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Bitrate Over Time

post #1 of 21
3/1/10 at 5:19pm
Thread Starter 
Does bitrate lower over time? I've noticed that some of my songs have dropped to random numbers such as 191, 219, and 188. Is there another cause to this? It's pretty annoying to have to go through all my songs and replace them again.
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post #2 of 21
3/1/10 at 5:23pm
Are you sure they're not VBR (variable bit rate) encoded songs? File info shows the average bit rate for such files.
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post #3 of 21
3/1/10 at 5:29pm
Yeah, they don't lose bitrate. They are VBR files.
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post #4 of 21
3/1/10 at 5:47pm
Thread Starter 
Ah, they probably are. I never knew what VBR meant. Is VBR a good or bad thing?
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post #5 of 21
3/1/10 at 5:52pm
It is good if you're trying to conserve space. Bad if you want the best audio possible.
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post #6 of 21
3/1/10 at 6:00pm
VBR is fine. I use VBR V0, which saves a bit of space over 320 KB/S constant bitrate with the same sound quality, at least to me.
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post #7 of 21
3/1/10 at 6:18pm
Quote:
It is good if you're trying to conserve space. Bad if you want the best audio possible.
Kind of. A VBR file will usually sound better at a given average bitrate than a non variable file.
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post #8 of 21
3/1/10 at 6:24pm
Don't listen to them! Your mp3s are losing their bits! Conspiracy!
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post #9 of 21
3/1/10 at 6:37pm
Unless beamthegreat comes up with a more entertaining thread by tonight, I nominate this thread to be "Thread of the Day."
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post #10 of 21
3/1/10 at 6:46pm
WTF, my 128 kbps files from last year degraded into MIDI files!
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post #11 of 21
3/1/10 at 7:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob_McBob View Post
Don't listen to them! Your mp3s are losing their bits! Conspiracy!
True, here an 11 pages, 160 posts tread discussing it.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f133/w...better-451369/
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post #12 of 21
3/1/10 at 8:00pm
VBR is usually better audio quality than a CBR (constant bit rate) file of the same bit rate as the average bit rate of the VBR file, and it's usually a smaller filesize.
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post #13 of 21
3/1/10 at 8:01pm
Thread Starter 
So all VBRs can go from 32 to 320 kbps, depending on the the part of a song?
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post #14 of 21
3/1/10 at 8:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flag View Post
So all VBRs can go from 32 to 320 kbps, depending on the the part of a song?
Yes VBR will allocate less bitrate for simple easier part and put more bitrate for complex harder part.

*the next are made up number I don't know what algorithm they use to decide how they allocate bitrate

For example the 218 kbps can have up to 320 kbps on some part and 128 kbps(completely made up number I have no idea how low it goes) on part that don't need that much bitrate

You'll end up in theory with a better quality files since it allocate bitrate where it's need and don't waist bitrate where it's not need.

Since it constantly changing bitrate at the end you have numbers like 191, 219, and 188.
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post #15 of 21
3/1/10 at 9:43pm
Thread Starter 
Interesting, if that is the case, then does that mean that every song encoded with VBR has the same file size?

*edit*
Never mind, I found two of the same song in my collection and both are VBR. But in theory doesn't allocating bitrate for certain parts means that the song needs x amount of bitrate at x time? Yet my obviously it is not the case.
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