Well, something odd has happened, but upon reading this you may doubt Napoleon's sanity (that's if talking about himself in the third person isn't a giveaway).
Preparing to sell my two mono CDs on eBay, I made a copy for the hell of it, mainly so I could talk anyone out of buying them by showing how bad the quality was. Inserting the copy into my CD player to test it out, I found to my surprise that the music sounded MUCH better! Eh? The mono now sounds wonderful, without the cramped, awkward sound it once had. it sounds juicy, Beatley, and bouncy (though that sounds like an insect porn mag).
Now how can this be so? How can the copy be exactly right? Admittedly it was burned onto a Maxell 'For Music' CD... maybe as the music is digital, it could be that the original disc is at fault but not the information. Like if I send you a Jpeg, it will look better on your machine if you have better photoshop or something.
Or even similar to the 1980s, where if you recorded a vinyl album onto a superior tape cassette it would sound better than buying the album on cassette, because the mass marketed cassettes would be of inferior quality.
I am quite baffled by this. And does this mean that the original mono recordings I bought off eBay are somehow at fault? And does it matter now I've got what I'm after?
Wow, I come back after a very long hiatus (as I do every now and then) and see my Beatles thread from five years ago still up and running!
Nap, I understand what you're referring to, as I used to do this all the time with CDs from the public library. Even if the disc was scratched (which it often was), I would rip it using Windows Media Player at mere 320kbps MP3--I didn't know of lossless codecs back in the day--with the resulting rip and subsequent burn sounding much better. I still have some of those old "Billboard Top '60s Hits" CDs in fact, and they still sound fantastic. My theory behind it is that CD drives, as well as the media player, use error correction, the process by which the hardware and software compensate for CD imperfections. Apparently, not only does this process correct CD scratches, it also corrects studio production "errors," with surprising accuracy. Though I haven't tried it lately, the fact that I wasn't using lossless back then could mean that the MP3 compression was actually correcting the errors in itself....
But techno-babble aside, this is one of the reasons why I ditched CDs a while ago and went straight to rips and downloads. There are no CDs to worry about scratching because I keep the originals for backups, and my whole collection stays on my laptop with me everywhere I go (between Uni classes in the computer lab--headphones baby, yeah! B-) ). With monster-sized hard drives becoming more commonplace every day, it's really not difficult at all. Not to mention the HP laptop I use has this "Premium Sound" thingy that processes the audio with 3D settings and whatnot. It still amazes me, the difference I hear when I switch it off and back on again.
...Were it more readily available however, I would gladly use vinyl. But when the needle on my old turntable went and marred my favorite Elton John LP, I figured it was time to give it up. Every record I fed the thing left a great big "screeeech" on the vinyl; and when I looked online for replacement needles, the catalogue of thousands of model numbers and picture examples was so daunting (I had no reference point whatsoever) I gave it all away when I moved shortly after. I'd rather see my Beatles albums go to another fellow enthusiast than watch them be destroyed by faulty equipment. That was when I went all-digital.
Long story short, keeping everything on PC may not sound mind-blowing, but at least I don't have scratches, needles or bulky jewel cases to worry about--now I just have to guard my computer with my life.
Thanks Sly! Or could it also be that it's the disc itself that is at fault while the info on it is in tact, and transfer it to another disc and it's okay?! But then again, 'sciene was never my strong point'...
Thanks Sly! Or could it also be that it's the disc itself that is at fault while the info on it is in tact, and transfer it to another disc and it's okay?! But then again, 'sciene was never my strong point'...
Well, the actual binary data on the disc is burned into the label side (top) from the bottom side, through the plastic material. So yes, you could have a faulty disc (the plastic material) with intact data on the underside of the label. The "error correcting" drive will try its hardest to see through the scratches on the disc like looking through a cracked windshield, then it will save whatever it can find to the computer for burning, storing, etc. Usually it can see through most faults nicely, but naturally some particularly nasty faults can make a disc fully unreadable.
However, if it is successful and you burn the new data from the computer to a new disc, you would have a "fixed" disc that might sound better... and if the computer saw some data on a perfect disc as being bad (like a studio recording fault), it is theoretically possible for it to "fix" the original! Which seems to be what happened in your case.
...and that's a basic rundown of error correction, compiled from things I've read over the years. I hope I didn't bore you with too much jargon.
Well, I guess it's a slice of humble pie for Naps after his mono reviews. Assuming that these copies are what they should really sound like and indeed what you'll be getting if you shell out for them new, then I advise fans to get the mono box set rather than the stereo.
In fact, listening to the White Album on stereo, it starts to grate a bit in comparison to the mono sound, oddly. Mother Nature's Son, where the opening acoustic is on the left speaker, then the ba-da-bum drum comes from the right speaker, it's a bit of a twee use of stereo and distracting. On Everybody's Got Something to Hide, the use of stereo is again just twee, you have the cowbell out of the left speaker where on its own it just sounds a bit tinkly and naff. The mono, as a whole, just doesn't have these distractions. And Lennon's voice arguably sounds better by having a subtle effect placed over it on songs like I'm Only Sleeping.
All this I'm hearing about the Beatles in mono has got me rather interested, although I was always under the impression stereo was vastly superior without exception.
Anyway, I found this interesting article about different MP3 bitrates versus the actual CD.
Even though it was written years ago, MP3 hasn't really changed much, anyway. It's really quite an interesting read and explains why we may hear a slightly better sound quality from an MP3. Some recordings are boosted in mid-range frequencies by certain MP3 bitrates (256kbps and 320kbps, to be exact). It also tells how 256kbps is actually indistinguishable from 320kbps, or even the actual CD. I can attest to the sound sometimes sounding brighter on MP3, but I wouldn't know about differences between the two higher bitrates--I use FLAC, which runs about 900 or so... ;%
I have done some tests myself between different lossless codecs, and I find that encoding at 24-bit on Windows Lossless WMA actually sounds a little better (only at very high ranges, though). It sounds like true, ultimate sound, even boosting the CD quality to a degree. But it takes forever to encode, gives larger sizes, and WMA isn't very compatible between machines, which is why I use FLAC.
...Now I know what I want for Christmas: a super-sized hard drive!
Comments
Preparing to sell my two mono CDs on eBay, I made a copy for the hell of it, mainly so I could talk anyone out of buying them by showing how bad the quality was. Inserting the copy into my CD player to test it out, I found to my surprise that the music sounded MUCH better! Eh? The mono now sounds wonderful, without the cramped, awkward sound it once had. it sounds juicy, Beatley, and bouncy (though that sounds like an insect porn mag).
Now how can this be so? How can the copy be exactly right? Admittedly it was burned onto a Maxell 'For Music' CD... maybe as the music is digital, it could be that the original disc is at fault but not the information. Like if I send you a Jpeg, it will look better on your machine if you have better photoshop or something.
Or even similar to the 1980s, where if you recorded a vinyl album onto a superior tape cassette it would sound better than buying the album on cassette, because the mass marketed cassettes would be of inferior quality.
I am quite baffled by this. And does this mean that the original mono recordings I bought off eBay are somehow at fault? And does it matter now I've got what I'm after?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Nap, I understand what you're referring to, as I used to do this all the time with CDs from the public library. Even if the disc was scratched (which it often was), I would rip it using Windows Media Player at mere 320kbps MP3--I didn't know of lossless codecs back in the day--with the resulting rip and subsequent burn sounding much better. I still have some of those old "Billboard Top '60s Hits" CDs in fact, and they still sound fantastic. My theory behind it is that CD drives, as well as the media player, use error correction, the process by which the hardware and software compensate for CD imperfections. Apparently, not only does this process correct CD scratches, it also corrects studio production "errors," with surprising accuracy. Though I haven't tried it lately, the fact that I wasn't using lossless back then could mean that the MP3 compression was actually correcting the errors in itself....
But techno-babble aside, this is one of the reasons why I ditched CDs a while ago and went straight to rips and downloads. There are no CDs to worry about scratching because I keep the originals for backups, and my whole collection stays on my laptop with me everywhere I go (between Uni classes in the computer lab--headphones baby, yeah! B-) ). With monster-sized hard drives becoming more commonplace every day, it's really not difficult at all. Not to mention the HP laptop I use has this "Premium Sound" thingy that processes the audio with 3D settings and whatnot. It still amazes me, the difference I hear when I switch it off and back on again.
...Were it more readily available however, I would gladly use vinyl. But when the needle on my old turntable went and marred my favorite Elton John LP, I figured it was time to give it up. Every record I fed the thing left a great big "screeeech" on the vinyl; and when I looked online for replacement needles, the catalogue of thousands of model numbers and picture examples was so daunting (I had no reference point whatsoever) I gave it all away when I moved shortly after. I'd rather see my Beatles albums go to another fellow enthusiast than watch them be destroyed by faulty equipment. That was when I went all-digital.
Long story short, keeping everything on PC may not sound mind-blowing, but at least I don't have scratches, needles or bulky jewel cases to worry about--now I just have to guard my computer with my life.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Well, the actual binary data on the disc is burned into the label side (top) from the bottom side, through the plastic material. So yes, you could have a faulty disc (the plastic material) with intact data on the underside of the label. The "error correcting" drive will try its hardest to see through the scratches on the disc like looking through a cracked windshield, then it will save whatever it can find to the computer for burning, storing, etc. Usually it can see through most faults nicely, but naturally some particularly nasty faults can make a disc fully unreadable.
However, if it is successful and you burn the new data from the computer to a new disc, you would have a "fixed" disc that might sound better... and if the computer saw some data on a perfect disc as being bad (like a studio recording fault), it is theoretically possible for it to "fix" the original! Which seems to be what happened in your case.
...and that's a basic rundown of error correction, compiled from things I've read over the years. I hope I didn't bore you with too much jargon.
Well, I guess it's a slice of humble pie for Naps after his mono reviews. Assuming that these copies are what they should really sound like and indeed what you'll be getting if you shell out for them new, then I advise fans to get the mono box set rather than the stereo.
In fact, listening to the White Album on stereo, it starts to grate a bit in comparison to the mono sound, oddly. Mother Nature's Son, where the opening acoustic is on the left speaker, then the ba-da-bum drum comes from the right speaker, it's a bit of a twee use of stereo and distracting. On Everybody's Got Something to Hide, the use of stereo is again just twee, you have the cowbell out of the left speaker where on its own it just sounds a bit tinkly and naff. The mono, as a whole, just doesn't have these distractions. And Lennon's voice arguably sounds better by having a subtle effect placed over it on songs like I'm Only Sleeping.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Anyway, I found this interesting article about different MP3 bitrates versus the actual CD.
http://www.lincomatic.com/mp3/mp3quality.html
Even though it was written years ago, MP3 hasn't really changed much, anyway. It's really quite an interesting read and explains why we may hear a slightly better sound quality from an MP3. Some recordings are boosted in mid-range frequencies by certain MP3 bitrates (256kbps and 320kbps, to be exact). It also tells how 256kbps is actually indistinguishable from 320kbps, or even the actual CD. I can attest to the sound sometimes sounding brighter on MP3, but I wouldn't know about differences between the two higher bitrates--I use FLAC, which runs about 900 or so... ;%
I have done some tests myself between different lossless codecs, and I find that encoding at 24-bit on Windows Lossless WMA actually sounds a little better (only at very high ranges, though). It sounds like true, ultimate sound, even boosting the CD quality to a degree. But it takes forever to encode, gives larger sizes, and WMA isn't very compatible between machines, which is why I use FLAC.
...Now I know what I want for Christmas: a super-sized hard drive!