[EFN]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fungi /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't get why people are still using CBR. VBR has every benefit over CBR except maybe minor quirks like slightly less battery life on portable players or something, but I'd say there's not much use for anything other than V2 or V0 mp3 nowadays, with such a good compression algorithm going on. The only step up from V0 is lossless.

I have answers for this. For the last 3 months I have been an avid LAME Q0 V0 VBR fan. I tought they were good and efficient. But recently I had undergone some gruelling ABX testings with VBR and CBR. My conclusion was, on certain DAP like Rio Karma and ZEN Neeon, they run flawlessly and better with CBR - somehow the decoding mechanism was optimized for CBR - I knew this is the case for Rio Karma because they used 128kbps CBR in development phase. With VBR, they tend to be a bit finicky like rolling off on peaky songs so they resulted in audible artefacts. VBR runs better on iPods and I was quite happy with the result on iPod 3G, 4G and 5.5G (Apple OS and Rockbox tested on all iPod).

So suffice to say that depends on where you play them. Some very efficient decoders like Foobar2000 will have no issues at all with VBR

 

[Sordel]

Well what use is this poll when by far the greater part of my iTunes is ripped at 96 kbps?

Yep, 'fraid so. I've got a fair amount of stuff at 128, some at 160 and, just for fun, a handful of CDs ripped with Apple Lossless. Given that my 15Gb iPod is full and I'm within 1Gb of filling my wife's 60Gb iPod, there's just too high a price to pay for the added SQ; after all, I've got nearly all my music on CD already to start with!

 

[Sean.Perrin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sordel /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well what use is this poll when by far the greater part of my iTunes is ripped at 96 kbps? Yep, 'fraid so. I've got a fair amount of stuff at 128, some at 160 and, just for fun, a handful of CDs ripped with Apple Lossless. Given that my 15Gb iPod is full and I'm within 1Gb of filling my wife's 60Gb iPod, there's just too high a price to pay for the added SQ; after all, I've got nearly all my music on CD already to start with!

Well whatever the majority is then... you would choose "< 128". "<" means less than.

 

[Sordel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sean.Perrin /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well whatever the majority is then... you would choose "< 128". "<" means less than.

I know what < means, although actually there's no <128 option, so I'd struggle to choose it. The implication of having a < 160 option (which there is) is that anything below that line falls into a specific, non-audiophile set, but to me there's a key difference between why people would choose bit rates below 160 and the poll does not differentiate these.

 

[lionel marechal]

I do not think the poll is valid, as you are going to have in the same category 160 constant bit rate, and lame -extreme VBR which average at 230, which truly does not make sense IMHO.
Lionel

 

[Cid]

I'm a flac fanboy. I don't settle for less. =) While I can't hear the difference between flac and lame mp3's at home, when I was down at my dads (he has an awesome setup, probably worth like £4000+) I could hear the difference clearly, since then I've always used flac.

I use flac in my portable player aswell, but I dunno if the ipod can support it?

 

[Dr. Vortex]

I store all my music in FLAC even though I probably wouldn't hear the difference between a good mp3/vorbis. However, that way I can restore the music in original quality in case a cd gets misplaced. And besides, if I ever manage to get any better equipment I won't have to re-encode every cd again just to get better sound quality.

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sean.Perrin /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well whatever the majority is then... you would choose "< 128". "<" means less than.

Your poll doesn't account for VBR. A file with a variable bit rate that averages around 160kbps is NOT the same as a 160kbps CBR file.

Your poll also does not take encoder into account. All MP3s are not created equal. Literally. An MP3 created in 1999 with the Xing encoder at 128kbps will probably sound pretty bad. An MP3 created in 2006 with LAME 3.97 at 128kbps CBR, on the other hand, will likely sound very close to the original. An MP3 created with LAME 3.97 using the -V5 --vbr-new setting, which averages somewhere in the range of 135kbps, will likely be completely indistinguishable from the original. (Personally, I cannot tell the difference in a double-blind test.)

Notice that I keep saying "likely" and "probably." The reason for this is that everyone's hearing is different, and artifacts that may be audible to me may not be audible to you, and vice versa. Moreover, many people here make judgments on lossy codecs based on outdated information, without conducting proper listening tests, or (worst of all) based on what they read here without listening at all. For these reasons, I strongly recommend that you base your decision on your own listening tests rather than on a poll. Foobar2000 has a a built in "compare two tracks" feature that will allow you to conduct a double-blind test and easily compare the same track encoded at different bitrates.

If you don't want to take the time to do your own listening test, I recommend that you use LAME 3.97 at the -V2 setting. This will give you VBR files that average around 192kbps, but which use frames of up to 320kbps as necessary. Listening tests have established that this setting is indistinguishable from the original CD to the majority of the population, and it is generally considered to be a good balance between file size and quality.

 

[Bunnyears]

On my external harddrive, I have the music in uncompressed (AIFF or WAV) files. On my ipod I use 320 kbps or ALAC, depending on whether I'm using the 8gig Nano or the 80 gig ipod.

 

[gsansite]

Lame -v6 for portable, FLAC for home. Low portable bit rate FOTW!

 

[NiceCans]

Free Lossless Audio Codec

and

LAME -V0 --vbr-new

 

[omedon]

128kbps / I am not afraid b/c I am saving up for Vahalla

Actually I am a total sissy. Everything I have is lossless & legal Flac or Shn the live music archive (archive.org). That is only my live music though. All my studio cd's I own and I don't bother compressing myself. I am waiting for an 1-terrabyte nano priced at $100. Then I won't have to bother with compression.

 

[warMen]

I'm doing my favorite CDs in FLAC.

Otherwise, LAME 224 kbps VBR. I can't really tell the difference between 192 and 224 with LAME though. I rip them to mp3 for my ipod.

 

[Radagast]

Mostly FLAC.

By the way, is it only me, or do you guys need to increase the volume when switching from MP3 to FLAC? (With MP3 I'm on the %40 mark, but with FLAC i'm on the %70 mark)

 

[Digitalbath3737]

LAME 3.97 -V2 for portable use on my iPod. I abxed this once with my SF3 and then again with my e500s... both times I couldn't tell the differance (on my iPod) between ALAC and mp3 in a blind abx.

FLAC for archiving. I really don't feel the need to use lossless on protable because 1) I can't tell the differeance 2) it kill battery life. 3) I have limited space... 4g. So lossless has zero use for me... besides archiving