Freesound Forums

Hello,

I've noticed that the sound quality is noticeably decreased while previewing a sound.
Steps to reproduce:

1. Open Freesound;
2. Search for a sound, no matter what it is;
3. Preview the sound, and remember how it sounds;
4. Download the sound, and see how the quality has been noticeably increased while you play the downloaded version.
5. Play again the preview version and compare the quality. You'll see what I mean.

Hi there

Please see this thread for an answer to your question...

https://freesound.org/forum/bug-reports-errors-and-feature-requests/42667/

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

So what I don't understand is:

1. Is this browser-based, or it's made this way to save bandwidth on Freesound servers, or it's both, or...?
2. Is this going to change in the near future? I would really love to hear the original sound before downloading it, cause this way I don't really realize if the sound i'm about to download is really what I need in terms of quality.
3. I'm currently using Brave. Do you think it will help if I try Edge, Firefox or whatever else?

Thanks.

It's to save bandwidth

https://freesound.org/help/faq/#i-hear-a-high-pitched-squeaking-in-the-audio-preview-what-is-that

You could try a different browser, but it's unlikely it'll have a drastic effect. More testing on that topic needs to be done.

This could change in the future. The current transcoding was developed around 10 years ago, so it can definitely be improved, but it's something that needs to be done carefully.

Using a different browser definitely makes a difference for whatever reason. I use Brave as well and have bad sounding previews compared to when I use, for example, Safari. It is apparently any Chrome-based browser that will have this problem.

Thanks for confirming that Tim