Hi Snark!
Quote:
Originally posted by Snarkridden
I presume you mean since quality is NOW a trading factor, that some unscrupulous individuals will be decoding & re-encoding at a false higher bit rate?
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Yep, that is unfortunately the case. It is easy enough to do an arbitrary MP3-WAV->MP3 conversion with MusicMatch, and then there are special converter programs that make the job even easier. Some 'mp3 doctors' are genuinely ignorant of the technical aspects - they just think that this new wonder conversion program performs some digital magic to their 128 kbs files so that they end up being fine 256 kbs files - and they may honestly not be able to tell the difference with their crappy PC speakers. Then there are the greedy traders who know what they are doing but do it anyway to 'manufacture' more acceptable trading material in hope of getting some genuine quality in return.
Quote:
Originally posted by Snarkridden
That should be easy to spot, by doing a FFR analysis of the spectrum, a genuine original will have the full spread, whereas the re-encoded one will be limited to the spectrum signiture of the original encoder.
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It surely is possible to spot a faked high-bitrate mp3
if you have the original CD or a quality rip of it as a reference, high-quality audio gear and good ears to do comparision tests, spectrum analysis tools and the expertise to use them and so on... but what's the point of trading if you already have the original or a good rip of it? Forged bitrates are like forged money... specialists may be able to spot the difference easily but normal users watch just the simple bitrate numbers and act accordingly - knowingly or unknowingly polluting the shared mp3 pool with faked quality. On anonymous filetrading networks like Gnutella and AG the quality problem is even worse as you lose the advantage of knowing reliable sources for quality rips.
- tg
