At 12:08 AM 11/3/99 EST, you wrote:
> The reason I ask is my father, who is an avid mp3 downloader, burns most
of
>his selections into CD-R. Played over my same system, those songs sound *so*
>much cleaner than when through my sound card -- not just in frequency
>response but also there's less of the sparking/warbling/annoying as hell
>sound from mp3s. That would lead me to think the decoder is better, but like
>MD shouldn't the end result always be the same? Regardless, MD wins hands
>down. He's got some songs burned into CD-R that were 80 kbps. He claims he
>can't tell anything wrong with him. Poor, poor old man. :-)
Ah, but encoders *are* different. This also goes part way to answer the
question on different ATRACs affecting recording.
ATRAC playback and MP3 playback (decoders) are well defined- once you have
a data stream encoded, it will produce the same digital data on playback,
unless you have been screwing with your equalizer. Any differences to the
sound are not because of different ATRAC (or MP3) decoders.
This is not the case for encoders. Every song can potentially produce an
infinite number of encoded variations. It's the encoder which must pick the
best match it can given the available bitrate. Early ATRACs did a poorer
job at this. Early MP3 encoders, and those written by back-yard boys are
also in the same boat. Ideally, if you are not working to a time limit, you
can usually do a much better job than if you were. But technology is
improving all the time, and these days "smart" real-time encoders work well
enough.
--
Archer
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6413/
End.
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