a Tribute to Jochen Hippel - OUT NOW !!!

[TNT]

I wonder that everbody's offering mp3 tracks always in 320 kbps. Can someone tell me the advantage of a 320 kbps mp3 compared to a 256 kbps mp3? As far as I know there's no audible difference if the tune has 256 kbps or more, even compared to a wave file. And is there anyone who can recommend a wave to flac program?

Anyway, thanks for your work! My favorites from Hippel are Training 1 from Chambers of Shalion, Ingame 4 from Lethal XCess, Options from Lethal XCess and I also like Ingame 6 of Wings of Death. Maybe someone will remix these tracks in future.

[Dr.Future]

Maybe someone already has remixed them?

There's no advantage of a 320 kbps mp3 to a 256 kbps mp3. We did this just to make you wonder.
And we succeeded!

[pepak]

Thanks for the FLAC version. Downloading now...

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

I wonder that everbody's offering mp3 tracks always in 320 kbps. Can someone tell me the advantage of a 320 kbps mp3 compared to a 256 kbps mp3? As far as I know there's no audible difference if the tune has 256 kbps or more, even compared to a wave file. And is there anyone who can recommend a wave to flac program?

http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html (Windows)
http://tmkk.pv.land.to/xld/index_e.html (OS X)

I have to disagree about there being no difference between 320 and 256 kbps difference, though. Obviously, the less lossy compression you apply to the source material, the less distance you put between the target data and the original. Personally, I always download in FLAC where available, and use the highest VBR setting (-V0) if I want to take things with me on an MP3 player.

[SarahKreuz31]

I guess it depends on your Equipment. As for mine (Low Budget "Altec Lansing", "Vivanco" and companies like those) I`m fine with anything @ 190kbps (and higher) - and can`t hear any difference between 224 to 320 kbps too. Though a MP3 compressed with 128 kbps is surely something that doesn`t sound THAT good.

Somehow a lot of the Remixes on -www.ocremix.org- are crackling and not sounding well. Even with my Equip. Makes me wonder if they`re compressing an already compressed Tune again (from 256kbps -> 160kbps for example). I wish they would just upload it like over here on RKO or amigaremix.com - where the Musicians decides about the MP3-quality in the end.

edit; oh, yeah. To stay on topic: of course nothing`s wrong with this Tribute-Album. Sounds wonderful, great production.

[Liontamer]

Somehow a lot of the Remixes on -www.ocremix.org- are crackling and not sounding well. Even with my Equip. Makes me wonder if they`re compressing an already compressed Tune again (from 256kbps -> 160kbps for example).

Just addressing this quickly, we typically don't do that. I can think of maybe 4 instances where I've had to re-encode a 320kbps MP3, but we don't make it a policy or habit to create double lossy MP3s. We all agree that's silly. Back when OC ReMix started 12 years ago, broadband internet was the exception, not the norm, computers had a lot less storage space, and our bandwidth was expensive, so that's why our 6MB song size limit stayed in place for so long.

But with broadband regularly available and Bandcamp making higher quality files the new baseline, we've since changed OC ReMix's policy to make 192kbps the MINIMUM bitrate, and our albums have been released as both VBR1 MP3s and FLACs for the past few years.

Various studies (both casual/unscientific and more serious/double blind) have been conducted illustrating that people generally cannot tell the difference at 192kbps or above when comparing with high VBR, 256kbps or 320kbps files, which is why 192 is our new minimum. If there's any evidence to the contrary that's more than anecdotal, let me know.

In preparation of redoing our torrents later this year, we're actually going to be emailing all the mixers to get WAVs or higher quality MP3 encodings if they're available.

Also, thanks Sarah for tweeting at us, I would have missed A Tribute to Jochen Hippel without you! I appreciate it. I've added an entry for it on VGMdb: http://vgmdb.net/album/31220

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

It just struck me that I never reconsiddered the issue of minimum bitrate in the 11+ years gone by since RKO launched.

The original reason for choosing 128 kbps was as a balance between sound quality, storage capacity, and users bandwidth - modem use was still widespread back then.

Having had a quick think about it, I have now raised RKO's minimum bitrate to 192 kbps, effective immediately.

( For those interested in numbers: Of the last 172 tracks published on RKO since January 2011, only 24 have been below 192 kbps, with only 9 of those being encoded at 128 kbps. So it hasn't really been an issue as such in a long time. )

[tas]

Looking forward to hearing this - If it ever downloads on my temporary internet connection :-/

[Vosla]

Just downloaded and listen to it. Solid work so far.

@tas : Hey, long time, no see !