Noticed how cheap USB sticks are now?

mrk

mrk

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I just bought a 16GB USB stick off the bay for £9.30 (free postage) from a UK seller. 32GB ones were not much more either.

I never recalled them being this cheap before although I've not checked the bay for these things only highstreet stores and regular etailers.

Damn they're cheap! Now I can have me entire music collection in the car instead of select albums :p
 
Soldato
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Some places are overpriced and my mum was a victim -_-

Although entire music collection on 16GB?

I would only get 15 albums or so :p I've converted my music into 4096kbps, 1GB an album. :eek:
 

mrk

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I have a small collection as I'm quite picky with music and they are 320Kbps LAME encoded :p

The rest of my stations are online streams which I get in the car too via line in from my 3G phone :D
 
Don
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I would only get 15 albums or so :p I've converted my music into 4096kbps, 1GB an album. :eek:

overkill?

that's bigger than WAV.


remember you can still get 'fake' sticks and memory cards on the bay, flashed to think they're bigger than they are, data in the 'fake' section will be very unreliable.

saying that, that's only a small amount of them, sony memory sticks are the worst for it
 

mrk

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You can't hear the difference because there is no difference because it's not possible in any way to gain extra detail that never existed in the first place from the original CD (WAV format) :p
 
Soldato
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Well don't knock it till you try it. I just have a crappy amp and I notice a good difference using that bit-rate.

Sorry if I've managed to offend anyone. :p
 

mrk

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It's sonically impossible my friend! Your crappy amp is deceiving you :)



It's very hard for me to tell the difference between 320Kbps LAME and the CD counterpart and I'm on a NAD C325BEE amp with matching equipment! (And I have excellent hearing!)

It is however possible that the encoder you used coloured the sound to make it feel different to your ears if you're regularly listening to that same music I guess, it won't be more detailed at all, just have a different sound colour :p
 
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Soldato
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It might have been because it encoded the audio signal into 96khz?

I don't know and I'm all new to this I ripped the CD at lossless (which was 600MB) then converted it using foobar which was 400MB more. When you say it wassn't there before CD quality still has to be compressed a little surely as CD's are still quite small in capacity?

Edit - argh my brain hurts there's no way I can really justify myself at all and maybe just playing a fools game :( Add me on msn mrk and I'll explain in full if you want? My e-mail is in my trust. I'll be home at around half 4 to accept the add if you do.
 
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Soldato
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It might have been because it encoded the audio signal into 96khz?

I don't know and I'm all new to this I ripped the CD at lossless (which was 600MB) then converted it using foobar which was 400MB more. When you say it wassn't there before CD quality still has to be compressed a little surely as CD's are still quite small in capacity?

Eh? CDs have 44,000 16-bit samples per second. You re-encoding at 96KHz can't add anything, there is no extra data to be had. What does it do interpolate new samples between the existing ones? Can that make it sound better? I don't really see how.
 
Soldato
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Eh? CDs have 44,000 16-bit samples per second. You re-encoding at 96KHz can't add anything, there is no extra data to be had. What does it do interpolate new samples between the existing ones? Can that make it sound better? I don't really see how.

Why do you get sound cards that output at 24-bit/192khz then if it doesn't add to sound quality at all?

And probably bledd... :( :D

That's the art of 'converting' surely to make it so it does output at a better bit-rate and audio signal.
 
Soldato
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Why do you get sound cards that output at 24-bit/192khz then if it doesn't add to sound quality at all?

And probably bledd... :( :D

Because we might be working with higher quality sources. Artificially created sounds, digital samples of an analogue source etc... Your problem is that you're limited by the CD as a source. Adding more bits is pointless.
 

mrk

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Why do you get sound cards that output at 24-bit/192khz then if it doesn't add to sound quality at all?

And probably bledd... :( :D

That's the art of 'converting' surely to make it so it does output at a better bit-rate and audio signal.


The cards are outputting by hardware though to anticipate better input sources in that instance - the values are labelled in vista and win7 as such too to make things easier. The default will always be 44100 or 48000 for DVD but soundcard drivers will bypass Windows values usually.
 
Soldato
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Well I followed a guide on Head-Fi using foobar.

I use a resampler as an Active DSP at 24bit/96khz which is the setting I have the soundcard at which says (studio quality). The added bit-rate I can't really justify without solid evidence which I don't have. Feel free to do the same using foobar and tell me if you have a better sound quality.

:):):)

Edit - It converted my lossless files to 24-bit apparently. I was supposed to add an asio profile but I havn't done that yet.
 
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Soldato
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remember you can still get 'fake' sticks and memory cards on the bay, flashed to think they're bigger than they are, data in the 'fake' section will be very unreliable.
Also cheap flash memories often use very slow chips. (especially write)
 
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