Myspace=rape

[ahjteam]

edit: part 2



Discuss.

[Torniojaws]

Well, mp3 is a destructive format and when you have 96 kbit "quality" it's bound to sound like an ass, no matter what you do. It's simply not enough bandwidth for most music to retain even some quality. If I'd make the player and I had severe limits imposed for the size, I would use a completely different format. mp3 has the worst quality of all current compression algorithms when you compress below 128 kbit. I would probably pick either WMA or OGG, for <128 kbit.

[sash poask]

shit man, that looks like quite a significant amount of deterioration going on there

i have noticed it while back, when a friend played me some music, and the quality sounded like shit, i asked him where its from....he said he ripped it off myspace- surprise surprise

i think its quite stupid, maybe they should offer a better quality player like a premium feature so that the quality isnt distorted

meh, what do i know

[Morgan C]

Why'd they choose 96k for MySpace? 128k is really not that much bigger, at all.. and the quality difference is inaudible on most consumer systems (I can barely tell the difference.. then again I'm on $50 headphones or worse). But 96k is so disgustingly bad..

[ahjteam]

Originally Posted by Morgoe

Why'd they choose 96k for MySpace? 128k is really not that much bigger, at all..

You are not thinking it on the larger scale. My biggest thougth is that its the server and bandwith load. The sizes 13 second clips I did were:

orig wav: 2247kb
320kbps: 511kb
256kbps: 409kb
192kbps: 307kb
160kbps: 256kb
128kbps: 205kb
96kbps: 154kb
64kbps: 103kb

Now multiply that by 20 to get normal lenght songs and then the song count by 30 million songs and you will understand.

[abyssofdreams]

they could have gone with a more bandwidth-friendly audio format that streams more fluent too.

[Torniojaws]

Yeah, bandwidth is not free. You always pay for extra bandwidth. For smaller scale things (like band sites etc), you're generally limited to n GB/month for bandwidth. Say, my site for Vortech has a 10 GB/month limit, and I have five Vortech releases there for download, 50 MB on average. Lets say, there's 100 album downloads, or 20 (twenty!) people downloading all five releases, that equals 100*50 MB = 5 GB of bandwidth, which is HALF of what I'm allowed each month. Once you reach the bandwidth limit, your site is shut down until the beginning of the next month, which isn't acceptable for a band website.

Now for a bigger service, like Myspace, they're renting bandwidth on a transfer amount basis, ie. instead of set limits for each month, they pay a certain sum for each GB transferred. These are contract-based, but let's assume a sum of 10 cents per GB:

- Say, 100,000 bands, each with 5 songs uploaded (á 5 MB)
- Every band's five songs are listened to 100 times in a month

-> 5 songs * 5 MB * 100 listens * 100,000 bands = 250,000,000 MB of bandwidth usage, or 250,000 GB

250,000 GB * 10 cents = 25,000 USD per month. If the song limit was 10 MB, you'd pay 50,000 USD per month. All the sums above are VERY modest estimates.

[Wolfeman]

The thing is, the average myspace user could care less about audio quality. I still have friends that think 128kbps MP3's sound as good as CD

[robfromthedeep]

Seeing as there are ways people can steal music from myspace sites, maybe that could be a pro of myspace having bad audio quality.

Why would i want that? I'll just buy the song thanks. etccc

[Metaltastic]

Originally Posted by robfromthedeep

Seeing as there are ways people can steal music from myspace sites, maybe that could be a pro of myspace having bad audio quality.

Why would i want that? I'll just buy the song thanks. etccc

Hmm, you may be on to something there...

[Öwen]

I know people on my sound production course that rip audio from myspace to listen to

[robfromthedeep]

Originally Posted by Öwen

I know people on my sound production course that rip audio from myspace to listen to

Same

You'd think they would be wiser right?

[Öwen]

I'd have hoped that all that time spent listening to stuff would have provided them with a better sense of audio perception yeah...

[PhilR]

I read a recent study that concluded that the kidz actually prefer the sound of compressed to fuck audio.

[JBroll]

Originally Posted by Wolfeman

The thing is, the average myspace user could care less about audio quality. I still have friends that think 128kbps MP3's sound as good as CD

As mentioned earlier, there was an article on a few news sites about how some people prefer squashed-as-balls nonsense to more 'true' signals - MP3 artifacts are the new vinyl 'warmth', it seems... and people wonder why I don't buy fucking MP3s.

Jeff

[ahjteam]

I think it was this article, I remembered that baby:

http://i.gizmodo.com/5166649/ipods-a...estroyed-music

[ahjteam]

hey, I just had an idea... now that we know how myspace affects the quality of the audio, should we try to make some kind of process, where we would actually try get that sizzle back to that +8khz area just for myspace?

[JBroll]

Someone was able to fool the Youtube earfucking by leaving a massive 22kHz wave to keep the volume 'regular' and keep the compressor off (it got highpassed out afterwards, so your dogs are still safe), I'd be interested in seeing how that works - I just don't have a Myspace, and at this rate I won't be using Facebook either...

Jeff

[ahjteam]

Okay, clearly needs some testing. I ripped 30 seconds from the beginning of Ancaras single Deny (I doubt they will mind as this is for selfeducational purposes and the song is downloadable from their website) and used it as a benchmark. The audio had about -10dB RMS, so it was quite brickwalled.

I used the Waves Q10 EQ and the L2 limiter. I set EQ to fucking ridicilous settings, but I tried to make it so that it didn't pump like hell:

Q10: Band 1: highshelf +18dB at 8000hz, Band 2: peak +6dB at 10000hz, Band 3: highshelf +18dB at 16000hz, Master L+R: -6dB
L2: Threshold -0.2, Out ceiling -0.2, Release with ARC "on", IDR 16bits Type1 Ultra with average of 6dB's of attenuation and peak attenuation at -11dB, so it was pumping really hard.

Then I converted it into 256kbps mp3 and uploaded it to myspace and I was actually VERY surprised that it actually had a lot of sizzle in there! I overdid it by far, but I thought that if it would've been done with lesser settings, it would've actually sounded a lot like the cd version. I tried it so that I replaced the +18dB boosts with +6dB boosts and raised the Master L+R to 0dB (unity gain). It made it actually still quite listenable even in myspace, it had that sizzle for my missile, so I guess the truth lies somewhere around those settings, or even +3dB setting might work:



PM me for the profile link if you are interested in hearing the results, I won't spread the link out publicly

[Kazrog]

I'm really not bothered by how awful everything sounds on MySpace, because I expect it to. People are used to music sounding fucked on MySpace, so the playing field is level in that sense. I always know I've done a good mix if it translates well to MySpace, because it's one of the most horrible environments imaginable.

The most important thing is to post links to higher quality versions of your songs. The MySpace player is a very useful indicator of popularity and ROI tracking, and I like the new skin and visualizer they put on it as well.

[The_Shred]

Yeah myspace rolls the top right off. Ive always thought about adding more top than usual JUST for a myspace mix, if you say it sounded better me will have to try it soon!

People will say "Fuck if it sounds good on the myspace player it must sound awesome as a MP3!"

[JBroll]

I can't stand sampling things off Myspace... I remember listening to the new Pain on Myspace and really hoping that the proper CD sounded better - fortunately, it did, but if it weren't for a heavy amount of optimism I might not have touched it.

Jeff

[AudioGeekZine]

Thanks for doing this test.