musicmatch jukebox

[Commasterharry]

it has come to my attention that the quality of musicmatch jukebox 9 is much better than the quality of winamp(v5.xx, dunno about the others). That is, with all equilizer and sound enhancements off on both players, same song, same quality. mmjb seems to deliver a far more dynamic crispness of the music. why is this?? i want winamp to be the best.....

[squakMix]

Because more than half or the winamp (nullsoft) team quit or was fired.

[Atmo]

Same soundcard, same speakers, done in a blind test?

Are you certain that even though MMJB's eq sliders are set to flat, that it isnt still doing some equalisation? Can you achieve the same sound using Winamp's eq?

The reason i ask, is because MMJB and Winamp both use the fraunhofer decoder, so there should be absolutely no difference whatsoever in sound quality assuming there is no equalisation or filtering taking place.

[Commasterharry]

yea, same computer, same setup, everything. i checked mmjb.....all sound enhancements were off.

i tried achieving the same quality with winamp. it got close when i set max bass&treble, but the sound was grainy.

i left everything in mmjb as default when i tested a song out.

[Phyltre]

Lies!

Heresy!

Contradiction of dogma!

High treason!

I can think of a thousand ways to kill you, traitor....

[gaekwad2]

If Winamp sounds close with max bass and treble then mmjb is doing something to the sound.

Doesn't it have the same SRS effect turned on by default as WMP?

[deeder7001]

i just checked out the situation myself and mmjb does sound better than winamp(w/out any enhanements of any sort). the bass and trebble is a bit better in mmjb but the difference is very little.

[Atmo]

i just checked out the situation myself and mmjb does sound better than winamp(w/out any enhanements of any sort). the bass and trebble is a bit better in mmjb but the difference is very little.

If the bass & treble are different, then theres certainly some sort of enhancement going on. Just because the eq sliders are flat, doesnt necessarily mean there's no equalisation going on.

If someone want's to check it, play a 20-20,000hz sine sweep through both players with the eq on flat, record the output and compare them in goldwave or similar. I'll download it and check it myself later if no one else does.

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

I'd be willing to bet that Atmo's right... MMJB is probably still performing some sort of equalization even though the EQ might be set to flat. As far as I know, Winamp does absolutely nothing to the sound as long as the EQ is set to flat and there aren't any DSP plugins running. If so, then Winamp is reproducing the music exactly as it was encoded. If MMJB is sounding different while playing the same file, then it's doing something screwy. And remember... what might sound better to you might sound worse to someone else. If you say you got close to MMJB's sound with Winamp by turning the bass and treble all the way up, then that would sound like crap to me. Overly excessive bass and treble, in my opinion, makes my music sound like shit. If you like to hear your music clip, then that's your choice. Don't say something sounds better when it's your opinion.

[Phyltre]

You sound miffed, seargeant. And you don't even know if he's right.

[Germ]

It's all placebo

[ryan]

"Placebo - Hang on to your IQ"

[ujay]

/\ /\ /\

UJ

[shakey_snake]

Originally posted by sgtfuzzbubble99
I'd be willing to bet that Atmo's right... MMJB is probably still performing some sort of equalization even though the EQ might be set to flat. As far as I know, Winamp does absolutely nothing to the sound as long as the EQ is set to flat and there aren't any DSP plugins running. If so, then Winamp is reproducing the music exactly as it was encoded. If MMJB is sounding different while playing the same file, then it's doing something screwy. And remember... what might sound better to you might sound worse to someone else. If you say you got close to MMJB's sound with Winamp by turning the bass and treble all the way up, then that would sound like crap to me. Overly excessive bass and treble, in my opinion, makes my music sound like shit. If you like to hear your music clip, then that's your choice. Don't say something sounds better when it's your opinion.

I love midrange.

[mark]

i usually boost bass and LOWER the last bar of treble.

[nybergh]

I know that at least iTunes
sounds way better than Winamp (clearer sound), becouse of that I've been using Izotope Ozone for Winamp for some time. But still iTunes is nowhere near Winamp when it comes to the other features and format support, and my speakers ain't that good anyway.

I'm not gonna check with Pukebox becouse it is maybe ever more bloated than WiMP, but it would be no surprise if it really sounds better.

[gaekwad2]

What sarge said.

A player shouldn't alter the sound by default.
There are more than enough plugins to "enhance" it.

If you ever get decent gear you'll realize that flat is best.

[zootm]

Gaekwad is right - sound "enhancements" are generally just compensating for low-quality sound gear. Not that that's a bad thing.

On the other hand, try the Enhancer plugin - it made my shitty speakers (well, they're really designed for movies, not music) sound good

[ujay]

Make sure you are listening at the same volume when you compare.
I think MMJB uses wave output rather than Direct sound and this will generally be louder. [edit] for the same mixer settings [/edit]
There is a well known acoustic effect which decreases the ears sensitivity to extreme frequencies at lower volumes, concentrating on the mid range. Many HiFi amps have a 'loudness' button to compensate.

UJ

[nybergh]

Originally posted by gaekwad2
What sarge said.

A player shouldn't alter the sound by default.
There are more than enough plugins to "enhance" it.

If you ever get decent gear you'll realize that flat is best.

My is system decent for a computer system, but not decent enough. with more subtle and non-aggressive settings Izotope Ozone makes my system sound more like a good system, i must say that I in this case believe in the propaganda of the plugin makers, all that analog modeling and stuff as the DSP has unusually high cpu usage. And usually i'm quite critical, Dolby Headphone is another of the very few enhancing DSPs i like, and I use it only for movies with real 5.1 sound if I have to watch them at night.

if i happen to listen to music trough a good system, like the one of my dad's car or the hifi-set in our living room, I off cource prefer to not modify the sound in any way.

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

You sound miffed, seargeant. And you don't even know if he's right.

There is no right or wrong when it comes to opinions. That was my whole point.

[Phyltre]

And you know it's strictly opinion because?

If there were no such thing as "better-sounding" audio, nobody would need a bitrate higher than 128. Therefore there's more than opinion involved in saying how music sounds.

[gaekwad2]

Except hardly anybody prefers the sound of low bitrate files.

[Phyltre]

That's my point, it's not all opinon, there are absolute or at least relative values that define how good music sounds.

[nybergh]

The best friend of one of my friends prefer "surround sound" in this way:
mono sound from 5 speakers around the room.

[Commasterharry]

Originally posted by nybergh
The best friend of one of my friends prefer "surround sound" in this way:
mono sound from 5 speakers around the room.

lol.

yea i guess musicmatch did something with the quality, but whatever they did, it sounds rich as hell, and nowhere near muffled or overdone. they must have been sure of the quality of their enhancement if they dared to enhance by default. anyone know what they have done? anyone who's real familiar with mmjb, cuz i just use it for converting and ripping cds

[nybergh]

Don't rip pukebox. Really. I don't remember what mp3-encoder it uses, it's either fraunhofer or the even crappier xing encoder (ech, just checked from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicmatch_Jukebox, it's it's using Xing. yuck). Use either CDex or EAC with LAME. And with LAME you should use the fantastic --alt-preset standard quality setting that is tuned for transparent quality.

If you manage to get Winamp Pro in some way (what I naturally mean is that you should tell your mom and dad to buy it as a xmas present ), you'll find that Winamp is a very cool LAME-mp3 ripper, much easier to use for noobs than CDex or EAC. And Winamp aslo has support for the fancy gracenote cddb which is the same as pukebox uses, so you'll find the right info for your cd's.

[gaekwad2]

Wikipedia is wrong, it's using fhg (at least encspot says so).

Maybe the first versions used Xing (it was bought by Real, Realplayer now uses an improved Xing encoder).

But the fhg encoder it uses is actually worse than xing, at least in vbr mode.

story time:
When I was a little n00b I used Musicmatch to rip CDs. Since "128kbps are CD quality" I thought I'd use 160 to be safe.
I could clearly hear the difference between those rips and the originals.

[Commasterharry]

nybergh ur saying mmjb's encoder sux0r?

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

And you know it's strictly opinion because?

If there were no such thing as "better-sounding" audio, nobody would need a bitrate higher than 128. Therefore there's more than opinion involved in saying how music sounds.

Did you read my first post in this thread? For the same exact file, I can say that I like how it sounds with my EQ settings, but you might think my EQ settings suck. That's your opinion, and it has nothing to do with the file in question. The fact that one player "enhances" the sound of audio files while another player plays the file exactly as it's encoded doesn't mean that one sounds better than the other. It's your personal opinion as to which sounds better to you. That's what pisses me off... people pushing their opinions off as fact.

[Phyltre]

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just saying that you can't immediately discount someone's analysis of how music sounds as opinion. Because if you do, you have no grounds whatsoever to differentiate between bitrates--which is an accepted logical practice, initiated by people who used what were their own opinions to determine how clearly the music sounded when played from its encoding.

I agree, MMJB should play the music flat by default unless it says otherwise. But you sounded upset at Commasterharry for giving his analysis of the clarity of sound from different players--upset, instead of looking into it to see if you could tell the difference. Yes, it is largely opinion,(largely due to the fact that we do not really understand how and why music sounds "good" [apart from harmonics]) but discarding anyone's word as useless just makes it sound like you're upset someone thinks something else sounds better than Winamp. I generally read pretty carefully before I respond to something.

[whiteflip]

Perhaps Musicmatch is using WaveOut and Winamp is using Direct Sound by default. Waveout always seems louder for some reason.

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

I don't have a problem with people stating their opinions or points of view. That's fine. What I have a problem with is what I said in my last post...

[DJ Shaji]

Originally posted by Commasterharry

.......... cuz i just use it for converting and ripping cds .............

I thought MMJB was shareware or something - about $29.95 for the "full" version...........

[Commasterharry]

eh still does the job

[Psythik]

Use Audiograbber instead. Supports multiple codecs (for example, just copy "lame_enc.dll" from the Winamp directory to the Audiograbber one if you want to rip using LAME), as well as ABR, VBR, and all that fun stuff. Only rips to mp3 and wav though, but it gets the job done.

[gaekwad2]

EAC bundle, rips and encodes to mp3, ogg vorbis, musepack, aac, speex, flac and monkey's audio (and wav of course).

I'll leave pimping CDex to nybergh.

[nybergh]

Originally posted by gaekwad2

I'll leave pimping CDex to nybergh.

if EAC feels hard to configure, use CDex

It's a shame that CDex hasn't been updated for a long time