audio quality vs. compression

[songpony]

Has anyone got enough history with Hoster to have determined where the best trade-off is for audio quality vs. compression? Right now I'm at the 96 default, and most of my stuff sounds OK - there are a few songs that I consider a bit "muddy" and some people have said they notice that "it's different" from when I played the CDs on a player (but they can't give me much more than that). Is there enough of a sound difference to be worth re-importing my 500 disks at the 128 level (or higher), or could I tweak the EQ on that mixer channel to brighten things up enough to accomplish pretty much the same thing? Any assistance / comments would be greatly appreciated.

[mindonstrike]

I can't answer your question directly as I used 128 from the get go and didn't use the the compression at all but you might try and reimport some of those muddy songs under an used bookid # at the higher bit rate and see if you notice a difference.

I did notice that the hoster music sounded a little flat so I did my tweaking on the soundcard EQ so that my channel pot eq's stay pretty close to flat , then i make minor adjustment to suit a particular song.

Sam

[kedmison]

Songpony,

I've got almost 7,000 songs done at 92. I did a few to start at 128 but then finished them all at 92. I can't tell enough difference. In fact I've had singers say that the songs sound "cleaner." I am however sending Hoster through a complete Mackie sound system. CFX-12 Mixer/SRM40's/1500 Sub. I've had a few songs that may sound as you say "muddy" but when I listened to the orignal on the dsic it sounded "muddy" also. My MTU laptop with a 60 gig played an important part in my choice also. Long story short, I personally don't hear enough difference to go relaoding your 500 discs.

Kelly

[gduns - with the Lord]

I imported all mine at the smallest compression after spending a week trying all and not being able to hear the difference in any of them.

Why double the size of the song if you don't need to. If you have a fast enough processor I don't see where it would matter.

With almost 20,000 tracks. the size does matter to me.

[djmadmaxx]

I use 128 for all my karaoke discs and it sounds great.. anything less and i can tell the difference. It's like mp3's, you can tell the difference between a 128mb file and a 192. a 128mb kma is equal to a 256 mp3. if space is an issue..get a bigger drive. I use 2 120gig hard drives and i'm not gonna run out of room for the 1,800 cdg's i have

[xxyzz]

I imported all my songs at the highest quality 196. Try this and prove to yourself that there is a difference. Import a song at 64k and then play it. Then play the origional song off the CD+G. You will hear the sound difference between the lowest quality and the highest quality. There is a big difference. With the CDG you do not have to have the volume up as loud as you do when playing an imported song. If you have a large enough hard drive and we should all be using mammoth hard drives (mine is a 250 gig) then import them at the highest quality. They will take up twice as much space as 64k but sound much better when played at high volume. Hard drive prices are very cheap today and you have a lot of money invested in your sound equipment I would assume so why skimp on importing?

I felt that there was enough sound quality issue that I even purchased a new 300 watt mixer vs my old 250 watt mixer just to give me a little more power boost. There were times when I had to have the volume all the way up on the 250 watt mixer. The 300 watter is just about right.

Custome made Monarch small form factor 3.0 GHZ Intel Processor
1 Gb RAM
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Retail
250 GB Maxtor hard drive

[S. Parks]

The Bottom Line, If your ears like whats coming in, it's all good. :)

[Beavis]

i use 128 ! sounds good to me !

[Party of one]

I use 128 from the start it sounds great, whatever you can get away with and still have a clean sound works.