There's more than one variable to take into account but pretty much yes, they will sound the same.
Regardless of anything else most people with most equipment would find it hard (impossible) to tell the difference between a CD and the mp3 at 320kbps.
http://web.archive.org/web/20131231013000/http://www.mp3sfinder.com/download.php?mp3=8ff29e9a4e1230fe7f2fcbf9ce25b15c/stay_the_night_benjamin_orr_hq_audio_320.mp3At 320K, as long as both were made from the same audio stream as a source, no. Much lower, there could be differences, depending on the content and encoder used (older v. newer Fraunhaufer(sp), or LAME). As high as 320K, either the MP3 format is good enough, or it's not and will glitch.Would an MP3 that was ripped from a CD down to 320 kbps sound worse than an MP3 that was bought online with the same bit-rate and from the same album? I'm thinking of buying an album in MP3 format online because I can't find it locally in stores and ordering the CD online will be much more expensive than because of shipping than just buying the album in MP3 format.
Either that's placebo, or it's been encoded lossy multiple times. If the latter, of course the quality will be worse. It's the same kind of effect on the audio stream as the noisy and blocky re-encoded JPEGs you see all the time. You want any lossy file to be created from the highest quality source you can get.It sounds BETTER than the average MP3. (Even @ 320k)
Would an MP3 that was ripped from a CD down to 320 kbps sound worse than an MP3 that was bought online with the same bit-rate and from the same album? I'm thinking of buying an album in MP3 format online because I can't find it locally in stores and ordering the CD online will be much more expensive than because of shipping than just buying the album in MP3 format.
There should be little difference. If I were going with a lossy format, though, I would go for AAC. It has better compression and generally comes out on top in most A/B tests at the various bitrates. Heck, even Vorbis has "better than MP3" quality.
The only reason people still use MP3s is because of the momentum behind them (similar reason why some people clung onto XVid and the old DivX stuff way past its prime... H.264 was a much better standard and x264 creamed them at any give bitrate).
Honestly, I'm not sure why we haven't gotten to the point of just distributing Flac everywhere. Where phones have upwards of 64gb of memory, 20mb vs 3mb doesn't make a hill of beans difference.
Why would I use 7x as much space (which eats into my finite storage and also takes longer to transfer), and a format not supported by some of my devices, to get no appreciable benefits? That is the reason.
lack of technical knowledge or simply not giving a crap.People who voluntarily choose MP3 over FLAC when they have the option are like people who choose to shoot photography in JPG instead of RAW. I just don't get it.
It's not 7x, for one thing, even keeping lossy and lossless copies (unless you ignore popular formats, and use only Opus). More like 4x, or maybe 5x. If you use something like use 320k MP3s, it might not even be 3x. 7x would necessitate 128k, which is usually not transparent for much music in MP3, to anybody. You could probably ABX a newish LAME encode at 128k in a car on the highway, with the right music.Why would I use 7x as much space (which eats into my finite storage and also takes longer to transfer), and a format not supported by some of my devices, to get no appreciable benefits? That is the reason.
It's not applicable at all. They don't do that. 44.1kHz/16-bit stereo is 44.1kHz/16-bit stereo is 44.1kHz/16-bit stereo. It must be converted to that before the encoding, and the quality of that conversion is going to be identical, whether it's going to MP3, AAC, FLAC, ALAC, or a CD.The difference in audio quality will be likely negligible. The MP3s produced by the vendor may even be better in quality, because they have the option of using audio that is closer to the original source (i.e. they can skip over the step of converting the audio for CD). But again, this is probably a trivial difference.
That would be AAC from iTunes. TMK, that's the only case where there's usually any difference, and it's usually just a normalization pass, similar to using ReplayGain.The difference you might be able to notice would be that the two formats may have been mastered separately. As a result, there may be slight differences intended to make the audio sound better in the different formats. Realistically, I wouldn't worry about it.
MP3s properly encoded with LAME is audibly transparent at 192kbps, much less 320kbps. Lossy audio compression has come a loooooooooong way even for the archaic MP3 format since the early 2000s despite the claims contrary by the placebophile crowd.
That's a silly reason because it's about future proofing and creating a reference quality backup of your purchase. You don't buy lossless files for compatibility. You buy lossless so that you have the ability to convert to whatever future lossy codec is the current favorite with zero loss of quality.
It's not 7x, for one thing, even keeping lossy and lossless copies (unless you ignore popular formats, and use only Opus). More like 4x, or maybe 5x.
It's not applicable at all. They don't do that. 44.1kHz/16-bit stereo is 44.1kHz/16-bit stereo is 44.1kHz/16-bit stereo. It must be converted to that before the encoding, and the quality of that conversion is going to be identical, whether it's going to MP3, AAC, FLAC, ALAC, or a CD.
The only way to get reasonably closer is to use the same rate and depth as the master itself. HD tracks at 96kHz or 192kHz are often archival quality copies. Lossy at such high data rates makes little sense. Most of the use they may have had in the past has been usurped by DACs upsampling and oversampling, except for the case of using a lot of DSP, to minimize errors (16-bit is enough for human hearing, but not by much).
That would be AAC from iTunes. TMK, that's the only case where there's usually any difference, and it's usually just a normalization pass, similar to using ReplayGain.