How can I ensure I get good quality mp3's when downloading?

[ayla.th...@gmail.com]

Hi there,

Ive been noticing that some of my downloads from soulseek claim to be 320kpbs when they actually aren't.. is there a way to know whether it is or not before downloading the file?

Also, whenever I look up each songs info in iTunes, all of the files I have downloaded from soulseek are MPEG format, is this normal? .... I DJ so i want to download mp3's that are 320 kbps. 

Sorry if this is a silly question, but I don't want to be putting out mixes that are lacking good quality sound. Any advice or info would be much appreciated!

Cheers!

Ayla. 

[Rich]

What exactly do you mean by "claim to be 320Kbps when actually aren't"? They don't sound high quality, or they are literally some other bitrate once you've downloaded them?

MP3 is a standard designed by MPEG.

If you want best quality, you're better off looking at lossless formats such as FLAC. To help assure that they are in fact good quality, these are often accompanied by a log file from the tool used to rip the data, I just grabbed this one for illustration:

-----------------------

DON'T MODIFY THIS FILE

-----------------------

PERFORMER: auCDtect Task Manager, ver. 1.6.0 RC1 build 1.6.0.1

Copyright (c) 2008-2010 y-soft. All rights reserved

http://y-soft.org

ANALYZER: auCDtect: CD records authenticity detector, version 0.8.2

Copyright (c) 2004 Oleg Berngardt. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2004 Alexander Djourik. All rights reserved.

FILE: 10 - Aphex Twin - Logon Rock Witch.flac

  Size: 25169838 Hash: AE520EC4D60E0A1F1177864B2DC9A87E Accuracy: -m0

  Conclusion: CDDA 100%

  Signature: 2A3061B4E996DEB971458263F953BFBCD62FA21B

There is still no guarantee of quality here, but it's a damn sight closer than with just 320Kbps MP3s. Without having any idea of the source, those MP3 files could have been encoded 10 times through various formats; 320 is an option someone selected in a tool, it's not an inherent property of the source data.

In fact, on that point, I'd argue that aiming to get only high bitrate VBR MP3 is a better option than just plain 320. That's because the encoding tool will have adjusted automatically to the quality of the source data, and thus give a better indication of original quality. But this is still miles behind sourcing lossless formats, and is very dependant on how the encoding algorithm works, so it's not a recommend solution...

Some DJ software doesn't handle FLAC very well, so if you do source FLAC, then be sure to encode it as MP3 yourself, but the application you use might be just fine with FLAC.

I haven't personally used this, but I imagine if you spend a little time to get familiar with it you'll at least be able to spot the good from the very bad: http://www.deephouseamsterdam.com/this-handy-tool-checks-the-real-quality-of-your-music-files/

As an aside, if you're using Ableton, never use 'Beats' time warping, it runes the sound quality of tracks it can't detect very well, 'Complex' or 'Complex Pro' are much better.

[kyrou.i...@gmail.com]

Hello, i read your discussion of both of you but the main problem is the locks on every FLAC song i search.

Is there a way to handle and access the songs and download them in FLAC format?

thank u

[chrisis...@gmail.com]

Mp3 is lame. Use FLAC.