Sound Quality Question

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rovingcowboy
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Post by rovingcowboy »

MusicBringer wrote:
rovingcowboy wrote:setup means better sound card. better speakers more ram more swap file. better sound fonts. all the stuff needed for better sound.
Right I understand you now :roll:
You are talking Hardware setup - I was reading setup settings for MM3 :P

Yeah, I quite agree the hardware you use is most important.
That's why my PC, with added sound card, is hooked up to my HiFi system, Amps, ProAc speakers, and so on.
But then that's the same for any player not just MM3.

"better sound fonts" I don't understand this one, rovingcowboy.
Tell me more about using better sound fonts on my MP3s with MM3 :)
i'm not sure how the soundfonts are working on the mp3's or oggs or wma's that are NOT created by midi equipment. but they do seem to help them just a little as i had to change the eq settings to get back the volume and when i did that i noticed a slight change in the volume of background noise or white noise, it was lower, so the soundfonts are doing something. just what i don't know.

but if you use a midi keyboard and make a song then save it with that keyboard as an mp3 or wma or if it will even the ogg format. the fonts will be used by those files.
just the same as they would be by the midi files.
midi makes the notes for sound by using the soundfonts. a better set or even different sets for different instruments changes the sound. i like the ones for the wurlitzer i found. but then i like to hear organ music too. nothing like bach's toccata on the biggest pipe organ in the world. over 10.000 pipes in it. huge sound, if you have the wurlitzer soundfonts and a sound card that uses them.
8)
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Post by rovingcowboy »

Big_Berny wrote:@rc: What about a ABX-test to check if the converted one or the modified (add echo etc.) sounds more similar than the original one?

Big_Berny
i did not do your test you posted it was way to large for me to sit here and download then i had to transfere it to the other computer. so i did not do it.

but in what i say to do the sound is different it does sound better on the ones with added echo for the freq's. as i said the only thing it might be doing that is keeping the sound from degrading is when you compress it again the compression rythum is taking the echo out when it needs to remove things for the smaller compression, and anytime you take out the echo you added in when you compress it the sound does not degrade as much, because it was the echo data removed not the songs orginal data.

but adding in the echo ever so slight that it only boosts the sound of that freq, will if it was not removed give you a more life like sound and make the song sound better.
so adding in echo you win a little both ways.

as for the wiki org they can keep it i don't trust it on 98% of the things.
and theres not a web page in the world that can convice me my sound here is not better after i edit the wav files. cause i am here and hear the improvement in the sound.

8)
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Post by Teknojnky »

@ soundfonts.... NO NO NO NO NO they do not do ANYTHING for files which are not midi or midi based.

Soundfonts are (generally) SAMPLES of REAL instruments. The Midi sequences then activate the soundfonts at whatever pitch etc specified in the midi file.

They have absolutely positively NOTHING to do with non-midi audio files.

Even if you record midi files to wave, then the soundfonts will have nothing else to do with those wave (or ogg or anything else) files at all.
MusicBringer
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Post by MusicBringer »

Hello rovingcowboy, we are not only in different countries we are in different worlds you and I, ha ha :wink:

Your hardware setup; your choice of music files; and your listening tastes are so dissimilar to mine.

In contrast to your music setup, I have a new laptop hooked to modern (costly) HiFi equipment, playing well made MP3s/FLAC files, in a style of classic rock that would not benefit from wretched echo. Thanks, but no thanks.

It is interesting to hear your views, rc, even though I cannot agree with your findings.

Each to his own :P
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Post by Big_Berny »

@rc: But do you think that with your modification the re-encoded file sounds more than the original one compared to a song which gets re-encoded without adding echo? If yes, then you should be able to prove that.
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Teknojnky
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Post by Teknojnky »

Big_Berny wrote:@rc: But do you think that with your modification the re-encoded file sounds more than the original one compared to a song which gets re-encoded without adding echo? If yes, then you should be able to prove that.
He apparently prefers the modified sound instead of the original. So no amount of arguing will prove him wrong.

To him, quality is how good it sounds to him on his system.

Not how close it sounds to the original.
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Post by rovingcowboy »

Teknojnky wrote:@ soundfonts.... NO NO NO NO NO they do not do ANYTHING for files which are not midi or midi based.

Soundfonts are (generally) SAMPLES of REAL instruments. The Midi sequences then activate the soundfonts at whatever pitch etc specified in the midi file.

They have absolutely positively NOTHING to do with non-midi audio files.

Even if you record midi files to wave, then the soundfonts will have nothing else to do with those wave (or ogg or anything else) files at all.
thats just what i said you others would say in my first post in this thread. but once again it is doing something why else would i have had to change the eq settings after i loaded the fonts. when i did not have to touch the mediamonkey program to install the fonts only the font bank folder of the soundcard.

so adding them did something to the sound as i said just what i don't know. :-?
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Post by rovingcowboy »

Big_Berny wrote:@rc: But do you think that with your modification the re-encoded file sounds more than the original one compared to a song which gets re-encoded without adding echo? If yes, then you should be able to prove that.
yep i can prove it I've sent cdroms to some people already its just a matter of what you want to hear. i like live sound feeling from the original vinyl records. and i am not alone on that. because a few years ago the riaa company's started making vinyl albums again for people to buy. not sure if they stopped again in the last 5 years but they had started because people complained about the 2 missing Freq's on the Cd's. the vinyl sounded better, which means it has the two freq's on.
i think the digital has them too only the guys in the studio turn them down for some reason.? but in wave editing i can and add echo to them and turn them back up.

adding in echo as most are thinking is not the warbling in the sound you only get that if you add in too many milliseconds of delay for the echo. 0.004 on even voice only does not produce the echo with the warble it just adds enough to the freq.. that it is sounding as a little longer or fuller note that is said. if you add in 0.018 ms you can get the double note but you can also add in more echos then just one. and get the same grand canyon echo everyone thinks about when they read the word echo.

but in editing the wav the word echo is just used to mean repeat of the note on a freq.. with in a certain millisecond time to either produce warble echo or not produce warble echo.


simple way to understand it is go to a bar. with a live band.
and horrible sound acoustics in the building. you can have a note echo off the wall behind you and yet not make the song warble. it just adds a fullness in the sound, that is the short Milli second echo but you can go to a bar some times that is huge and sit on the other end from the band and get that warble echo you get in a canyon. that is horrible on some things, and it is the longer Milli second setting on the editing.

if you use the echo in the chorus freq's of 80, and a 20% modulation. and make it have 8 millisecond of delay you get nice big full sub woofer bass in the songs. but only on that bass freq of 80 hrz

if you have it at the 16 millisecond delay you get the warble sound.

now can you see what i mean with the echo. i just use it to pump up the freq's on the songs some of them you need it to get the voices out of the noise of the songs. you know when you go to a concert you can hear the words fine. but on the radio or tape or Cd's you sometimes have a hard time hearing some words. but on the old vinyl you don't. its those two missing freq's.
of course if you can't hear them in the first place then you don't know there is anything causing the words to be hard to hear.

and as for my sound on my system is the way i think sound is better that is just because Teknojnky cant even see any little point in what i say as true so he has to make cracks like that.

i can go to any sound system and show the way i did the sound is better on any system. because the way i do the sound is always adding or removing volume to freq's some systems can't handle some freq's cause they don't have the full range of speakers. some can. its like the old Wurlitzer organs some are set up for churches and can't play all the sounds as the ones set up for the theater's.
because they don't have all the pipes set up in the ones for the church's. they might be able to use some electronic sound to reproduce the parts the theater organs can. but it won't sound the same as the theater's sound.

so the sound quality issue has been around forever in one form or another. even the romans knew of it. but thats a longer page message so I'll stop with that.
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Post by drjboulder »

rovingcowboy wrote: so adding them did something to the sound as i said just what i don't know. :-?
Which seems to sum it up nicely.
It did something to the sound - but do not know what....
Not exactly how I wish to do any conversions I may need to do...

But, hey, if it sounds good to you, RC, that is what matters.

Think that Tekno is more concerned that you are sending Noobs down a long and winding road to no solution to their problems.

But, maybe I will just stay out of this one... :lol:
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Post by Big_Berny »

Ok, but then it's just your personal taste. The idea of each compression like MP3, WMA, AAC and so on is to get a sound which sounds as similar as possible to the original one. And most people want that too. Because I want the music to sound how the artist wanted it to sound. You know what I mean?

Have you ever tried soundenhancement-plugins like DFX? You might like them probably because they also improve the sound like this.

Personally I think it's no problem if somebody want this kind of good sound, also if I do not. But I think it's problematic if a new member asks how to get good sound and he get's tricks like these how to make the sound sound better.

The only thing I don't understand is that you first said you modify the sound to get closer to the original because encoding might delete some frequencies (and that's surely not true and could be proved) and now you say that you do it to sound better on your system. That are two completely different things.
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Post by rovingcowboy »

drjboulder wrote:
rovingcowboy wrote: so adding them did something to the sound as i said just what i don't know. :-?
Which seems to sum it up nicely.
It did something to the sound - but do not know what....
Not exactly how I wish to do any conversions I may need to do...

But, hey, if it sounds good to you, RC, that is what matters.

Think that Tekno is more concerned that you are sending Noobs down a long and winding road to no solution to their problems.

But, maybe I will just stay out of this one... :lol:
yep i know the soundfonts are to be for midi only but why they changed the sound of all songs is sure a strange one to me but they did. and as i said the only thing you touch when you add in the sound fonts is the folder for the soundcard's soundfont bank. not media monkey. so that has to show its not monkey that changed only the sound card stuff. :-?

Big Berny wrote:The only thing I don't understand is that you first said you modify the sound to get closer to the original because encoding might delete some frequencies (and that's surely not true and could be proved) and now you say that you do it to sound better on your system. That are two completely different things.
no i still say the adding of the data for the echo of the freq's will be the data most likely to be removed by the compressing of the songs when you go from mp3 to wav to wma. or from mp3 160 to wav to mp3 128,
the compression is going to take bits of data out. if you add in data in the wav. then that data was not there in the first mp3. and is extra stuff for the compression to the next mp3 to mess with. thus having the chance of it being the bits of data removed and not messing with the data from the first mp3.

it will help keeping the same quality that way. its not going to keep it exactly but closer to the same, then not having the echo data added in doing the wav editing, and having the compression to the wma or smaller mp3 remove the songs bits of data..

8)
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Post by Big_Berny »

rovingcowboy wrote:yep i know the soundfonts are to be for midi only but why they changed the sound of all songs is sure a strange one to me but they did.
Ok, this statement is enough for me to know that it makes no sense here to discuss...

It like a guy I saw in a forum who told that flac-files sounds better when you use the extension .fla instead of .flac because it is shorter which makes the sound crisper. ;)
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Post by rovingcowboy »

Big_Berny wrote:
rovingcowboy wrote:yep i know the soundfonts are to be for midi only but why they changed the sound of all songs is sure a strange one to me but they did.
Ok, this statement is enough for me to know that it makes no sense here to discuss...

It like a guy I saw in a forum who told that flac-files sounds better when you use the extension .fla instead of .flac because it is shorter which makes the sound crisper. ;)
what you can't see that something changed in the sound card either. i have no idea what it could have changed but it did and since i post that you like to call me a stupid liar. have you ever touched lava from a volcano? then how do you know its hot it might be cold. if you never touched it and believe it to be hot then some one had to tell you that did touch it.

:wink:
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Post by Big_Berny »

With this attitude we would still be in the stone age. With education, knowledge and logical thinking you can already understand a lot.
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Post by rovingcowboy »

Big_Berny wrote:With this attitude we would still be in the stone age. With education, knowledge and logical thinking you can already understand a lot.
true but with out happy programming errors that can be turned in to something useful we would not have color monitors or color tv sets. most useful items were once thought to be bugs that were turned in to something useful.
8)

not saying it is something that can be useful but it just might be something that could be if some programmer had an open mind about it and tried to hunt down the reason it changed when it was not ment to change.. i do know how it changed the sound on this computers sound card but this is the one that kept crashing, the other computer is able to use them but was not to change the sound on anything but midi. so why did it? thats unknown, it happend was not to happen but did. so there's something causing it. of course that computer is also the one with two blown cap's on the motherboard, and is not to be working at all but it is. how i don't know it is though. maybe those caps have something to do with sound? not sure on that either. :-? :o
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