Learned something new today about playing MP3s

[Gouki 0]

Well I had time to kill today, so I did a quick comparison of the headphones that I had including a pair which I have hardly used (earphones that came with my SHARP MP3 handphone) :

 

- Sharp earphones

- Sony EGGO 66SL

- Senn. 570 Symphony

- Sony CD3000

 

Listened to mainly MP3s on my computer and the result was very surprising :

 

- Sharp earphones

The surprise of the pack! While listening to "Sakura" by Moriyama, his voice sounded so clear and sharp. The mids were OK and the bass were lacking in comparison to the others. I was really surprised with this one because I never used this pair since I got the EGGOs.

 

- Sony EGGO 66SL

Sounded a little muffled compared to the Sharp, though the bass was better, the vocals were not "as interesting" as the Sharp.

 

- Senn. 570 Symphony

This is a terrible pair of headphones, period. I realised how forgiving my ears have been because mentally I thought I paid good money for a nice pair of headphones. The music was muffled like hell, vocals were drowned out by some mysterious audio mist and was just awful. I don't know how I managed to put up with this pair for so long.

 

- Sony CD3000

What do you expect? Bass was good, vocals were not as sharp as they were on the Sharp, but were much better and clearer than the others. The music sounded richer but I know that with better quality music and system, this phone would be put you to a new realm of quality sounds.

 

What did I learn?

 

Well, I played MP3, not exactly high quality music, which seemed suited to earphones and not headphones. Some headphones like the EGGOs and the CD3000 may play MP3s well, but I think you need something like earphones if you want to hear the best from MP3s.

 

BUT, why the hell am I listening to MP3s with the Senns. and CD3000? The CD3000 is more forgiving than the Senns., they can play MP3s well enough. But it proves that MP3s are no substitutes for CDs, and a computer is no substitute for a real audio system.

 

I've tried playing 256k/bit and 360k/bit MP3s, and the sound quality wasn't necessarily better. It all depends on how they were encoded in the first place (56k/bit songs however are very noticeable in quality - ie. bad).

 

Some people might have encoded 56k/bit MP3s into 256k/bit MP3s. The file size may be bigger, but the sound quality will not be better at all (and I think there are too many of such encoding practices out there on Kazaa).

 

MP3s are mainly audio files, created to duplicate the "sounds" of their CD counterparts. It does a pretty good job of it, but high quality headphones will pick out the weaknesses in MP3s and you will definitely notice them when listening with various types of headphones. This is affect your judgement when buying new phones. There are many other factors, but I think some people (like myself) feel that headphones are like some kind of black boxes that will magically make your music come alive. They will not make your MP3s sound better, they will make them sound worst.

 

So, to sum up, if you're only going to play MP3s on a computer, or a portable, a good quality pair of earphones will be more than enough. Headphones may be an overkill for MP3s since they are not high quality music, and doesn't use the full potentials of the headphones' capabilities (portables only need low ohm phones).

 

The EGGOs does the job, the CD3000 is so forgiving (it is only 32ohm) that it will also play MP3s pretty well, but you will be totally underutilising these phones if you only used them for MP3s.

 

If you must use MP3s, encode them yourself from original CDs and at the highest quality possible.

 

As for me, I now know what I need to do to make my CD3000 match the vocals on my Sharp while playing MP3s. I need more CDs, an AMP and an audio system!

 

Using MP3s to test the quality of headphones - DON'T DO IT!

[Q00 0]

I think u need an amp to make the 570's sound better?

[Blues 0]

amp will make it sound better.

Then again if it's playing mp3.. it's not worth amplifying

[ckng 0]

I have been playing MP3s through speakers, headphones, and recently amped headphones and never had a complain about sound quality issues. I did the listening in the office PC, which is a Dell PC with host audio, listening through a META42 and Sennheiser HD600, AKG K501; at home I use Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum and the same headphone setup, no quality issues.

 

Sure, the original CDs sound noticeably better, but MP3 and other compressed audio like WMA isn't as bad as many made it out to be.

 

Regards

CK

[lekguan 0]

Not if its downloaded.

 

If you rip from CD, sure quality is not that much of an issue(assuming u use a reasonably good codec at a reasonable bitrate, eg LAME at -alt preset standard).

[Rameish 0]

It's good that you learnt that MP3 suck. I guess if you do it yourself they may suck a bit less. My advice is stick to a portable cd player. Then you'll have reasonably good portable playback. The next alternative is to get a harddrive player and download from CDs without any compression. That's quite good too.

 

Sony Cd-3K with MP3? Forgive me for saying this but you should have spent less on you headphone and got a better playback unit. It would have been more gratifying.

 

My 2¢

[Gouki 0]

I have been playing MP3s through speakers, headphones, and recently amped headphones and never had a complain about sound quality issues. I did the listening in the office PC, which is a Dell PC with host audio, listening through a META42 and Sennheiser HD600, AKG K501; at home I use Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum and the same headphone setup, no quality issues.

 

Sure, the original CDs sound noticeably better, but MP3 and other compressed audio like WMA isn't as bad as many made it out to be.

 

Regards

CK

Well,

 

I don't have perfect hearing (I can't get the high frequencies and some other parts that you guys can pick up), which explains why my ears can be so forgiving all this time.

 

Even I thought the 570s were good.

 

But yeah, the CD3000 suddenly made my ears realise how bad MP3s were no matter how high you encode them!!!

 

So, now what I'm doing is just copying straight from the CDs themselves.

 

File size may be bigger (ie. 40-50mb), but the sound quality is sure worth it!!!

(these days hard disks are bigger so its no problem to have large music files).

 

 

[Gouki 0]

It's good that you learnt that MP3 suck. I guess if you do it yourself they may suck a bit less. My advice is stick to a portable cd player. Then you'll have reasonably good portable playback. The next alternative is to get a harddrive player and download from CDs without any compression. That's quite good too.

 

Sony Cd-3K with MP3? Forgive me for saying this but you should have spent less on you headphone and got a better playback unit. It would have been more gratifying.

 

My 2¢

You said it Rameish!

 

I'm learning how to enjoy music, thanks to a better quality pair of headphones, and more experiences.

 

The CD3000 can be played with anything that I have so far including my handphone.

 

I'm very interested in what that guy on head-fi did to his CD3000 when he covered the earpieces with a kind of woolly cover. That would be warm, apparently it improves the sound a little.

 

Its 5 degrees here in Japan, so woolly covers would help!

[Gouki 0]

amp will make it sound better.

Then again if it's playing mp3.. it's not worth amplifying

The CD3000 picks up everything that's so unfriendly to the ears.

 

Buying an AMP to solve the MP3 limitations will not solve the problem.

[ice888 0]

due to my "physical" limits, i can't quite* hear out the the difference between cds and mp3 ripped from it @ VBR 112~224. (maybe my hearing was damaged...)

 

and certainly re-encoding mp3 @ 56kbps to 256 or whatever higher is like re-packaging a damaged item.