KVR Audio

Seidhepriest · Post by **Seidhepriest** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 7:43 pm

Seriously. What's the absolutely worst quality achievable with an MP3 encoder? And which encoder? Something seriously bad, so as to make an MP3 file unusable as anything but a preview. It should still give an idea of what the original sounds like though.

Soundcloud kind of manages this kind of un-quality when transcoding from other formats. It'd be great it were worse though. So, what kind of a bitrate/parameters/encoder would that be?

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:04 pm

Seidhepriest · Post by **Seidhepriest** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:09 pm

This has a practical purpose: website previews.

Tricky-Loops · Post by **Tricky-Loops** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:13 pm

I guess your intention is to make the mp3 demos so bad that people are buying the original mp3 immediately to save their ears?

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:17 pm

Just use 96k/sec - mono - should be safe enough for a preview. Or use higher quality mp3s and add irregular beeps to the audio - Voxengo has an automatic beeper available. Or watermark the audio with a voiceover, that's very common for audio libraries. Really shitty audio will put potential customers off, not a good idea imo.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:18 pm

Seidhepriest wrote:This has a practical purpose: website previews.

Then you should be going for the highest possible quality while keeping the file size as small as possible. And then MP3 might not be your best option.

george · Post by **george** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:26 pm

96k/s mono could be Hi-Fi for some ears

I'd go with 32k/s stereo for the worst possible quality.

32k/s mono still sounds decent.

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:28 pm

Seidhepriest wrote:This has a practical purpose: website previews.

That's not really clear from the thread title or the post though.

Seidhepriest · Post by **Seidhepriest** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:40 pm

Tricky-Loops wrote:I guess your intention is to make the MP3 demos so bad that people are buying the original MP3 immediately to save their ears?

Something like that, yes.

Seidhepriest · Post by **Seidhepriest** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:43 pm

chk071 wrote:
Seidhepriest wrote:This has a practical purpose: website previews.
Then you should be going for the highest possible quality while keeping the file size as small as possible. And then MP3 might not be your best option.

It is the only option, as MP3 files are playable by pretty much anything.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:45 pm

Most web players should be able to play other formats as well though.

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:45 pm

Could you not apply some bit reduction and distortion to customize the level of sound that you imagine?

Seidhepriest · Post by **Seidhepriest** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:48 pm

Sampleconstruct wrote:Just use 96 k/sec - mono - should be safe enough for a preview. Or use higher quality MP3s and add irregular beeps to the audio - Voxengo has an automatic beeper available. Or watermark the audio with a voiceover, that's very common for audio libraries. Really shitty audio will put potential customers off, not a good idea imo.

That sounds like a good idea. Thanks.

Seidhepriest · Post by **Seidhepriest** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:50 pm

robojam wrote:Could you not apply some bit reduction and distortion to customize the level of sound that you imagine?

Hmm, that, too. Thanks for the idea.

Seidhepriest · Post by **Seidhepriest** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:52 pm

chk071 wrote:Most web players should be able to play other formats as well though.

Most web players are Flash-based. Browsers are fine with Flash, but, say, some phones and players aren't. MP3 files, on the other hand, are playable anywhere.

What is the WORST MP3 Encoder?