Sound f/x MP3 files.....are they really that bad?

Not my dream environment (by along shot) but a great place to learn, to spark an interest, to let our young people see/feel the possibilities.
I volunteered to help because I have skills in the area. They are a school with a strong music and drama department with one facility manager/technician who needs help (his own words) so why would a school not teach students to do stuff even if it is out of normal school hours.

I value all of your comments so please don't think I am being argumentative in my reply. Text does not convey feeling of the spoken word.

You all make good points in your posts so thankyou for spending the time to reply.
In the end I will play the game because there is not another option if I want to be involved with my daughters school and contribute to their community.

Regards
Geoff

So much for the "dream environment" ;) .

If you're up against a teacher or school employee I suspect he's developed his work flow and choices based on whatever it's taken to get a show up and open, and once he found something that worked with minimal re-learning or new training, he's stuck with it because there is no need to change.

Exposing students to the Ye Better Wayz is a good thing but perhaps rather than offering up your QLab rig as the show is in tech, instead you can offer a class-time demo for the students (which he will observe). This puts your offer outside the pressure of the show environment and may eventually give the benefits you are hoping for. The best way to get someone to change is for them to think it's their idea. :D
 
The difference can be glaring, or not, depending on the quality of the file and the playback system. The biggest flaw in asking for .wav is that many or most people will take their lossy format files and convert to .wav to satisfy the request, which is just a turd polishing exercise.

Yes, it depends highly on the MP# file settings when it was created. You can't undo awful. Start with a good high bit rate low compression MP3 file setting and it is difficult to tell with out a direct A/B comparison, but a low bit rate highly compressed audio file sound noticeably awful (IMHO). Think: The difference between listening to FM radio, then re-listening immediately to a CD version of the same song.

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Aaron -- exactly. It ain't the format, it is the history. Like the example that pops up on CFH and similar sites all the time; client is asked for an EPS document (aka scaleable) and sends the same over-compressed JPEG saved as a AI file. Anyone who hands me an mp3, I have no trust that they actually have the same music in clean 44.1 somewhere.

My experience with endless dance shows, usually student groups from the local university, was mp3's that had gone through fifty generations. Not that they were downloaded, but that they were "saved" from iTunes, spliced with another track, had the bass kicked up because they couldn't hear it on the battered boom box they were using for rehearsal, sent to another dancer for approval, who brought it into iTunes and then "saved" it again -- recompressing each time. By the time the track hit our theater it sounded like the vocalist was gargling marbles from the bottom of a tin can.
 
I'll say this about dance groups -- my favorite sound system demonstration ever was pulling the director aside during rehearsal and telling her the track sounded off. Like, painfully off. It was a Florence + The Machine song. I happened to have that same track on my phone. Played it for her off of my phone after rehearsal and did an A/B test. Both files were mp3's of course but my phone played a clean track while the track she handed us was distorted to the point of being ear-drum piercing.

After that one little side by side test she let the venue or an outside sound designer handle all her audio. Never tried to leave the audio to chance ever again...

Of course, fast forward 2 years and she was doing a summer show of Peter Pan. Convinced herself that flying was necessary and paid ZFX like $7500 to do 3 nights of shows. They blew their wad on the flying effects so the rest of the scenery was painted cardboard and plastic kids playground equipment from Menards. Most of the kids didn't know their lines and less than 100 people showed up because it was an indoor show in the middle of the summer. Forest for trees --- forest for the trees...
 
Aaron -- exactly. It ain't the format, it is the history. Like the example that pops up on CFH and similar sites all the time; client is asked for an EPS document (aka scaleable) and sends the same over-compressed JPEG saved as a AI file. Anyone who hands me an mp3, I have no trust that they actually have the same music in clean 44.1 somewhere.

My experience with endless dance shows, usually student groups from the local university, was mp3's that had gone through fifty generations. Not that they were downloaded, but that they were "saved" from iTunes, spliced with another track, had the bass kicked up because they couldn't hear it on the battered boom box they were using for rehearsal, sent to another dancer for approval, who brought it into iTunes and then "saved" it again -- recompressing each time. By the time the track hit our theater it sounded like the vocalist was gargling marbles from the bottom of a tin can.
@nomuse and @MNicolai Don't you love it when they sum their stereo tracks to mono then wonder why the vocals and bass are missing???
Too sad, too funny. Too bad. Tough luck.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
However, there's this one audio cue program called MultiPlay. MultiPlay is supposed to be a poor man's QLab, and it runs on Windows. It absolutely hates mp3s.

I wrote MultiPlay back in the days of Windows XP and it relied on audio playback code that didn't work well at all on Windows 7 onwards. The workaround was to use wav files as I discontinued development on MultiPlay back in 2013.

The good news is that MultiPlay version 3 is in the works and it uses a completely different playback method so won't have the mp3 issues. :)
 
When using certain playback applications such as Multiplay, I will only use 16 bit PCM *.WAV and won't use MP3 format because I've had issues with playback on certain Windows machines. This is not to say MP3 won't work, it's just my own brute force approach and what I find works for me. Quite honestly I do the same with SFX Deluxe and QLab. With MultiPlay I haven't had the luxury of time when the error occurs to diagnose but I suspect this is a performance / decoding related issue. Or maybe codec related (restarting MultiPlay can help but by then it's too late).

Like Aaron mentioned above, when doing certain kinds of productions - rather than just accepting varying MP3s from individuals on the spot, where possible I tend to prefer to proactively ask folks for their files ahead of time. At least then I have a chance to compile a playlist that is pre-processed for loudness and potentially EQ (and to Ron's point mono/stereo issues). I recently have been liking software by Grimm Audio called "LevelOne", the software is a little unusual but IMHO very helpful for batch-normalizing music material for loudness from different sources. Quite helpful for certain types of productions.

With respect to whether MP3 can be heard through a PA system, I'd say it depends on (maybe) the test conditions and more so how familiar you are with the material. Never discount the power of comparative listening. I saw a interesting demonstration one time of a recording of a pair of castanets encoded in PCM and then at various MP3 rates. When in an environment and situation where it was possible to A/B these different recordings, it was immediately apparent the difference between 44kHz 24 bit or 16 bit PCM and MP3, especially standard 44kHz MP3 below 128kbps. The transient response of the click of the castanet hit gave it away. "In situation" as such, I doubt many people could peg 128kbps straight on without comparative listening - unless they were so intimately familiar with the material. My $0.02
 
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I don't have any $700K sound systems :)-), but on the ones I do have, I have A/B compared my own rips off CD, using Exact Audio Copy in errorless mode, at 320kb/s CBR Joint Stereo, and I can't tell the difference.

I used to use non-Joint, but the error of my ways was corrected. :)

One thing: earlier versions of QLab used a different Mac library, that puked on MP3s, playing the first minute or 2 and then going silent; not even a wafeform display. For that environment, you *had* to bring WAV or AIFF files, even if they were just conversions from MP3.
 

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