Is kbps sufficient to tell the quality of an audio file (music)? I usually download music from YouTube...

Is kbps sufficient to tell the quality of an audio file (music)? I usually download music from YouTube, and often I get 320kbps mp3s, which is the same bitrate of purchased music.

It's a good start, as with anything you have to remember that if more bandwidth has potential to be better, doesn't mean it actually is.

You need to convert the 320kbps MP3s to flac for higher fidelity. Foobar can help with this.

>I usually download music from YouTube
Youtube sound quality is shit, even if you save with FLAC format.

Bitrate only matter if it came from lossless or original source.

I don't think FLAC compression is even an option when uploading to Youtube. It would serve no purpose taking a lossy compressed file and re-compressing to lossless.

Look up the difference between lossless and lossy audio.

Long story short: If it ain't wav, something's been cut out to reduce the file size.

Nice ruse duuude!
fuck ur smart man!

assuming the stream hasn't been re-encoded from a low bitrate to a high bitrate, higher bitrate is of course higher quality. having said that, if you need to ask you either don't care or can't hear the difference anyway.

That's the whole point, Youtube re-encode every files so no loseless from Youtube.

you can sync them, invert one track, and mix'n'render to see how much you lost per bitrate. Here's a sample song that went from FLAC to 128k

Nope. The encoding matters too . 256 Kbps VBR AAC sounds the same as a 320kbps mp3. Now with the advent of opus format even a 64kbps track sounds nearly perfect.

See the spectrum not that waveform. 128 kbps won't even exceed 15,000hz

youtube takes the original uploaded audio and re-encodes it. whatever service you're using to download MP3s from re-encodes it again (often at 320kbps to ensure the audio degrades as little as possible). if the original upload was 128kbps, then re-encoding it at 320kbps will not make it sound any better.

"purchased music", however, will almost always come from a lossless source and the difference between 128 and 320 will be obvious.

what do you even expect to see in a waveform at this scale?

OP's question has nothing to do with comparing different formats

This.

Hearing the difference now isn't the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is 'lossy'. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA - it's about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don't want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.

I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange…well don’t get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did.

People didn't use flac for lossless in 2001. It was all about shn back then

thanks, i had forgotten to save this one

question isn't as easy as a yes or no but it is still a no to your question. possibly it has been re encoded or encoded multiple times. spectrograph is the way

> I usually download music from YouTube, and often I get 320kbps mp3s,
no you don't, because youtube doesn't store or provide 320kbps mp3's

Use a spectrum analyzer like Spek and you can see how lower bitrate will lack highs from 10-15 Khz and up. Often these "320 kbps" Youtube will just upsample a 128 kbps file. I've heard dirpy.com is true 320 kbps, but I haven't tried it.

this right here

Memeing aside, is this actually true?

No.

/thread

Usually converters especially online = 128kbps

Yes. Have you done the what.cd interview?

>I've heard dirpy.com is true 320
which means fucking nothing if the original upload is 64kbps

It doesn't matter, if it's 64kbps then you can still see the cut frequencies in the spectrum.

taxi to apollo, sir???

it's an old pasta

Is this it? Music on YouTube is 128 kbps MP3 at best?

does this mp3 look high quality?

You can still get 192kbps AAC though

it goes up to 160kbps OPUS

Interesting. Sadly, YouTube still isn't a place for downloading music. It's a shame really, given that there are a lot of obscure albums on YouTube.

>YouTube still isn't a place for downloading music.
not really, but it's not the worst place either
160kbps opus overshoots what is generally considered transparent, so if someone uploads a lossless file, so it's only encoded once into a lossy format, that would be a perfectly fine version to get
there isn't a way to verify the sources of youtube uploads, but that goes for most other lossy sources on the internet as well