable Bit Rate, Bit Rate Variable): Encodes the file in MP3 with a variable Bitrate.
CBR (Constant Bit Rate, Constant Bit Rate): Encodes the MP3 file with a fixed Bitrate.
In addition, another factor that influences the encoding of the MP3 file is the CODEC (Encoder-Decoder) used, one of the most common and the best result is LAME (Lame Ain’t an MP3 Encoder) which is also free.
One point to keep in mind is that if we recompress an MP3 file that originally has a 128 Kbps bitrate and convert them to 192 Kbps for example, audio quality is not really gained because the MP3 format has some quality loss (MP3 is a loss algorithm, also called lossy). which has occurred when converting the original file (Ex: CD Audio or a 320 Kbps MP3 to a 128 Kbps MP3) so this recompression does not make much sense since we will not gain in audio quality (As they say where there is no one can not get) and the only thing we will achieve in any case is to increase the initial size of the file.
The opposite case (Recompress a 320 Kbps MP3 file for example at 192 Kbps) if it makes some sense because in this case although we lose some audio quality we reduce the weight (Kilobytes or Megabytes) of each MP3 file somewhat.
In conclusion, it can be said that if we need to encode / compress an MP3 file with good quality, the “ideal” would be to do so:
To be able to start from an Audio CD, although an MP3 at 320 or 256 Kbps could also be valid for a recompression of the file.
In stereo mode (With two channels, right and left).
With at least 44100 Khz sampling rate and 16 Bits.
With a minimum bitrate of 192 Kbps or at most 256 Kbps (Using 320 Kbps would give higher quality but also increase the file size considerably).