Tfw I just realized a lot of my old "320kbps CBR" mp3 files are just shitty transcodes

>tfw I just realized a lot of my old "320kbps CBR" mp3 files are just shitty transcodes

I've had them on my hard drive(s) for so long, maybe over 10 years since I started my digital collection, I never bothered to verify the quality of my downloads until maybe 4 or 5 years ago when I started downloading FLACs and checking the spectrograms to make sure they were legit.

So today I randomly dragged one of those old .mp3 files into my spectrogram analyzer and and found pic related (left), downloaded a lossless version and transcoded it to actual 320 CBR mp3 and realized a (very minimal) improvement in sound quality.

Now my autism won't let me sleep until I check the rest of my old files (about half of my music library). Why would you upload shitty lossy2lossy transcodes? (I'm looking at you, TPB fucking shits).

REEEEEEE

I don't think the left is a transcode, just an older encode with an inferior/older encoder compared to the ones nowadays which have improved

>when the flac spectrogram is just right

MP3 encoders are old as fuck. LAME is almost 20 years old, the current alpha version is about 6 years old but very little has changed in the past 15 years or so anyway, I don't think the encoder is the problem here, it looks just like a 192>320 transcode some fag made for >muh internet thank yous.

What program is this?

Spek, I think it means bacon in dutch or something.

Thanks. I've been suspicious of a lot of slsk downloads and want to check them.

>I've been suspicious of a lot of slsk downloads and want to check them.
you will never find peace if you decide to check your slsk shit

trust me

I've actually had good luck with slsk stuff.

>tfw rutracker master race and don't have to worry about any of this
Life is good.

Kek. Yeah it seems like there's a lot of transcodes on there. You can tell fishy shit is going on when there's fuckin a 192kbps copy of an album and then a 320 kbps copy with the exact same filenames and folder name.

can't find half the shit on rutracker than i can on slsk tho

>mfw I purchase all my music legally in a physical format, rip it, and already know that I am receiving nothing but the highest quality possible

i still buy physical copies of the music i love, if i can find it.

what if all of my music are just shitty transcodes

well idc i have shitty earbuds anyway

Maybe they have deteriorated over time due to rotational velociraptor

But how you couldn't tell they're shitty transcodes by listening to them? Are you unable to detect fakes by ear???

>download 128kbps mp3
>save as 320kbps mp3
>good as new

fuck people who do this

Nope, sadly I was born with plebeian ears. Are yearly cochlear implants worth the money?

But seriously, I don't have a problem listening to lower bitrates or youtube videos if nothing else is available and I understand that they were popular not long ago because storage space (especially in portable devices) was expensive but it is pretty cheap now so I don't see the problem with having hundreds of GiBs of music. You can easily fit 450+ hours of the highest quality mp3s in most smartphones now.

another reason ipod classics were ahead of their time

>listening to mp3s in the first place
You deserved it, user.

I do this on purpose to piss people off.

Sometimes your brain can be fooled too. If you think it's a high bitrate, you assume it's a high bitrate. I can see how one could be fooled by 192kbps especially on average speakers. Not much lower though.

LAME 3.97 encoded MP3s have the most nostalgia feels for early college days

>implying you can

Not relevant. If you can't spot the differences between a legit file and a transcode you shouldn't worry: you can hear the difference anyway. That's the point.

Really makes you think
I listen to nothing but MP3. I have a few 192 or 256 kbps albums that I couldn't find in 320.I'll have to get better headphones and more storage space if I decide to get into FLAC.

>tfw pth master race

but let's be honest, slsk is a nice source of flac material sometimes.

I think you mean [REDACTED] master race

if your ears couldn't notice does it really matter?

fr fr

How can 320 kbps be real if our ears aren't real

why do you care enough to examine spectrograms? If you can't tell whether or not the file sounds like shit with your ears then why does it matter?

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

kek

>he thinks that being on an open sign up tracker makes him master race