MP3 sounds weird

Tvis

I have a question about some mp3 songs I have from one CD. They sound like being recorded in a can. I usually play songs in WMplayer, but also use iTunes. iTunes is normally better quality but it is the same thing with this CD. if I hold the cursor above the song it says for example 224 Kbps, but when I play the same song in the song information I see coming by: 150 K bits/second. I thought this was always the same (the 224 and 150)...Is that what causes the bad quality? Can I upgrade the quality with a program, or is the only option getting a better CD? Rolling Eyes

Animal

This is probably because the mp3 is VBR (Variable Bit Rate) - this means that the song has a high bitrate (say 224kbps) in a section with a lot of audio information, yet other sections of the song may only need a lower bitrate (say 128kbps) to achieve good quality.

The output quality issues are unusual - maybe you have set some EQ levels that have reduced the sound quality? You could also use something like Audacity to try to clean up the audio.

kelhamcrisis

this happened to me once.

i think it was because i ripped the CD into mono by accident. or it might have been joint stereo.

Try ripping it again and make sure you rip it to separate audio channels (i.e. into stereo).

Hope that helps.

KelhamCrisis

Tvis

I downloaded the program Audacity...but there are so many things you can do with audio in there...I don't have any clue where I start to clean the audio.

I cannot rip the CD again...because it was actually a downloaded CD. So most probably the one that did rip the CD must have ripped it bad...Guess I go back to the old fashion way of obtaining the music...the store... Laughing

AftershockVibe

You can't get the quality back then. If the detail has been removed then there's no way to get it back.

It's like trying to get the orginal image back from a pixellated photo. The audio equivalent of "smooth" might help a bit but it's never going to be decent.