High Quality Audio Files

[trueartinspires]

Hey guys,

First if all I wanted to say thanks to everyone on this forum for all the help you have given me.

Let's say your going through soundcloud and you find a new track. It's available for free download but I'm assuming that's not going to be the best quality file. If you can't find the track elsewhere does anyone have any suggestions on using the track? How do I know if the mp3 is 128 or 320?

Thanks again

[Mr_Moo]

Stick it in Winamp (people still use that!) and it'll tell you just below the volume bit in kbps. If it fluctuates, its in VBR. It might also be 256 amongst other compression rates.

[trueartinspires]

Thank you. Will Winamp run on a Mac?

[johney]

you can look at the filesize.

or if you're on windows right click>properties>details

[the_bastet]

Hes on mac. But in your dj software you should be able to see what the KBPS is. Soundcloud itself does tend to compress tunes. Ive noticed this from using soundcloud to download my own tunes when I forgot them at home. Waveforms have clipping after downloaded back from soundcloud.

Best thing to do is contact the original artist bruv. Most kats have no problem sending you a .wav or 320.

[papo]

Hey guys,

First if all I wanted to say thanks to everyone on this forum for all the help you have given me.

Let's say your going through soundcloud and you find a new track. It's available for free download but I'm assuming that's not going to be the best quality file. If you can't find the track elsewhere does anyone have any suggestions on using the track? How do I know if the mp3 is 128 or 320?

Thanks again

You can use VLC for this. Available on Mac and PC.

Just play the track in VLC and open the "Media Information" screen. It will show you the real-time stream data rate for the track you are playing.

Here is screenshot.
http://d.pr/i/n0n3

[Nicky H]

I think soundcloud streams at 192 or 128 but it's re-encoded from the original.

So if they upload a wav, thats what you download.

But can't you just click properties to see the bit-rate

[b1sh0p]

I think soundcloud streams at 192 or 128 but it's re-encoded from the original.

So if they upload a wav, thats what you download.

But can't you just click properties to see the bit-rate

That's only for streaming.

[mdcdesign]

iTunes displays bitrate, you just have to enable the column.

[papo]

iTunes displays bitrate, you just have to enable the column.

That will show you what the file's bitrate claims to be.

For example:
You rip an track in lossless quality from a CD. Then you compress to 320kbps. You will have a true 320kbps bitrate track.

Now if some one transcodes a 192kbps (CBR) to FLAC format, it is basically a lossy to lossless transcode, which is bad.

The file will claim its, let's say 320kbps or higher, but won't really be a "high-quality" audio file. Source file was a 192kbps.

the only real way to find out, is to open the track in a application that let's you look at the spectrum analysis to see where the frequencies start falling off.