Boycott Beatport! Selling some MP3 files as Wav/Aiff and refuse to issue refund...

[userb420]

the stereo information of the file, i.e soloing the side channel demonstrates clear mp3 artifacts as I mentioned previously. During MP3 encoding this makes up the majority of the information removed from the file. It is very obvious to hear if you have done it before it's not a subtle thing anyone's grandmother can hear it, try for yourself 128kbps mp3. When you solo the side channel, think a mid side encoder or EQ all the sound is brutally distorted.

[nineofkings]

That's maddening. I doubt Beatport would intentionally be fraudulent like that but maybe the label sent a lossless converted mp3. Which would be pretty shitty

[timbateson]

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I experienced similar.

I bought 80 tracks from Beatport in lossless (.aiff) format and converted them to FLAC for playback on my Sonos system. When checking the FLAC files' tags in Mp3tag, which also shows the bitrate, I became suspicious that 4 tracks had significantly lower bitrates than the others (~500 to ~700kbps, when ~800 to ~1,100kbps is typical for FLAC). A lower bitrate when encoded in FLAC typically means less/no high frequency content.

I checked the original .aiff's spectrographs using Audition, and they all exhibited brickwall lowpass filters at 16kHz with a light smattering of point samples ('dots') above 16kHz. This is characteristic of the LAME mp3 encoder when used with the -Y flag, which is enabled by default on all constant bit-rate encodings (including cbr320 / --preset insane). See https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?t ... E_Y_switch (https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=LAME_Y_switch)

Here's the catch - I purchased 2 of the tracks a second time, but this time in physical form by buying the relevant CD single via Discogs. In both cases, a .wav of the same track ripped from the CD single had exactly the same issues as the copy from Beatport.

That leaves us with Beatport selling lossless rips of tracks that were at some point mastered in mp3 by the relevant record label. It's better than buying a mp3 of an mp3, but not by much. While this might not be Beatport's fault, I agree with comments on the previous page to the effect that they can (and should) have controls in place to detect when this happens.

Tim

[anarchophora]

mastered in mp3

Doing that should instantly result in losing your license, if only there were licenses for this sort of thing.

[excuse me please]

Gee, I always was thinking mp3 had a reduced file size in comparison to wav.

[Spring Goose]

I can't imagine anybody will boycott Beatport.

[thecontrolcentre]

I will ...