Freesound Forums

I was wondering if the Forum could request to have all future sound uploads to be in the WMA or MP3 128kbs format ?

Reason for this is that I've been converting my entire sound collection from Wav to Wma Stereo 128KBs and the quality in sound is excellent.

I had a folder that had 34 MB worth of Mono sounds and once converted to Wma Stereo 128KBs that folder was now around 4 Mbs.

The sounds though where still Mono but the quality was exactly the same.

Alot of the sound files here that are uploaded in wav can save the site space if it where to be converted to Wma or Mp3 128KBs and still retain a good quality in sound.

I converted a 9.54 MB stereo Wav file to a Wma 128KBs stereo file and it and the new file was only 923 KBs.

Also the higher 128KBs MP3 or Wma format would mean better quality in the sounds uploaded because there are a lot of really interesting sounds but they all uploaded with a low compression,making them sound messed up.

Full format wav aiff or flac is the way to go. Even though you may not hear it MP3 compression does effect the sound quite a bit, even at 128kbps. Anyone using these sounds and looking for professional resulting projects will want to start with full format files not mp3's or WMA's.

If it does effect the sound but you won't hear it then why use wav or the higher format sound if you can't tell the difference ?

This does make me a bit curious.

When I said "you" i meant YOU (adamstrange). Most all audio professionals agree that yes you can hear a difference. It may not be prevalent to the casual listener but to someone with a trained ear it is blatantly obvious. This is why freesound requests uploads in a full format file type.

Yea.. I prefer wav. or the equivilant.. mp3s suck ass quality wise. (and at 128kbps?.. omg.. can u say "artifacts"

true that!!!! Even at 320kbps mp3's contain lots of audible artifacts.

Also, alot of audio programs don't accept mp3s as samples.

WAV is a good standard compatible with many programs,
why complicate things man, hock:

Does someone work for microsoft?

If size is an issue for you then the lossless FLAC would be the answer surely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flac

There is way too many legal strings attached with MP3 and even moreso WMA. Nothing can stop either patent owner to simply revoke the privilege of being able to decode those formats, or cease to license encoders/decoders in the future. Plus the distinct possibility that these formats will get repeatedly superceeded by Version X and will have to undergo another conversion of some kind into another lossy format. After a handful of these iterations the file is reduced to hot digital ass-piss. (As some have said already, low bitrates start out as hot digital ass-piss)

I'm aware that MS and IBM collaborated to make the PC format of LPCM, but it is hardly a controllable codec in the same way that proprietary data decompression routines require.

The beauty of WAV is raw PCM audio data with 44bytes in front; Very simple. It is the most likely format to be playable decades from now. Universally, those who care primarily about quality, the size of the file is a non-issue.

I think NoiseCollector might be onto something.

One major problem with compressed formats [this includes visual formats like JPEG as opposed to RAW etc] is that they cannot be manipulated to the same extent. For example, if you want to time stretch an audio file the uncompressed version will tolerate more abuse. As a lot of freesound files are used by people wishing to use such manipulations then uncompressed files are preferable. MP3 files are ok for certain things and there is a place for them here but I see no point in restricting uploaders to one format or another.

Try a very narrow bandpass on an mp3 file, you'll hear digital bleeps and cuts and ass-piss. This shows data for that particular frequency is lost forever on the mp3. If you do the same to a lossless file (compressed or not), you will get a much cleaner result (save for any processing prior, like compressing and/or limiting of the signal). Since sounds on freesound are meant for anybody to experiment and twist and process, you will have to use a relative high quality soundilfe to begin with. Anything compressed lossy is both relative and absolute low quality, therefor unsuitable for any serious audio work.
Now fully finished songs, released under say cc-by-nd can be mp3d just fine, they don't need any further processing or recompression. Those can be uploaded to archive.org or any music sharing site so we can enjoy the results of people's freesound-torture-twisting-timestretch-equalize works.

So wooden planks, bare and clean and large so you can cut and nail and paint them to become the final shed.

I just purchased an Olympus DS-40 for peanuts and will be testing it as soon as the snail mail gets here. My ears are shot apparently and I can't hear anything over 15k so I am being less critical on the spec sheets of gear I drool over.

I just thought the question was a bit weird, asking everyone to use WMA. I tried to add a poll to my other post and there are 4 paragraphs missing (must be a limit on text count in forum posts and I am a wordwhore). I won't cross post, and I already know what the fully hearing capable and those without gear budget disease will say but I am curious to know what the average person thinks, so check out the other post.

PS

I would love the MS folks to do a commercial where the PC guy bludgeons the Mac kid with a ball peen hammer as he asks how many macs can be bought at a computer show for $200, that would be funny.

MP3/WMA as a forum standard would make all files useless in a professional environment so this suggestion is a bad one.

I agree that mp3 isn't good standard, the better would be WAV 16 bit standard because of its compability and high quality.

Obviously standardising on either WMA or MP3 would be insane, but do people think that some sort of standardisation is desirable? Perhaps not on one specific format, but perhaps we should have a single uncompressed lossless format, a single compressed lossless format and a single lossy format?

Why? It only excludes people who prefer the other formats.

We like treating our uploaders better than our downloaders: there's few of the former and PLENTY of the latter.

- Bram

I hate the word "standardising",
this is a contradiction with the word "freedom" and "free"...

We cannot choose only one codec to solve the problem.
Each compression codecS has advantage and disadvantage that depend
of the content of the current sound.
And there will be always hardware/freeware/software that
are will not supporting the sound you really need.
So you will have to convert it and edit it anyway.

I see your points. It's just there are a lot of audio formats out there - I can understand wanting to give uploaders a selection, but if a sound was uploaded in a really obscure format it would inconvenience a lot of downloaders.

Having said that, if an uploader has some content in obscure format X, and they aren't bothered to or don't have the tools to convert to a less obscure format - having them upload it in X is infinitely more useful than not having them upload it at all. Somebody could always re-upload ("remix" it in another format anyway (even if X was lossy, re-uploading it in wav doesn't reduce the quality in itself).

So I guess the priority should be to encourage uploaders to upload sounds more than anything else, and not "standardising" would be in line with that.