Har-Bal Users Forum BBS

Hi my friends,
I have had Harbal for some time now but I am only starting to get back into music again (I hope).
This may seem a silly question, but is there any way that Harbal can inport a mp3 file in the future without having to decode to a wave file, why I ask is that it would be great to see exactly what a mp3 encoder has done to the music and compare it with the original so that one can make ajustments to the original to compensate.
Just a thought,

Allan

Hi Allan,

Har-Bal will not directly support mp3 any time soon. mp3 is a proprietory format and although the per unit licensing is reasonable they have a requirement (Thompson) of a minimum annual royalty of around $20,000 US the last time I checked. So we have no inclination to directly supprot it. Indirectly through OS and third party CODECs is a possability (provided they are legitimately licensed).

On the issue of attempting to compensate for the spectral distortion that an mp3 encoding had imposed, I think it would be a futile excercise. That alteration in the spectrum is a result of the encoding process being lossy compression. Adding more or less prior to encoding is not likely to fixthe problem, only upping the bit rate.

Regards,


Paavo.

HarBal wrote:Hi Allan,

Har-Bal will not directly support mp3 any time soon. mp3 is a proprietory format and although the per unit licensing is reasonable they have a requirement (Thompson) of a minimum annual royalty of around $20,000 US the last time I checked. So we have no inclination to directly supprot it. Indirectly through OS and third party CODECs is a possability (provided they are legitimately licensed).

On the issue of attempting to compensate for the spectral distortion that an mp3 encoding had imposed, I think it would be a futile excercise. That alteration in the spectrum is a result of the encoding process being lossy compression. Adding more or less prior to encoding is not likely to fixthe problem, only upping the bit rate.

Regards,


Paavo.

Hi Paavo,
Thanks for your info. I hope you do not mind me asking another question about mp3s, I know this has nothing to do with Harbal, but I hope with your expert knowledge you can advise me.
1. I record my music at 24bit wave, is it ok to convert to mp3 (128x44) from 24bit or should I convert to 16bit first?.
2. If ok to convert from 24bit wave to mp3 should I use dithering too?
Sorry for my ignorance,

Allan

Allan,

My knowledge of mp3 is pretty limited so I truly don't know which aproach will give better results. I'd suggest experimenting for yourself to see if there is an appreciable difference.

Regards,


Paavo.