MP3, OGG and AAC audio quality and Hertz under the microscope

After reviewing various information sources including recording forums, I came to some golden conclusions regarding sound quality. Not everyone knows about this and many people think wrongly! Sometimes marketing and advertising can make people think differently.

1. Each sound re-encoding does not improve the quality, it can only worsen. If you re-encode the sound from 128kbit to 320kbit, it will become worse.

2. Listening to music with a discredit frequency above 44100khz does not make any sense , only a few people with gifted innate hearing will be able to hear a minimal sound difference when compared with 48k or 96k. Or maybe I’m like that??? Don’t even think, you are definitely not like that, because this is a rare natural deviation. But why then are such frequencies popular? The original sound is recorded at a frequency of 96k or higher, so that it does not become worse when re-recorded. The fact is that when analog dubbing from 96k, the sound will have a frequency that is 2 times lower than 48k. However, CD-quality 44k listening will be enough to give our ears the best sound quality possible.

3. Is the AAC format better quality than MP3 or OGG? This is not true, the truth is that no one format is better than the other!

- if you need low bitrate and traffic, then AAC is the 100% winner , the best sound quality at bitrates from 32kbit to 96kbit

- at a bitrate of 128kbit and above, all formats have approximately the same quality, but the winner will be MP3 - due to its popularity and support

- super sound quality is achieved at bitrates from 192kbit, at such bitrates OGG sounds a little better, but the difference is minimal

Conclusion and recommendations

1. Try not to re-encode audio unnecessarily. Myradio24 does not transcode files if the bitrate of the downloaded file matches the required one.

2. Forget that files with frequencies above 44100khz sound better. This is wrong.

3. If you require low bitrate audio from 32kbit to 96kbit, for example, to listen to radio on your phone over the Internet, choose only the AAC format, because MP3 with such a bitrate will sound terrible.

4. Otherwise, use MP3. MP3 files with 128kbit provide a compromise solution with good sound, but we will get excellent sound at 196kbit. Bit rates even higher, such as 256kbit or 320kbit, provide minimal sound improvement that can only be heard with expensive, high-quality speakers or headphones. This means that most listeners will still not be able to enjoy this quality.

5. The OGG format, although free, is not of great value for radio broadcasting. We do not recommend using this format.

Bottom line: To listen to the radio on a PC, broadcast in MP3 format 128kbit or 192kbit, gourmets can broadcast in 320kbit. For listening on mobile devices, to save traffic, we recommend an additional stream in AAC format with a frequency of 32 to 64 kbit, to choose from.

Interesting fact

The healthy human ear hears in the range of approximately 20Hz to 20,000Hz, depending on age.

According to Kotelnikov's theorem, in order to hear maximum frequencies, the original sound must have a frequency twice as high.

Thus, the original sound with a frequency of about 40000Hz is sufficient to transmit maximum quality.

Sound in CD quality is recorded at 44100Hz, which is 10% more than the human ear can hear.

By the way, over the years, we hear worse, children hear up to 20,000Hz, adults up to 19,000Hz, and older people up to 16,000Hz.