what bitrate do you encode MP3s at?

[Booster]

Always @ 256 or 320.

 

[tigerbait]

Originally posted by: mto81
lame --r3mix

 

[Ultima]

yes, VBR beats CBR by far.

 

[TranceNation]

Originally posted by: Ultima
yes, VBR beats CBR by far.

VBR sucks, dont know why people use it, i delete all mp3s that have it.

 

[Ultima]

I can say the same thing about CBR. Why does VBR sucks? It's quality is better. Actually, Ogg Vorbis is better but I'm talking about mp3s here.

 

[brisco]

Why would anybody EVER go more than 128? Unless you have bionic ears you aren't going to hear any difference between 128 and anything any higher. All it amounts to is wasted HD space.

 

[LiLRiceBoi]

192 vbr

 

[StattlichPassat]

Is it possible to recode a ton of MP3s (oh, say 20GB) from 128kbps to a higher bitrate?

 

[mk]

Originally posted by: NightFlyerGTIIs it possible to recode a ton of MP3s (oh, say 20GB) from 128kbps to a higher bitrate?

Yes, it's possible but when you encode any music files into any lossy format you always lose quality. In this case you'd end up with large MP3's that would sound even worse than the original MP3's.
It's much better to either keep them as they are or re-rip and encode the CD's to a higher bitrate.

 

[mk]

Originally posted by: TranceNation
VBR sucks, dont know why people use it, i delete all mp3s that have it.

You've got to be kidding.

The whole idea behing VBR is that the encoder uses as many bits to encode a passage in music as it needs to achieve the best possible result (within the limits of the format and the encoder of course.)
If you use CBR (with any "low" bitrate) or place an arbitrary upper limit to VBR the quality will always be less than what is possible.

Most of the stupid rules as in "use CBR", "use *this* bitrate", "no joint-stereo" etc. have been made by some clueless release groups around the net mostly based on the fact that in Xing, Blade and to some degree Fraunhofer-based encoders many functions been implemented incorrectly which is not the case with LAME and the resulting quality using LAME is usually very good (for MP3).

LAME --alt-preset standard (not to mention --a-p extreme; aps/e are both VBR settings) should beat higher bitrate CBR files made with any of the aforementioned encoders quite comfortably in (just about) every case.

Please do yourself a favour and conduct some listening tests.

 

[chickendinner]

320 with powerencoder

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: dieselstation
OH MOTHER OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY.. DO NOT ENCODE AT 128!!!

if you DO encode at 128.. please keep it to yourself and don't share it online. I really really hate having to sift through all those 128kb files when i'm searching on WinMX or Kazaalite or whatever. Online sharing should be quality encodes only. none of that crappy 128 stuff.

So far the MP3s I've been encoding are my radio shows via Total Recorder. It's 2.5 continuous hours once a week and TR has scheduling so all I need to do is turn on my receiver and my computer. I used to record on normal bias cassettes (until a couple weeks ago) and to my ears so far, 128 kbps at 32 khz sampling rate sounds pretty good. FM only extends to about 15 khz so I'm told that 32 khz will give me as much as 44 khz. Even so, my files are around 145 MB. Now if I encoded at 192 or something like that my files would be much bigger. Is this sacrilege?

 

[Ultima]

Originally posted by: Mk4

Originally posted by: TranceNation
VBR sucks, dont know why people use it, i delete all mp3s that have it.

You've got to be kidding.

The whole idea behing VBR is that the encoder uses as many bits to encode a passage in music as it needs to achieve the best possible result (within the limits of the format and the encoder of course.)
If you use CBR (with any "low" bitrate) or place an arbitrary upper limit to VBR the quality will always be less than what is possible.

Most of the stupid rules as in "use CBR", "use *this* bitrate", "no joint-stereo" etc. have been made by some clueless release groups around the net mostly based on the fact that in Xing, Blade and to some degree Fraunhofer-based encoders many functions been implemented incorrectly which is not the case with LAME and the resulting quality using LAME is usually very good (for MP3).

LAME --alt-preset standard (not to mention --a-p extreme; aps/e are both VBR settings) should beat higher bitrate CBR files made with any of the aforementioned encoders quite comfortably in (just about) every case.

Please do yourself a favour and conduct some listening tests.

I agree with no joint stereo. Half of all the mp3s I download with that have a crappy stereo image, and then when I hear the real thing I'm like "woah", cause I didn't even realize what I was missing.

 

[abaez]

Joint stereo can cause some problems.

 

[Nefrodite]

yup gross flanging fx, not that bad with lame vbr though. and yea, mp3s from the net can be bad. ripped/encoded with audiocatylst or whatever, its sad that or recorded over line in, or from radio sometimes hehe. or some freak that makes a cd from mp3s, shares it. another freak rips the cd and recompressest.., and repeat,... wee crappiness!

 

[Nefrodite]

So far the MP3s I've been encoding are my radio shows via Total Recorder. It's 2.5 continuous hours once a week and TR has scheduling so all I need to do is turn on my receiver and my computer. I used to record on normal bias cassettes (until a couple weeks ago) and to my ears so far, 128 kbps at 32 khz sampling rate sounds pretty good. FM only extends to about 15 khz so I'm told that 32 khz will give me as much as 44 khz. Even so, my files are around 145 MB. Now if I encoded at 192 or something like that my files would be much bigger. Is this sacrilege?

i think 32khz for mp3s is sampling rate, not signal frequency. so setting it at 32khz does not match fm, it only makes your recording cr@ppier. if you want to limit the frequency range the mp3 encoder deals with, low pass high pass filter settings for lame do that. but at 128kbs recording for fm, standard settings are just fine. use 44khz

 

[MichaelD]

256kb/s STEREO, not that mixed-stereo bullsh1t. Rip to .wav using EAC @ 44.1, then encode w/LAME 3.92 @ 256kb/s "quality" preset, stereo. I cannot hear a diff b/the actual CD and my MP3s....isn't that the idea?

 

[Nefrodite]

wouldn't it be better to use full stereo+ VBR at the highest setting? isn't the highest setting something like 256kbs average? i know the standard VBR now is 192~ average.

 

[Nefrodite]

ok found a lame VBR FAQ, with preset settings and stuff

ah, --alt-preset extreme is probably the one you want. average 256kbs VBR


--alt-preset insane This is almost the same as constant bitrate (CBR) 320 kbps. It is not VBR.You get the best quality, but at the cost of a waste of disk space and bandwith: insane. There is a small difference with CBR 320: the low pass filter is moved down a little from 21.4 KHz to about 20.5 kHz.


--alt-preset extreme The highest quality - in fact the same as the "insane" option above - with the smallest file size. The bitrate usually averages around the 256 kbps, but achieves CBR 320 kbps quality. Depending on the complexity of the sound wav, the resulting mp3 is about 224-256 kbps on the average. In case of old recordings, I found file sizes around 160 kbps.


--alt-preset fast extreme If you get irritated of the time consuming encoding process with "--alt-preset extreme", you might try this option. The quality is, according to the developers, "very slightly lower" than "--alt-preset extreme". But the encoding is faster. The file size is larger, though.


--alt-preset standard This is still "Very High Quality", with bitrates averaging around 192 kbps, but targetting CBR 256 kbps quality.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Nefrodite

So far the MP3s I've been encoding are my radio shows via Total Recorder. It's 2.5 continuous hours once a week and TR has scheduling so all I need to do is turn on my receiver and my computer. I used to record on normal bias cassettes (until a couple weeks ago) and to my ears so far, 128 kbps at 32 khz sampling rate sounds pretty good. FM only extends to about 15 khz so I'm told that 32 khz will give me as much as 44 khz. Even so, my files are around 145 MB. Now if I encoded at 192 or something like that my files would be much bigger. Is this sacrilege?

i think 32khz for mp3s is sampling rate, not signal frequency. so setting it at 32khz does not match fm, it only makes your recording cr@ppier. if you want to limit the frequency range the mp3 encoder deals with, low pass high pass filter settings for lame do that. but at 128kbs recording for fm, standard settings are just fine. use 44khz

I think maybe two people told me that I could accomplish the same thing by use 32 khz sampling rate, but maybe what you say is true. Thing is I'm using Total Recorder 3.4 and AFAIK, there's no way I can set up frequency cutoffs with the LAME encoder within Total Recorder. The resulting MP3s don't sound crappy to me. I'll try to find a way I can configure for the cutoff but I'm not optimistic about that. In any case, I imagine that since there's really no signal being received for anything over 15 khz in the high treble, I assume that the LAME encoder isn't wasting any bits recording any. Make sense?

 

[Jarwa]

192 CBR. I've been considering 192 or 256 VBR, though. I have only encoded a handful of my CDs. I don't want to have to do them over after I find out what I like them encoded best at. It's been a long night. I hope that made sense.

 

[mk]

Originally posted by: abaez
Joint stereo can cause some problems.

LAME has properly implemented joint-stereo that shouldn't usually cause any problems. There are some cases where it can cause barely audible ringing but it has been fixed in the --alt-presets. The infamous collapse of soundstage bug that has plagued the Fhg encoders doesn't apply to LAME.

 

[Beattie]

96. anything higher, and you can't tell the difference in quality anyway.

 

[PliotronX]

Originally posted by: Beattie
96. anything higher, and you can't tell the difference in quality anyway.

I beg to differ. 192Kbps minimum for my ears. I use MPC mostly now though, also encode some tracks using --alt-preset standard and LAME.

 

[mk]

Originally posted by: PliotronX
I use MPC mostly now though

What settings do you use?