Weeklybeats is a 52 week long music project in which artists compose and publicly release 1 song a week for the entire year.
Starting January 1st 2024 GMT each participant will have one week to upload one finished composition. Any style of music or selection of instruments are welcomed and encouraged.
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so I've noticed that the quality of mp3's played natively on my PC vs through the browser (I've tested ie, ff, chrome) always seems diminished through the browser.
so much so - that upon hearing them through the browser after uploading to weeklybeats i've oft been inclined to remove, remaster and reupload them so they sound better (maybe a good thing)
can anyone comment on the loss of audio quality?
does wb.com transcode after upload? is it a browser format thing?
I imagine it makes them 128kbs, but I dunno really. 
I'm under the impression that whatever you upload is whatever gets streamed, the limit is filesize rather than duration or bitrate. The only thing I can think of the explains the phenomenon is that if you play the mp3 in your media player (Winamp, iTunes, Media Player, etc) there is LIKELY to be some EQ colouring performed by the software, which isn't happening with the streaming version.
streaming audio sounds like crap... reason why I don't like stuff like spotify, etc
The files used in the playback are the exact ones you upload. if you are using something like itunes to preview a track be aware that programs like that have a "sound enhancer" option that is checked by default.
fyi audiophiles...
i cant find much literature on browser specs unfortunately but a little experiment i did...
* decode rate of mp3 is 44khz/16bit
* soundcard (WDM mixer output device) set to 44khz/16bit - normally i would output to ASIO device for uber quality
* foobar2000 player output set to 44khz/16bit
* i assume browser follows windows system/WDM mixer bitrates
so all things being equal...
there is an option in foobar to 'dither audio' when i have that off (as i would prefer things, native digital bit-for-bit reproduction) foobar sounds 'crisper' in the top end.
when i turn it on however, it sounds practically the same as the browser - so at this stage (with my subjective testing) i am assuming the browser is dithering the output audio.
question answered? TBC...
hmm. so it sounds more muffled when dithered? that doesnt make sense.
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