b.e.wilson Posted September 29, 2004 Report Share Posted September 29, 2004 I've been moving .mp3 audiobooks and old-time radio shows over to 48kbps ATRAC3plus. The audio in the converted files has pre-and post-echo, and has a metallic sheen over the voice. Is there anything I can do to unpack and process the .mp3 to help eliminate the artifacts, or do I sell the Hi-MD and get a microdisc .mp3 player? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrgeen4242 Posted September 29, 2004 Report Share Posted September 29, 2004 Hi - I have a alot of audio books as well, and its one of the main things I am looking at HiMD for... I downloaded sonicstage the other day to test some conversions and whatnot to see if hte sound quality would be adequate for me (so, no, I haven't got a MD player). Anyways, if you tell me what the original bitrate and sample frequency of the audiobooks you are having trouble with are I will see if I have anything similar and run some conversions to see what I can come up with. Voice recordings can be some of the most difficult compressions in my opinion, as you generally can go for a lower compression ratio, and while the overall quality is good, you end up with a lot of 'ugly' artifacts (if that makes sense ) Rob PS What model MD palyer are you using? How do you like it (other than this) and if you decide to sell it, contact me first, maybe we can work out a deal for you to unload it quickly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jadeclaw Posted September 29, 2004 Report Share Posted September 29, 2004 Use atleast Atrac3+@64k, better use Atrac3@105k. 48k sucks... - In addition, Atrac seems to be a bit sensitive about compression artefacts already present in the source material, especially at low bitrates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b.e.wilson Posted September 29, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 29, 2004 The original .mp3's were 64kbps/22kHz. I have an NHF800. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcnet Posted September 29, 2004 Report Share Posted September 29, 2004 Try converting it to a 44Khz file in any good audio editor and then importing the 44Khz .wav into sonicstage.. When transferring Blue Jam radio show episodes I noticed most of them were at 48Khz samplerate and the audio quality on the MD was terrible.... I converted them to 44Khz in CoolEdit and transferred the resulting .wavs into SonicStage. The result was *much* better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b.e.wilson Posted September 29, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 29, 2004 You know what, a lot of the artifacts are present in the original .mp3 files. I transferred the .mp3's to a cdrom and played them in a cd player, and they sound a lot worse through earphones than they did through the PC speakers. The 48kbps ATRAC files did sound worse, but not that much worse. Thanks for you help everyone. I can live with a little bit worse for audiobooks. I'll make a point to doing the original encode better in the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrgeen4242 Posted September 29, 2004 Report Share Posted September 29, 2004 I was just getting done doing some testing and coming to post what I had come up with and saw your post, b.e. Since I already did it, I figured I mind as well tell you how it came out... I decided that I would just rip a track from an audio book I have at 64kbps/22kHz and see how it comes out. (Note that I usually rip my books at a lower bitrate than that, as I usually listen to them while driving and the road noise covers up alot of the artifacts). Anyways. I made a total of 3 files, an MP3 at 64kbps/22kHz, and two 48kbps Atrac3plus files, one from the original CD and another converted from the MP3. The copy from CD to Atrac3+ was very good, imo. I didn't notice any artifacts. The mp3 was also pretty good, although, again imo, not as good as the CD->atrac3+. Lastly the mp3->Atrac3+ picked up quite a bit of background noise. This would probably only be evident if you were listening to it in a quiet enviroment and at a pretty loud volume, but it was there none the less. I really had to be listening to hear it. I also took the 64/22 mp3 and upsampled it to 44kHz and converted that to Atrac3+, at the sugestion of marcnet, and it sounded about the same as the first mp3 to atrac3+ converted file, but I don't have the best of ears, to be honest. Anyways, since you seem to have found most of the problem with the original mp3s, I can suggest that doing a CD to 48kbps Atrac3+ conversion gives some pretty good results, so ripping your future audio books in that format may be a solution. (Although that has the drawback of limiting playback to only your MD devices, and not any other mp3 players). I think what I am going to do is rip my (new) books to 128kbps/44khz mp3 for archiving, and then convert them to 48kbps atrac3+ for MD purposes. I just did a test of that and the result was identical to the CD->atrac3+, as far as I could tell. Not much help, but I tried Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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