In music files, does the term bit rate have anything to do with the quality of the file?

Question

I have two music files that are exactly the same, however the bit rate on the first file is 124Kbps and the second file is 192Kbps. Both files sound different in quality, just need to know if there is a link between bit rate and quality. No bit rate definitions, i know wat it is.

Answer 1

Bitrate does effect the sound quality. Higher bitrate, higher quality (but bigger filesize).

Answer 2

It has EVERYTHING to do with the quality of the file (assuming it's been ripped from a CD), but the file type can make a difference too. MP3 at 192kbps will sound worse than AAC at 192kbps. In general, the higher the bitrate the better the sound quality.

I use 256 as a minimum, but preferably 320.

Answer 3

See first of all a higherbitrate provides better sound/visual quality and larger the size of the file is. For example you may notice that if an Mp3 music file recorded at 192bit rate would be larger than the same audio file that was recorded at 52 bit rate and the sound quality will be much bad! Real Audio files are compressed and recorded at low bit rates and that is the chief reason for it's sound quality to be poor!

Answer 4

Yes,it infact represents the quality of the audio in the file.
It tells you how many bits are used to represent that one second of that file.
Normally two typs of coding are used.CBR and VBR. CBR stands for Constant Bit Rate and VBR for Variable bit rate.
In CBR same number of bits are used to represent that second irrespective of the complexity of the music during that second.VBR is more sensible and uses more bits in case more number of instruments or frequencies are to be encoded in taht one second.Most encoders nowadays use VBR in professional encoding.However home users use CBR since it is default and there is always the risk that VBR encoded files might not play on some MP3 players

Answer 5

Yes, the bit rate matters, but so does the algorithm - for example Microsoft claim that their 64Kbps wma format has the same audio quality as a higher bitrate in MP3 format.

Answer 6

yes. but it really depends on the codec used. 124 sounds like it might be variable bit rate, as 128 is the nearest standard. Variable bitrates allow slight improvements in quality at lower bitrates. so 124 variable bit rate MAY be almost as good as 192 constant bitrate.

Answer 7

Larger bit rate in general gives a better quality.

Answer 8

Yes there is a difference in quality. Think if it in terms of pixels - 100 big pixels do not make as clear of a picture as 1000 smaller pixels. Same with bitrate.