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Old 2015-12-26, 10:24 AM
Neil Wilkes Neil Wilkes is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2015
Re: MP3 or MiniDisc?

The easiest way to spot MP3 sources (and once you know what to listen for, lossy sources in general) is tio take the suspect file, and open it up in your DAW/Editor and instead of playing it in regular mode pop across to voxengo.com and gran the free MSED plugin.
Plonk this onto your track, and mute the Mid component & now pan the S component to both speakers.
Listen.
Ideally, just to learn what you are listening for, make a low bitrate MP3 (at 128kbps) and then import the MP3 and the source file (from CD or wherever) and do the Mid-Si8de thing on the master buss. Toggling between the MP3 and the lossless will clearly reveal the chirping sound you get from MP3/lossy sources. Learn this sound & become allergic to it in the same way you would to the sound of out-of-phase material.

Once you can hear this in worst case scenarios (128kbps MP3 is about as bad as it gets) you will start to find you can spot this sound even in regular listening modes.....
Seriously - this is a much better way to tell than looking at spectral plots. Sources taken from old vinyl can punk out at 15k - look for the label "ffss" on vinyl. This means "full frequency stereophonic spectrum" and was common in 60's & even the 70's, and your upper limit was around 14k400.
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