Well written, everything you said is true (of course)!
Usually, I like to provide the highest bitrate I'm able to find and I rarely listen to what I reupload for people who requested it (simply because of lack of time or interest), so when there are low bitrate and high bitrate rips of the same requested album/release circulating around - I grab and share a higher bitrate one, preferably if it originates from original (such as proper Scene rips or people's personal rips) and not web stream rip (such as youtube for example), even tho I'm aware the sound doesn't really have that much to do with bitrate itself.
HQ is HQ, but just because something is HQ/high bitrate doesn't mean it's going to have good sound. Sound depends on many factors such as:
- the recording process: is it some bedroom band recorded by someone who doesn't really know much about what they are doing, is it a garage demo rehearsal or an audio recording of a live concert, or is the album properly recorded in a studio and had professionals working on digitization.
- the format of original: Is it a vinyl, tape or a CD (or even a floppy disk)? Professionally released CD should usually have highest quality sound on it, and with tapes - it really depends. Dubbed tape is of much lower quality than pro tape. This depends on the label who released it too, I noticed nowadays there are new BM labels releasing tapes who's owners don't really know they are downgrading the original quality while recording material onto a tape.
- finally, final sound you hear depends also on encoding, software used while digitizing, codec, the actual lossy or lossless format or bitrate.... also on equipment you're listening it through such as do you have some cheap headphones, listening through a laptop or mobile phone speakers or good quality strereo speakers etc. Sound you get in a way also depends on the listener, it's subjective. Haha obviously if you're half-deaf or have hearing problems, sound you hear isn't the same as the sound someone else hears. Obviously.
Basically, I noticed many people here on metalarea especially have a hard on for lossy CBR320 and don't like VBR/V0 even though I've noticed VBR rips very often outperform 320 in sound.
I like to share lossless @ flac when I'm able to find it, simply because I have a feeling that times are changing and very soon HDDs will be dirt cheap so people will more and more start to prefer flac over 320. But I personally rarely even keep flac rips on my HDD, because it's simply not needed for me. Lossless is good if you're going to edit the rip, or record it onto a tape, or CD for a car, or if you have some fancy expensive equipment for listening music. I don't have some super fancy equipment for listening music so there is barely any difference in sound between an album in lossless or lossy. I still like CBR192 and V0, because those rips often sound more than good enough (but the sound depends on many factors, which I've mentioned above).
Finally, one more thing I'd like to add is about spectrogram. Yeah, spectra does show the bitrate and encoding but it doesn't show the final sound of release. And there are so many rips circulating around that are transcodes, but that's not all - many of releases on metalarea and other music sharing websites that we consider to be 320 are actually proper 192 or 256/cut at 18-20kHz frequency (especially tapes), while also many 192 or 256 are actually stream rips upconverted from lower bitrate such as 128...
So, for getting the best possible quality - it's best to buy the actual original/physical release. Nothing ever compares to that, and no digitization can replace owning original.Of course, with so many underground bands existing, with so much music, so many albums - it's not possible to have everything as originals. It's expensive, and it takes room/space to store all those tapes and albums. So, if one's going to have digital music - at the end it comes down to personal taste, attitudes, opinions and needs. For me - I appreciate when a rip is made out of original source without unnecessary converting and transcoding, I appreciate when there are scans too, I love scans.
The actual bitrate, such as is it 192 or 256 or 320, is less important.
