

If using a constant bit rate even at 320kb/s the mp3 encoder might run out of the bits it needs. So a very high bit rate mp3 should in theory sound good, but as the waveform has changed there's no guarantee how good it will be. There's also a bit of irreversible maths that goes on which will cause some spectral distortion (I can't remember what it is exactly) so even if you had infinite bit mp3s you would still chagne the waveform. In mp3 the band filters used are of equal length to make things simpler so this is the sort of thing that can lead to discrepencies. The human ear can be modelled as a bunch of band filters of varying length. Now the models aren't perfect, for example mp3 splits your audio in to sub bands. Frequencies are masked by dearby louder ones. These are based on:Ī: Basic human hearing, you hear some frequency bands better than others.ī: Masking. It's true it radically will alter it, but the point is that it uses psycho acoustic modelling to throw away what you are least likely to notice. If you’re listening to pure white noise, it is usually painfully obvious.Someone mentioned waveforms. If you are listening to music that doesn’t have much of that, you probably won’t notice any difference beyond 128 or 192.
160 KBPS VS 320 KBPS 320 KBPS
The short answer to your question is yes, 320 kbps & FLAC sound infinitely better than the low-fi rips and streams you are used to.Ĭan you tell the difference between 128 and 192kbps music?
160 KBPS VS 320 KBPS 320KBPS
Up till about 320kbps it’s pretty easy to tell the difference, but 320 vs FLAC is where I lose confidence distinguishing the two. I never ripped my CDs beyond 128 kbps due to space restraints, but with new streaming services like Spotify (320kbps) and Tidal (FLAC), I’m wondering if it’s worth the upgrade.Ĭan you tell the difference between 320kbps and FLAC? What is the best quality of mp3? Bit rates range from 96 to 320 kilobits per second (Kbps).Ĭan You rip music to 320kbps or 128 kbps? They (128 kbps) remove more of the higher frequencies (>16 kHz) and have slightly more audible compression artifacts.128 kbps means, 128 kilo bits of data is consumed every second to play that audio.

128 Kbps quality is typically considered radio quality, and a bit rate of 160 or higher is equivalent to CD sound quality. The lower the Kbps, the more data the encoder will eliminate when compressing an audio file the range for bit rates is from 96 to 320 Kbps.
