Preferred Method for Myspace Music Posting

[Rolsen]

I am embarrassed to ask, but are there any secrets, tips or tricks for uploading the best mp3 representation of either a wav file or something straight from a cd?

I?m not that old, but I loath the computer after work hours, I buy and listen to CDs (!), and am not acquainted with the fine art of providing on-line fodder for digital voyeurism (ie Myspace). I am a retard when it comes to modern computer entertainment. Nevertheless, I?d like to post my songs on Myspace, and would rather get guidance from you folks than by some snot kid on another forum!

Thanks for putting up with me!

[Mr PC]

Let's see. I'm not an expert, but I did set up my band's Myspace page.

You need to establish a Myspace music account. Go to Myspace and look for a "Music" tab in the menu near the top. Once there, you can click "artist signup".

You fill out the forms and such. Then you need to root around within your account home page and find the "edit profile" link. Then you can add songs and such. I think there is a tab that says "manage songs". I think you need to convert your songs to MP3 format before you upload them. It is easy if you are patient enough, which can be a challenge.

Have fun-

PC

[Rolsen]

Thanks! I do have the account setup already, I'm just wondering if there are things I can do with a wav file (or other) prior to uploading it - I've heard pretty good sounding myspace mp3's and really cruddy sounding ones and I don't think it had to do with the original recording quality...

[NarxistDan]

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe you're asking about how to get better results converting your masters to MP3? I share your question. I feel like my MP3's are not up to snuff. This is a very relevant question. The field of mastering changed somewhat dramatically when the delivery format moved from vinyl to CD. Does the way mastering happens need to be rethought? Are there ME's mastering for MP3? Does Peak really make a better sounding MP3 than iTunes? Itunes at 192 definitely beats the LAME VBR algorithm, or at that's what my ears tell me. Has anyone done any comparisons of MP3 conversion methods?

The other important piece of the equation is the myspace player. It seems to do a tremendous amount of damage no matter how good your MP3 is. ReverbNation has a widget that seems to do less damage (still definitely fucks it up quite a bit though). If you hosted a flash player on a server of your own and embedded it into myspace you could ensure that the player wasn't further degrading your MP3s.

[metanoiastudios]

I seriously hate the myspace player. It's ruined every song I put on my page.

My 2 cents when it comes to uploading tracks to Myspace...at least what works best for me:

Roll off a little bit of the highs from your mix before converting to mp3. This helps the encoder a lot, and the clearer the conversion the better it'll sound on Myspace.

Save at the highest conversion rate (maximum quality as opposed to fast conversion) and 192kbps or HIGHER if you can.

Don't squash the music too much. Be sparing on compression and other dynamics processing, as this can cause the encoder to get "confused"

Hope that helps. I'm still trying to find the best way to get things to sound decent and not overly distorted...

[tomberdude]

Hey Paulo, nice to see another local on the TOMB! This is Robert from Ingsoc.

When you are bouncing/mixing down the original .wav file, the type of dithering is a very important factor in how the both the .wav and the converted .mp3 will turn out. You'll have to experiment with different types of dithering, as they each have a different reaction to the mix.
If you are unfamiliar with dithering and how it works, check out the wikipedia.

Also, the frequency response of each bit rate is different, which I'll get into in a second, but a very often neglected piece of information needs to be addressed. All frequencies above the specific frequency, which is determined by the bit rate, are cut by a brick-wall removal method, and not a slope method which is something like a low-pass filter- a gradual reduction in decibel level from the specific frequency to the highest frequency in the mix. The crude brickwall cut causes the "mp3 sound". That sound is the absence of frequencies digitally removed above the specific frequency, and the rounded off leftovers or "artifacts" in their place.

96kbps cuts @ 11kHz (more or less an equivalent of a 22.05kHz .wav- search "nyquist theorem"), 128kbps-224kbps all cut @ 16kHz AND FOLLOW THE SAME RESPONSE ALL THE WAY DOWN TO -55db before any variance between their responses, and 320kbps cuts @ roughly 16.5kHz. The response chart below (created by Bob Crites) shows you what I'm talking about, but all of them are actually @ the same decibel level as the 1st green line (roughly -3db). Bob graphed each response on a different decibel level solely so you could distinguish each line.


I've not done this myself, but if the .mp3 thing is a big enough deal to you, I suggest you make a separate mix that doesn't contain anything above 16kHz on each individual track down to -30db (don't just low-pass @ 16k) before you bounce to a .wav and convert to .mp3. That way when you encode your .mp3, you should have minimal, if any, audible artifacts, and after proper dithering/truncation your mix would by my logic sound the best it could sound in .mp3 format.

[chris harris]

jeez... you guys are making this waaay too complicated.

just make a good sounding mix, and convert it at as high of a rate as you can with a good encoder (LAME is a good one) and be done with it. The Myspace player is not messing up your songs. There are lots of things on Myspace that sound just fine. These people don't have any secrets. Their mixes just sound better than yours.

Good mixes are gonna sound much better on myspace than bad ones.

If your stuff sounds terrible compared to other stuff on MySpace, then it's YOU and not MySpace that is responsible. Try to make better sounding mixes and/or masters and stop worrying about jumping through hoops to "fix" your mixes for MySpace. I know plenty of people with great sounding releases on great labels who don't bother with doing any special mixes or masters specifically for MySpace. Their stuff sounds fine on MySpace because it sounds fine to begin with.

[NarxistDan]

The crude brickwall cut causes the "mp3 sound". That sound is the absence of frequencies digitally removed above the specific frequency, and the rounded off leftovers or "artifacts" in their place

That's what I'm talking about. Thank you for that post. When I have some time I'll do some listening with that in mind. That gives me a lot to try. It's really just the totally non-musical high end artifacts that I'm trying to deal with. Obviously when you're data compessing it you're going to lose fidelity, width, and depth and such, but a good mix comes still comes across. It's the high end artifacts that are just kind of a buzzkill.
There does seem to be dramatic variation in terms of how well this issue is dealt with in terms of online content. I'll try to link to some examples.

jeez... you guys are making this waaay too complicated.

just make a good sounding mix, and convert it at as high of a rate as you can with a good encoder (LAME is a good one) and be done with it. The Myspace player is not messing up your songs. There are lots of things on Myspace that sound just fine. These people don't have any secrets. Their mixes just sound better than yours.

Have you A/B'd LAME MP3s against higher bitrate CBR's? You might rethink your opinion.
Whether we like it or not there is a whole population out there who don't hear anything wrong with heavily data compressed audio and a lot of your mixes will be listened to after data compression.
Indeed, better mixes will obviously lead to better MP3s and better sound on the myspace player, but there are characteristics of the medium that we can do our best to work around sort of like an MP3 RIAA curve or something. I'll try some experiments with manual filtering and get back to you.

I also know plenty of people with great sounding releases on great labels who don't bother with doing any special mixes or masters specifically for MySpace. I'm not sure why that is. Not all great mixes sound great on myspace. Some really cool, quality, creative mixes sound really fucked up. http://www.myspace.com/tomwaits Especially "Alice". I'm sure "Smooth" or some other velveeta nonsense would survive the conversion just fine.


Correction: Smooth sounds extra horrible on Santana's myspace page.

[frankz]

I didn't seem to have a problem with my music. I used Peak to convert to mp3 files.
Under Save As chose the mp3 choice, there's an option bubble, set quality at Best and chose either 320 or 256 depending on how long my song was. There's a limit on file size on the myspace page. Listening over my studio system, NS10's and a subwoofer, I can hear a difference but it didn't sound "bad". I've received good comments so far.

I have noticed a difference when using itunes to convert down to mp3, I think Peak does a better job, but even with itunes it still isn't crappy sounding. I still work on an old mirror door G4 so I have an old free plug in called Inspector that gives me a rough idea of the frequency structure on my tunes and I've been using the NS10s for almost 20 years so I've become pretty used to what things are going to sound like out of the studio.

Take a listen if you want, maybe my ears are so bad after all these years I can't tell what sound good or crappy anymore.
www.myspace.com/frankzincavage

[@?,*???&?]

Just make sure your music is unmastered, of course!

[curtiswyant]

This may only be a rumor, but I've heard it's better to encode at 128kps (or whatever final rate Myspace uses) so your file goes through less encoding by Myspace. ???

[thieves]

my rule of thumb was to try to upload as high a bitrate as i could before hitting myspace's file size limit. i'm not sure what the limit is, but as far as i can tell it's around 10 MB. So on a shorter song, you could easily encode at 320 kbps CBR and be ok. Longer songs are trickier. As far as I understand it, myspace is doing some sort of trancoding (re-encoding your already encoded tracks), so starting at the highest possible fidelity is best. it's like every song on myspace is a photocopy of a photocopy. you just have to make sure yours is as high quality you can get and hope for the best when you give it to them.

[tomberdude]

This may only be a rumor, but I've heard it's better to encode at 128kps (or whatever final rate Myspace uses) so your file goes through less encoding by Myspace. ???

I was going to make mention of this but couldn't find anything on the Myspace support pages, or in the upload pages, but I do remember that Myspace used to only allow 128kbps mp3s. I also remember the upload pages and support pages confirming why they only allowed 128kbps.

Don't hold me to this, but I have it in my head that when Fox bought Myspace, Post magazine said something about an updating of the player code to allow higher bit rate mp3s, but currently had an in between solution in place until they worked out the bugs... I bet that is what thieves is talking about. I'm guessing that they just convert everything up or down to 128kbps. Less conversion=less loss...

However, it's an mp3. It's a flawed format. The average listener normally doesn't know a difference between the mediums. Even then, I feel comfortable stating that most people don't care about how an mp3 sounds, they just want to be able to hear the song. The mp3 industry thrives off of that very concept.

[TheForgotten]

After reading the thread title and knowing a bit about the frequenters of the TOMB, I fully expected the first reply to read "Don't" .

[Evilspidey]

From what I understand now, Myspace converts your mp3 to 96kbps. Haven't tried uploading at 96k, but I'll take a second and test it though.

- spidey