[Peddler]

Using Exact Audio Copy and LAME for high bit-rate encoding.

I have noticed a ‘metallic sheen’ to some of the music I’ve encoded in MP3 format. I’m aware of the ‘ringing’ phenomenon that can effect certain bit rates. Has anyone else come across this or is it a characteristic of the player?

Some people on this group have talked about using the various presets in LAME such as –extreme and so forth. When I try entering these parameters in the Exact Audio Copy app they don’t appear to work – can anyone put me right on this. As far as I know I’m using the correct version of LAME but by all means feel free to explain this to me in ‘Denzel Washington Mode’ (do a search through the posting to see what I mean by that!).

Is it worth using EAC to extract the CD music and then an alternative ‘front end’ to LAME to do the encoding? Any help would be appreciated. Specialically URL's for exactly what I'm looking for.

 

[rickcr42]

I am no expert on this topic but have done my share of ripping and converting since the format was invented and "metallic sheen" is something I would not mention in the same sentence as Lame.At least not as more so than ANY MP3 conversion which being a lossy compression means throwing out some music in the name of file size.
And EAC while not the fastest ripper IS the most precise when presented with errors
Ever consider it may just be the playback system or soundcard ?

 

[SWS]

Are you using the DLL version of LAME, or the regular version?

I find the regular version works significantly better with EAC.

Under Compression Options | External Compression I have:

Use external program (checked)

Parameter passing scheme: LAME MP3 Encoder

File extension: mp3

Additional command line options: --r3mix (or whatever you like)

r3mix yields vbr, js, mp3... Work great on my SP25

Bit rate (overriden by --r3mix)

 

[Peddler]

Thanks guys - I shall try this and get back to you.

 

[Razlak]

OK, sounds like you might have an older version of the LAME encoder. Go to http://mitiok.cjb.net and grab the latest 3.91 release. Put this in your EAC folder and point EACs external compression to it.

Now heres where I get a bit weird. Don't select the LAME MP3 Encoder option, select User Defined Encoder. Why? So that EAC doesn't add any of its default LAME options which are oriented for plain CBR encoding. With this option, only the ones you specify are used, except you must now add a few switches. I use this as the additional command line options:

--alt-preset extreme %s %d

The %s and %d are there as the source(wav) and destination(mp3) file paths for LAME to work with. I use the extreme preset there, which averages about 256kbps VBR on most rock music. If you want a little lower bitrate, or just can't hear the difference, use --alt-preset standard, which is approx 192kbps VBR. If you need to use CBR, the setting is --alt-preset cbr 128 or whatever bitrate you need. More info on these can be found at www.hydrogenaudio.org or with lame --alt-preset help from the command line. That'll give you an outline on all of them. These are all highly tuned modes that should give you great sound quality without having to worry about a bunch of commands.

 

[Peddler]

Thanks matey - that's just the sort of thing I'm looking for - I will give it a try and get back to you.