Freesound Forums

Just thought I would mention this, but I really wish the sound quality on this site was better, for a site made especially for sounds you would think it would serve that purpose to it's potential.

Don't get me wrong this is a great site and all but the sound quality really gets on my nerves sometimes lol maybe its just me cause i hate hearing my own high quality sounds being degraded, especially the little preview thumbnail playback before you actually click it, it's just terrible imo the "real" sound preview is better but still, it needs to be better, we need to go deeper! lol no this is not the time for memes

take soundcloud for example, great quality

(and yes I do understand they made it low quality to save bandwidth, but its nearly 2015! I think playing sounds back at high bitrates wont hurt anyone)

So are you talking specifically about the preview quality, or are you also talking about sound quality in general for users' uploads?

Headphaze wrote:
So are you talking specifically about the preview quality, or are you also talking about sound quality in general for users' uploads?

im only talking about the preview quality

Ok well it is like that for a reason.

Personally, if the original upload quality is decent, then degradation is minimal, and usually unnoticeable to untrained ears.

If you have used google image search you will see that when previewing an image in isolation it goes through 2 loading phases - one with a very low resolution and then the higher resolution afterwards. This can be viewed as the same principle, where brevity is considered when users are previewing many files in quick succession whose bandwidth is perhaps not good enough for the task. If it's lacking then it becomes a major grind for the user.

Ultimately, it's not about data storage and more about allowing a more fluid and streamlined search ability.

The thing about Soundcloud, it serves a different purpose. It's less about cycling through many sounds in one session, and more about listening to individual music tracks - the files are processed on their server for preview quality, but with less noticeable destruction. Therefore, having a massively reduced file-size is less important, because it's unnecessary.

With all that said, I actually do agree somewhat that the reduction in sound resolution could be less than in previous years, as domestic bandwidth has increased generally.

Headphaze wrote:
Ok well it is like that for a reason.

Personally, if the original upload quality is decent, then degradation is minimal, and usually unnoticeable to untrained ears.

If you have used google image search you will see that when previewing an image in isolation it goes through 2 loading phases - one with a very low resolution and then the higher resolution afterwards. This can be viewed as the same principle, where brevity is considered when users are previewing many files in quick succession whose bandwidth is perhaps not good enough for the task. If it's lacking then it becomes a major grind for the user.

Ultimately, it's not about data storage and more about allowing a more fluid and streamlined search ability.

The thing about Soundcloud, it serves a different purpose. It's less about cycling through many sounds in one session, and more about listening to individual music tracks - the files are processed on their server for preview quality, but with less noticeable destruction. Therefore, having a massively reduced file-size is less important, because it's unnecessary.

With all that said, I actually do agree somewhat that the reduction in sound resolution could be less than in previous years, as domestic bandwidth has increased generally.

I understand what you're getting at, I think it depends on what kind of sound you upload, I notice too that some of my sounds are pretty unnoticeable in sound quality and some are very noticeable, all are the same quality (technically speaking) , i think the less bassy the sound is the less noticeable it will be, or something that has to do with how the compression works, since im not an expert in this area im not exactly sure

You're absolutely right, it does depend on the precise sonic make-up of that audio file.

When you compress an audio file and reduce it's sample rate, you will get "artefacts" or aliasing, the severity of which may vary depending on the frequencies that are predominant in the wave; this has something to do with the 'Nyquist theorem'.

Bass heavy audio tend to generate more prominent artefacts because the wave generally has the greatest amplitude of all frequency content, therefore the aliasing is more distinguishable. These bass artefacts are characterised by 'squeaking', which is the only way I can describe it.

I do urge you to read more into aliasing and the Nyquist theorem because it's a fascinating subject; at least I think so

ah ok makes sense now thanks i will