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MP3 or MP4? What's the difference?
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| agentdansmith |
What's the difference between these two formats?
I've only just noticed that Beatport offer MP4 as an option... |
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| Spoonz |
i could be wrong but i believe an mp4 at 320kb/s is a lot smaller in filesize than an mp3 of the same bit rate
thus giving u the same quality using less space... as i say they, i could b and probably am (knowing me,) wrong |
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| Darkarbiter |
| quote: | Originally posted by Spoonz
i could be wrong but i believe an mp4 at 320kb/s is a lot smaller in filesize than an mp3 of the same bit rate
thus giving u the same quality using less space... as i say they, i could b and probably am (knowing me,) wrong |
MP4 is video... 320kbps would be refering to the audio I suppose which would be a lot bigger in filesize total. |
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| Mr.Mystery |
| quote: | Originally posted by Darkarbiter
MP4 is video... |
Not necessarily. |
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| DJ Tee |
| users at xlr8yourmac.com did tests on this subject and here's what they found; link |
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| Darkarbiter |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mr.Mystery
Not necessarily. |
Ok well anyway 320kbps meens 320 killabits (or bytes whatever) per second. Therefore a 10 minute mp3 song and a 10 minute mp4 song at 320kbps will be pretty much the same size apart from the extra text info (title, arist etc which should only be like <10kb) so when your comparing different codecs for audio you'd want to look at the quality per byte. Also diffent codes have different qualities they can be at (e.g. wma is like 48kbps to losses wheras mp3 is like 128-320kbps I.E. much smaller).
Anyway point is when comparing codecs in general you look at quality for size or just quality. The kbps is the size. |
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| david.michael |
| quote: | Originally posted by Darkarbiter
The kbps is the size. |
Actually, it's the rate. |
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| Spoonz |
| after a little google research, got lost in most of the jargon but mp4 is generally speaking, audio and video, where as mp3 just supports audio |
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| antronx |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_14
.mp4 or .m4a is a container format, meaning its like a candy wrapper. I have not tried downloading an mp4 file from beatport, but i suspect they sell AAC encoded music under .mp4 extention. Mp4 does not have to be video and audio. It can be combination of anything. AAC is a more intelligent way of compressing audio than MP3. I have found out that music encoded at 192kbps AAC sounds as good or better than 320kbps MP3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding |
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| Stu Cox |
| quote: | Originally posted by antronx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_14
.mp4 or .m4a is a container format, meaning its like a candy wrapper. I have not tried downloading an mp4 file from beatport, but i suspect they sell AAC encoded music under .mp4 extention. Mp4 does not have to be video and audio. It can be combination of anything. AAC is a more intelligent way of compressing audio than MP3. I have found out that music encoded at 192kbps AAC sounds as good or better than 320kbps MP3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding |
Exactly.
Beatport encodes mp4s at 170-205 kbps VBR using AAC compression which, according to tests carried out by www.soundexpert.info, works out at about the same quality as a 192kbps MP3 (depending on the encoder they use), so I'd stick with 320k MP3s personally.
AAC does tend to offer better quality at lower bitrates when working with bitrates below this, and in fact an AAC+ encoded at 320kbps is supposed to sound better than a 320k MP3... but it seems it doesn't make a lot of difference at that sort of range. |
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| agentdansmith |
Cheers guys - that's cleared that up then.
Ta :) |
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