Originally Posted by
neilometer
I am by no means a seasoned audiophile, but sometimes I am embarrased by what I think sounds good. I don't think that I have bad ears or anything, but I think that there is a definite difference between a badly encoded 128kbps mp3 and well encoded one.
Example: A few years ago, before I even got into the home audio hobby, I upgraded my car stereo to Boston Acoustic Rally's with a very nice 40wrms amp and a good sub. The Bostons are very detailed and crisp. I could tell a big difference between a badly mastered CD and a well mastered one. FM Radio listening was just out of the question (yuck!). So one day, I pop in Madonna's Ray of Light CD. It was created using mp3's that I downloaded via the original Napster waaaay back in '98. Now, back then you could get some pretty fugly sounding mp3's. No one had decided on any sort of standard and the crappy xing encoders were running rampant. So, I popped in it the player and.... what the heck it sounded just like the CD version to me! To this day, I have that ripped-and-reburned CD in my collection and it sounds better than the factory pressed version of her awful 'Music' CD (talk about badly mastered, but that's another topic.) I HAVE listened to bad/low bitrate mp3's on the same system and could immediately tell the difference, but for some reason, these mp3s sound really good to me.
Oh, and the Ray of Light mp3 were 128kbps. Forgot to mention that.