# Check CD quality?



## AsRock (Sep 16, 2010)

I'm after some thing that will tell me what bitrate the actual music CD is.  So anyone know of a program that shows this info ?.


----------



## JrRacinFan (Sep 16, 2010)

Bitrate? CD quality bitrate is 1411.2kbps. Or are you asking for a program that will detect what bitrate of a track was recorded at?


----------



## AsRock (Sep 16, 2010)

JrRacinFan said:


> Bitrate? CD quality bitrate is 1411.2kbps. Or are you asking for a program that will detect what bitrate of a track was recorded at?



yes


----------



## JrRacinFan (Sep 16, 2010)

Ahhhh .....

Can't think of anything off the top of my head. Sorry. =/


----------



## Drone (Sep 16, 2010)

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2909873/how-to-detect-generation-loss-of-a-transcoded-audio


this is something different but maybe it's somehow related to it


----------



## Easy Rhino (Sep 16, 2010)

what drone said.


----------



## AsRock (Sep 16, 2010)

checking between 2 tracks is not what i am after.

When a song is recorded originally to a CD the quality is normally kbit/s.  So making a music CD 320 kbit/s when it's only 128 kbit/s would be a waste of time and HDD space.

As i am finding it more and more common most are 128 kbit/s which is lame ( as long as it's recorded at a higher kbit/s ).

Like i brought the enigma CD and  i can say i am not impressed with the quality as it used to be much better.


----------



## scaminatrix (Sep 16, 2010)

I would have thought just about anything; VLC has an option to look at the details of the media you're playing, so does MPC. I use them both all the time for checking bitrates on videos, they also give you details of the bitrate of the audio.


----------



## Tatty_One (Sep 16, 2010)

In Windows media player you can add Bitrate info to check the quality of your CD's playback before you rip them (by right clicking where indicated on attached pic) at therefore the "appropriate" quality (in whatever proggie you choose to use) if thats what your talking about...........


----------



## CJCerny (Sep 16, 2010)

AsRock said:


> checking between 2 tracks is not what i am after.
> 
> When a song is recorded originally to a CD the quality is normally kbit/s.  So making a music CD 320 kbit/s when it's only 128 kbit/s would be a waste of time and HDD space.
> 
> ...



Sounds like you are asking about the bit rate used to record the music in the first place. Most pros and studios today are recording digitally at least at 24bit/96khz and typically at 24bit/192khz resolutions or on analog tape and then converting them to digital--those are way, way above MP3 bit rates. The bit rates of the original recordings are also way above the bit rates of the CD's themselves. CD's all conform to the same standard (16bit @44100hz of linear PCM--the 1411.2Kbps quoted above). The original recordings have to be downsampled to fit on CD. If you have CDs in your collection that don't sound good, it's not because of low bit rates. It's just not a good recording or master, of which there are plenty.

There isn't any way for you to determine what was done on the recording/studio side as far as bit rates go, and it doesn't really matter anyway, because the bit rates they are using are way, way above CD bit rates anyway. Bit rate is just one factor in how good a recording sounds. There are plenty of ways other than low bit rates to screw up a recording, and that's what you are hearing.


----------



## Deleted member 3 (Sep 16, 2010)

Size of the file divided by the duration of the file in seconds = bitrate. 

Considering bitrate only defines the amount of data used per second it is quite irrelevant. CD audio is uncompressed, thus has a very high bitrate, something like 650,000/(74*60) You can't compare this to the bitrate of an MP3 or any other format. It says little about actual quality.


----------



## CJCerny (Sep 16, 2010)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> Size of the file divided by the duration of the file in seconds = bitrate.
> 
> Considering bitrate only defines the amount of data used per second it is quite irrelevant. CD audio is uncompressed, thus has a very high bitrate, something like 650,000/(74*60) You can't compare this to the bitrate of an MP3 or any other format. It says little about actual quality.



Not quite true--CD audio is compressed when compared to the master recording. Think of it this way--original recording contains all the musical data you could ever hear--CD contains about 95% of all the musical data you could ever hear (data wise, it is much smaller than the original recording)--MP3's contain X% of what the CD contains, based on the bit rate you select (data wise, it is much smaller than the CD).


----------



## AsRock (Sep 16, 2010)

CJCerny said:


> Sounds like you are asking about the bit rate used to record the music in the first place. Most pros and studios today are recording digitally at least at 24bit/96khz and typically at 24bit/192khz resolutions or on analog tape and then converting them to digital--those are way, way above MP3 bit rates. The bit rates of the original recordings are also way above the bit rates of the CD's themselves. CD's all conform to the same standard (16bit @44100hz of linear PCM). The original recordings have to be downsampled to fit on CD. If you have CDs in your collection that don't sound good, it's not because of low bit rates. It's just not a good recording or master, of which there are plenty.
> 
> There isn't any way for you to determine what was done on the recording/studio side as far as bit rates go, and it doesn't really matter anyway, because the bit rates they are using are way, way above CD bit rates anyway. Bit rate is just one factor in how good a recording sounds. There are plenty of ways other than low bit rates to screw up a recording, and that's what you are hearing.



Yes they do down sample them so they fit but as time goes on some lower it to speed up the process and what ever other lame reasons.  Then you have the remastered stuff which i find even worse for obvious reasons. As then your taking new hardware which is like changing your amplifier or speakers and what they THINK sounds right to them.


I know why i like records over is partly due to Dolby Digital as that crap takes away the edges of sounds to take away possible hiss but if you do or do not have his it still takes away sound. 

So i wanted to see if there was anyway to check before ripping them of there disks.




CJCerny said:


> Not quite true--CD audio is compressed when compared to the master recording. Think of it this way--original recording contains all the musical data you could ever hear--CD contains about 95% of all the musical data you could ever hear (data wise, it is much smaller than the original recording)--MP3's contain X% of what the CD contains, based on the bit rate you select (data wise, it is much smaller than the CD).



So only real way is to buy the most original one you can get ya hands on


----------



## scaminatrix (Sep 16, 2010)

AsRock said:


> So i wanted to see if there was anyway to check before ripping them of there disks.



Go into the WMP options and select the 'WMA Lossless' option, it should rip it at the same quality, if you really want to check the bitrate of your cd, try what I said in post 8.


----------



## CJCerny (Sep 16, 2010)

Unfortunately, a lot of the sound quality of the disc you've selected is based on the skill of the person doing the encoding/mastering. Here's what happens--musicians record what they want to in a studio and then mix it all together. Then, they turn that recording over to someone who's job it is to make it sound as good as it can on format X. So, one person will do the CD, another person will do the vinyl version, someone else will do the DVD--whatever the format. Some people are just better at this than others, just like anything else in life. So, you might get a CD that sounds great and a record that doesn't sound so good or vice versa, from the same original recording.

"Re-mastering" is a popular thing with CD's now. All it really means is that the original recording is downsampled to CD again by a different person using more modern tools 20 years after it was first tried. Generally, this results in a better sounding CD, but not always. In a lot of cases, you can't make beauty out of a turd, with the turd being a bad original recording. 

Anyway, I digress--to get a good sounding CD, you need a good original recording plus a good master of the original recording to CD. The only way real way to find these is to read reviews where they listen to a lot of CDs and rate their sound quality.


----------

