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Question For Audio Pros

post #1 of 14
12/7/03 at 2:42am
Thread Starter 
I just wanna know whats the best preset for mp3 LAME 3.93, I use Cdex, Whats the best preset for mp3 quality, I listen top mostly rap & R&B, 192-256. what quality preset should I use

1. Alt-preset standard
2. Alt-preset fast standard
3. Alt-preset extreme
4. Alt-preset fast extreme
5. Alt-preset insane

which ones is best one too use
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post #2 of 14
12/7/03 at 3:07am
Well I'm no "Audio Pro", but from experience I've learned a thing or two. For one, you can be sure that using one standard is good for all genres because of its stability. That would be the alt.preset.extreme standard. Personally, i feel that insane is a bit of overkill..especially for particular types of music. If we're talking about rap, which isn't very complex, you can use a lower standard...the standard fast would do. For R&B you could do fast extreme if you want, but I'd probably encode from 160-192 Kbps with R&B. The same goes for rock music..unless there's alot of instrumentation going on, or lots of percussive stuff.

Classical probably deserves the highest settings becasue of certain pieces frequency ranges. Transparency is probably most important here too. But like I said, I'm NOT an audio expert...I'm sure someone else will chime in here...

Besides, I've mosly been encoding to Ogg lately.
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post #3 of 14
12/7/03 at 6:28am
>>which ones is best one too use

Whatever sounds the best.

Want more? Do you have a lot of hard drive space? Is this for a portable player as well? HDD or flash based? What soundcard, amp, and headphones do you have?
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post #4 of 14
12/7/03 at 10:23am
Given my current (meager) setup, --preset standard is essentially transparent except for a few carefully selected moments, but where I can hear artifacts with standard I can also hear them at insane. Also, in my testing I've found that lossy codecs tend to have more difficulty with synthetic instrumentation than orchestras. You should do some ABX (blind) testing with music you are familiar with before settling on a certain preset.
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post #5 of 14
12/7/03 at 12:50pm
I switched to --alt preset extreme. I used to use --alt preset standard, and I couldn't hear a difference between that and the original CD. But just to be sure, I switched recently to 'extreme', it's not that much larger.
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post #6 of 14
12/7/03 at 9:57pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by stereth
>>which ones is best one too use

Whatever sounds the best.

Want more? Do you have a lot of hard drive space? Is this for a portable player as well? HDD or flash based? What soundcard, amp, and headphones do you have?
1. yes I have 60gb
2. yes for my iPod
3. Koss portapros
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post #7 of 14
12/7/03 at 10:31pm
Likely you'll not hear any difference between -aps and -apx, especially with PP's, but if you want the slight extra for future phones, use -apx. Your call about using the "fast" tag, but since the quality loss is only "potential", I'd use it to quicken the process (double on my system) since LAME is so slow.

Are you considering using AAC also?

If you want to see a sample file size comparison see here.
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post #8 of 14
12/7/03 at 10:33pm
Alot of people like to go with some sort of lossless format, and then transcode down to lower bitrate lossy files for use on portable devices. Strictly for purposes of making tagging easier, I've chosen to encode everthing with the -alt--preset insane settings and just use those files on my iPod until it becomes absolutly necessary to sample them down to fit them all on.

To be honest though, I can't tell the difference between extreme and insane with CDex. Standard and extreme seem to be the most popular choices from what I've seen.
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post #9 of 14
12/7/03 at 10:40pm
There is no real "best" setting. It's all a tradeoff between size and fidelity. For archival purposes where space is not a consideration, extreme or insane probably make sense. For use with a portable that has very limited space, it would be perfectly legitimate to drop below "standard" to get more music on your player. You really have to decide for yourself what tradeoffs you're willing to make. Any of the alt-preset settings will produce acceptable encoding of most tracks for use with a portable. Beyond that it's just a matter of how much space you're willing to give up for any given track.
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post #10 of 14
12/7/03 at 11:41pm
I like using --alt-preset standard. However, you should definetely switch from lame 3.93 to lame 3.90.3. It has been tuned to near perfection by audiophiles at hydrogen audio.

You can get it here

dj_digital
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post #11 of 14
12/8/03 at 12:39am
Just keep in mind for those wanting to experiment with the new "--alt-preset medium", it's not available on earlier LAME versions. Higher presets should normally be used, but for small memory players it can be useful.
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post #12 of 14
12/8/03 at 2:07am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by blessingx
Likely you'll not hear any difference between -aps and -apx, especially with PP's, but if you want the slight extra for future phones, use -apx. Your call about using the "fast" tag, but since the quality loss is only "potential", I'd use it to quicken the process (double on my system) since LAME is so slow.

Are you considering using AAC also?

If you want to see a sample file size comparison see here.
Thanks for the link to the comparison chart, that helps A whole lot on other question I had. No I never tried Acc, How does it compare in sound quality to MP3.
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post #13 of 14
12/8/03 at 2:50am
There's debate there. Like Ogg, AAC tends to do better than MP3 at 70%-75% of the bitrate. The LAME presets though are extremely well tuned so still compete favorably with the newer codecs at the higher ends. I don't have experience with Neros newish AAC VBR settings, but iTunes AAC has the advantage of quite a bit faster encoding than LAME (4X-8X on my system depending if the 'fast' LAME tag is used). That's not insignificant (especially if you use something else, say FLAC or Monkeys, for archiving). I think you'll find AAC 192 similar to -aps and 224 to -apx. Some are satisfied with 160. LAME MP3 and QT AAC have a slightly different focus sweet spot. It's best if you test and see which you prefer. It's difficult to generally recommend one over the other. A lot depends on the bitrate (I use AAC for music and FhG MP3 for audiobooks). MP3 is of course more compatible with a variety of software and hardware players and is better for trading, but expect AAC to gain more support quickly. Pepsi is giving away 100 million iTMS AAC tracks in a Super Bowl tie in. Public awareness to follow soon.
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post #14 of 14
12/9/03 at 2:28am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by blessingx
There's debate there. Like Ogg, AAC tends to do better than MP3 at 70%-75% of the bitrate. The LAME presets though are extremely well tuned so still compete favorably with the newer codecs at the higher ends. I don't have experience with Neros newish AAC VBR settings, but iTunes AAC has the advantage of quite a bit faster encoding than LAME (4X-8X on my system depending if the 'fast' LAME tag is used). That's not insignificant (especially if you use something else, say FLAC or Monkeys, for archiving). I think you'll find AAC 192 similar to -aps and 224 to -apx. Some are satisfied with 160. LAME MP3 and QT AAC have a slightly different focus sweet spot. It's best if you test and see which you prefer. It's difficult to generally recommend one over the other. A lot depends on the bitrate (I use AAC for music and FhG MP3 for audiobooks). MP3 is of course more compatible with a variety of software and hardware players and is better for trading, but expect AAC to gain more support quickly. Pepsi is giving away 100 million iTMS AAC tracks in a Super Bowl tie in. Public awareness to follow soon.
O alright thanks "blessingx", your the man!!!, and everyone eles that helped me out.
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