GeekPro

Does anyone have any opinions on Bitrates and Encoding, I'm sure we'd all like to go for broke with 320K VBR, but I recently spent a week ripping about 250 CD's using the latest version of EAC (Exact Audio Copy) and the Lame Encoder using the 192K VBR option.

First question:

Is 192K VBR good enough to encode CD's with for making quality MP3's, not so much for size constraints but for saving my collection to my HD in CD quality?

Secondly,

EAC and Lame - I set EAC to 192K VBR and I took the standard LAME settings, any opinions on any other way I should have set up LAME other than with using the standard settings?

Lastly,

Is there a better way to rip and encode than using EAC and LAME to get high quality MP3's created?


MY DJ20 is showing 2130MB of Free Space left and 222 Albums Loaded.

dissident

If you dont care about the space, then go with 192. That quality is good enough to make cds with as I have done so several times. But you probablly wont be able to tell the difference between 192 and 128.
EAC is a very popular program for ripping. I use MM so I cant help you there.

__________________
Dell DJ15
9151MB free space
Track Count: 1270
Album Count: 116

Rev. Nathan

192 VBR MP3s are fine. However, if you are a little more on the audiophile side, then 320 VBR is just plain awesomeness. Near-lossless audio.

__________________
Nathan Speer

In-Line Remote :: Belkin Neoprene Sport Case :: Belkin Desktop Stand/Organizer :: Sennheiser PMX-60 Neck-Worn Headphones

I have alot of Iron Maiden on my DJ. Isn't that amazing?

deckard

I use Lame exclusively and have settled on VBR with 128K min, NO max and quality of 3 as perfect for my demanding ears.
If you're completely anal about archival quality and file size is no issue, raise the min to 160 and quality to 0 or 1 and I'd challenge you to notice the slightest difference from the CD.

GeekPro

Well thanks for the suggestions, I did some further testing of the settings in EAC only to find that the settings which are controling the LAME DLL do not seem to be working, I changed the VBR quality settings in EAC and noticed that LAME was not recognizing the changes made in EAC, so I've been actually getting VBR q_4 with joint stereo and bitrate qval_2 from LAME, but EAC was set to VBR q_5 with stereo. So, I'm not sure why the EAC is not forwarding the settings correctly to the LAME DLL, guess I'll send the app owner and email to inquire. I'm using Lame 3.95 and EAC v0.95 prebeta 5. Maybe the prebeta is the issue?

Any feelings on joint stereo vs stereo?

deckard

Quick Google turned up this:

"One trick in order to compress the mp3 file is to encode the low frequencies mono, while keeping the high frequencies in stereo. This saves some extra bits that can be used to increase quality in other ways (most often used to fill up the frequency bands better) to the cost of damaging the stereo or "live" feeling of the music. It can be compared to playing music on a system with satellite speakers and subwoofer instead of real stereo equipment, but is normally taken a bit more to the extreme by the mp3 encoder (more frequencies being made mono).

This is a typical mid-fi sollution. It's normally a good choice when encoding at low or medium bitrates since the frequency bands otherwise gets a bit empty, resulting in a worse quality degradation. At high bitrates its a bad idea.

Consequently most mp3 encoders use joint stereo for 128 kbps or less and switches to real stereo at 160 or 192 kbps. Some encoders however, especially an older version of Fraunhofer's, stuck with joint stereo even at 256 kbps

However, there are some drawbacks with joint stereo even at medium bitrates. Dolby surround information that has been encoded into the song might get damaged or lost. Music that has been mastered using analogue equipment (mostly older music, like from the 60's and 70's) and live recordingstends to suffer a lot more than modern, studio recorded music.
You can also get strange phasing effects in some rare cases with joint stereo.
"

Not to worry though, I also found this:

"Joint-stereo in LAME is definitely better than Stereo. It is perfect. No problems at all. Period. Whoever tells you that Joint-Stereo is a problem in LAME has no idea what he is talking about, has not tested, and should not be considered reliable. Are you going to believe him or the guys that develop LAME? Who do you think knows better?

The idea that Joint-Stereo is bad started because years ago, there was a commercial encoder that had a major bug in the way it did Joint-Stereo. But that's not LAME, and it has nothing to do with it."

I use the same EAC version as you with the EXE version of Lame 3.93. Dunno if it'll make a diff but try replacing the DLL with the EXE. I know for fact I'm able to successfully pass parameters to the EXE from EAC's GUI.

snaimpally

http://harmsy.freeuk.com/mostync/

Read this aticle. He says joint stereo being bad is a myth and explains why.

Hard drives are cheap (200GB for $99 after rebate). The best 'lossless' storage is .wav :-)

I'd rip an album you are familiar with in different formats and listen critically. Also, compare sizes. Using audiograbber, I found minimal size differences between 192 VBR and 192 CBR (different codecs though).

GeekPro

Looks like this discussion I found today really hammers the topic into the ground. Have a look. http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index....t=ST&f=15&t=995

Anyway, after the massive amounts of technical back and forth I've found regarding joint stereo vs stereo, and I read all of it I could find, mind you, I decided to take a less technical approach and to try something completely out of the box.

I loaded up an album in my DJ20

Jimmy Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland: Moon, Turn the Tides...Gently Gently Away...

And sure enough, the damn Stereo Seperation sounded just wonderful. Try it.

And to think, I spent so many hours reading a studing this topic, only to relize that my hearing (after all the Maiden - Slayer - Priest - AC/DC and Metallica shows) can still be trusted.


DJ20
Almost Full
192K VBR Joint Stereo

snaimpally

I put a lengthy post on the DellDJ discussion forum on file sizes. mp3 produces slightly smaller file sizes than wma at the same bit rate. Blade and Lame are almost dead even when it comes to file size at a specific econding rate. You might as well use the highest VBR rate (VBR 0) since file size doesn't change all that much as you drop VBR rates. VBR 0 prduces file sizes on par with CBR 256 but smaller than CBR 320. The questions is does VBR 0 sound closer to CBR 256 or CBR 320?

deckard

I did a quick and dirty experiment the other day with VBR and file size with a song that was about 5 meg encoded with V4. Same WAV became near 6 meg with V3 and 8+ meg with V0. Using the EXE of Lame you get that cool little graph of how many frames went to each bit rate and V0 definitely puts many more frames into the higher bit rates. I personally think it would take an ear much more sensitive than most people possess to notice any further audio fidelity past V3.

snaimpally

https://delldjsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1261
This is the post on vbr vs cbr, mp3 vs wma.
CBR rips much faster than VBR so if time is an issue, CBR is a better bet. Dudebox users should rip to a higher quality 'archive' bitrate (320 or 256 kbps) and then use audiomorph when transferring to get smaller files at a lower rate.

snaimpally

Nathan: what do you use for 320 kbps VBR?

GeekPro

So are you saying that I wasted an entire week ripping all my CD's at 192K VBR and that I should start over again with a 0 setting VBR at high quality and at 320K?

I wish I had a screen shot of the LAME window so you could see the 2 settings that I see, one is q=4 and the other is qval=2 on each side of j-stereo during the encoding. What are the differences between q and qval? so I know what seting I'm using, the EAC is not passing the switches to the LAME exe, so who knows what VBR quality setting I'm really encoding at?

hellmachine

i'd also say that lame is the best way to encode mp3s (and i also heard that the joint stereo thing was a myth, from a different source tho.)

my suggestion: the best way to archieve a cd collection, if you have a dvd burner or a huuuge ^^ hdd, is to encode everything with monkey's ape - lossless. of course, min file size is but 50% of the original file ^^, but you will be able to encode that again without a lossy to lossy quality downgrade and can bring it back to wav, same quality.