[Zin_Ramu]

As JahJahBinks pointed out within a particular bit rate VBR > ABR > CBR, so rather than choose between 128 and 320 investigate the VBRoptions. The most popular of which are --alt-preset standard and --alt-preset extreme. Again see the link I posted above for directions on how to use those presents within EAC (not EMC btw).

Then do some testing, with your ears and your system to see if you need standard or extreme. I personally find standard to be sufficient for most albums and since HD space is a bit of an issue for me I went with that. Others can tell a difference on some recordings so they use extreme always just to be safe. Its your call choose a couple tracks from your favorite albums and do some testing. Compare .WAV, standard, and extreme and see if you can discern any differences between the three. If you can consistently pick out the standard MP3, you should go with extreme.

Zin

 

[pedxing]

Personally, I hate VBR because its tricky. Lame has some good presets with VBR such as the --r3mix option. A badly tuned VBR encoder can ruin your music. Long time ago when VBR sucked, I just encoded my stuff at really high constant bit rates.

Of course, there are other formats such as .shn and .flac, but they are lossless compressions at the price of only reducing the size of the file to about one half of the wav file.

 

[Nefarion]

Encode at the highest bitrate possible... The higher the bitrate the less compression. VBR effeciently fluctuates the bitrate as the music requires. For instance, during silent parts the bitrate would go way down.. but during loud/demanding parts the bitrate goes up. Constant bitrate just keeps the bitrate (or quality) at one constant level. 320 is the highest, when kept at 320 throughout the song you get the best quality mp3 possible throughout the song in its entirety(sp?)..

If you need space or need to keep the file sizes small for any reason.. Use different VBR settings till you get the quality/size you want.

 

[PodMan]

I use alt-preset standard. I figure mp3 isn't good enough for archival purposes even with extreme and insane. If you want to archive for future usage, use a higher quality codec such as MPC or even a lossless codec. You may want to transcode to another format in the future from your archive and mp3 is not a good codec for that. with the Standard preset I cannot make out any artifacts on an iPod with D66 eggos. I use to encode with insane but then my ipod started to get full so i started using standard. haven't been able to tell the difference yet.

and LAME is optimized for higher bitrates, they are working on pushing the alt-presets to lower bitrates (alt-preset medium) for portables with the latest betas.

 

[joe_cool]

Depending on your playback plans, you may want to try the Windows Media Player 9 which was recently released. WMP(v9) no longer supports MP3 encoding without a plug-in, but the available bit rates for WMA encoding (especially for XP) are very much improved. Everything from 48-192 CBR and 40/75 to 240/355 VBR (in kilobits).

 

[kcits]

from reading a few threads over at hydrogenaudio.org, the (apparently) highest quality VBR .mp3 possible is LAME 3.90.2 --alt-preset extreme (averages to about 250kbit/sec.)

but.. it seems that --alt-preset standard (avg. about 190 kbit/sec) is so close in quality to --alt-preset extreme, that it's not usually necessary to use the latter.

 

[punosion]

Quote:

Originally posted by Zin_Ramu True if EAC+lame isn't working then 2 seperates may be better.

RazorLAME is nice because you can rip a bunch of CD's to .wav's and cue them up to compress to .mp3's overnight. Do the manual work when you need to be there, leave the boring compression time for later.

 

[abeautifulife]

Fraunhofer is available on Cooledit (do a search on Google.com). Not available as shareware or freeware AFAIK.

 

[shafu]

If you are having problems with the set up on the EAC and LAME, there's a profile you can load up to EAC at:
http://www.chrismyden.com/nuke/modu...E&file=painless

That allows you to have the standard set up for ripping and encoding via LAME --alt preset standard. I had some problems as well with EAC for awhile (messed around too much with the setting - so many of them!) and got it to work again with the profile.

 

[longship]

The latest LAME releases support presets. Of particular interest is the R3Mix preset

http://www.r3mix.net/

This saves a helluva lot of disk space as not every frame of an MP3 needs to be encoded at 320 kps to be audibly indistinguishable from the original CD. LAME's R3Mix preset attempts to minimize all the nasties while keeping a sane average encoding rate. Many of my CDs -- all classical -- end up at just over 160 kps average. I can't hear the difference on my equipment.

Nota bene, go to the R3Mix site and read about the testing procedures.

 

[coho66]

To the best of my knowledge, 320kb/s cbr is the best. I liked to use EAC to extract to wav. Then use MP3Compressor (which uses the Frauenhofer codec) to compress into mpeg. Could sure use a nice id3 tag editor for managing 4-5000 files. Any suggestions?

 

[andrew3199]

Thought this artical was intresting, although for the airhead amp it gives a comparison beetween wave and MP3.


Quote.... (Sure, my computer’s hard drive is loaded with time-shifted copies of music that I have previously purchased (ahem), but I never regarded them as anything approaching hi-fi, especially when listening via my Rio player or my laptop’s speakers. I mentioned something to that effect to Tyl Hertzens of HeadRoom, and he replied that I shouldn’t jump to such hasty conclusions. He told me that MP3 decoding is a completely different process than WAV (CD-ROM) or Redbook (CD music) decoding, which results in a more "organic" sound. He went on to say that MP3s with sampling rates in the 300+ kbps range can sound better than CD. Tyl is onto something. I am not about to say that MP3s played back through a hi-fi rig compares with CD, but I agree that MP3’s strengths and weaknesses mesh well with headphone playback. For example, with the high resolution capabilities of the TAH and Sennheiser or Grado, I heard further into many recordings than I could with my home rig. I perceived the decay of plucked notes on an acoustic guitar and the startling snap of snare drum shots, and could even distinguish among the drums used. And there was no harshness whatsoever. (I typically listen at a sampling rate of 128 kbps, which is a pretty good comprise between compression and not). In terms of its smoothness, it made me think I was listening to quality tube gear. That is a tough feat to pull off: "smooth detail." Furthermore, I was starting to eat my words regarding soundstaging. MP3 is a reflection of CD in the sense that some recordings are imbued with much more ambiance and dimensionality than others. On some MP3s, I could actually hear beyond the soundstage and into the ambiance of the recording venue, which, as I said, is my hi-fi Holy Grail. Admittedly, the soundstage was still not in the shape or position that I prefer, and yet I was amazed that I was getting that kind of sound from an MP3. Other hi-fi attributes were also present on MP3 via the HeadRoom: dynamic punch when called for, and a tight bass perhaps in the 30-hz range from a particular synth-based recording. I have no basis to compare what TAH is doing for MP3s relative to other headphone amps, but I can tell you that MP3s lost much of their magic without the amp. I never thought I would use "MP3" and "magic" in the same sentence…)......Intresting..?

 

[erikzen]

I don't doubt that listening to MP3s through a TAH sounded better than straight from a Rio or through laptop speakers, but it sounds like a little bit of hyperbole to me. What is the source of this article and who is the author?

 

[andrew3199]

The full review can be found here

http://www.stereotimes.com/acc071301.shtm

 

[phonatic]

I'm by no means any sort of expert on the subject, but the whole business of perceptual codecs is bizarrely fascinating.

Over on one of the minidisc message boards, more than one person has suggested that transferring a tinny-sounding CD to MD can "warm up" the sound. Whether this is some characteristic of the analog portion of the posters' MD gear, or something to do with ATRAC, is not clear to me, but I got the sense it was thought that ATRAC was responsible for this alleged sweetening. Naturally, I had to try this out for myself.

I transferred some selections of shrill, violin-heavy music recorded in the 60s from CD to MD by S/PDIF, with the standard play ATRAC Type-R codec. I can't say the process added any body to the violin that wasn't already there, but it does seem that the tone is less strident, and not really because the upper range is rolled-off; more like it sounded over-emphasized straight out of the CD. I've tried different headphones with CD and MD sources, different CD sources (though no stellar ones), and the difference remains constant. I would say that I find the MD version of the selections more listenable, less fatiguing. I don't have any real experience with tube gear, but I think there is something to the idea that perceptual codecs can alter a program in pleasurable ways, without necessarily obscuring detail.

Whether ATRAC can seem to reveal additional detail is something I haven't tried to evaluate yet... more on that later. There is a page on MD sound quality at http://www.minidisc.org/near_cd.html
where various people are quoted as saying that later iterations of the ATRAC codec could possibly be felt to exceed the resolution of CD.

I plan to transfer a few 20-bit selections in the coming weeks and see how the MD does with those.

There is further, interesting discussion of this topic, specifically dealing in MP3 over at http://www.airwindows.com/encoders/index.html