mp3: 128 bitrate vs. 192 bitrate - plz help!

[DentyCracker]

I've found that at 128kbps high frequencies tend to be messed up with a bit of "ringing" It is not so bad with lame though, but still noticeable. I supposedly have (or at least I did have in 1994) supranormal hearing tested by audiometry. VBR sounds better to me too, and usually works out to around the same size as 192kbps. Hard disks are cheap, I am considering getting a 100GB Maxtor for $228, so the increased size shouldn't be too big of a concern. However if you have your mp3s primarily for your enjoyment and can't hear a difference even when re-enciding from 192 to 128 then do so.

[nehalmistry]

hmmmm, well yeh, hearing is subjective, i guess if someone sais that 128 is CD quality, their right, and if another sais 192, their right too...

[Maggi]

Originally posted by nehalmistry
hmmmm, well yeh, hearing is subjective, i guess if someone sais that 128 is CD quality, their right, and if another sais 192, their right too...

Not at all ...

neither 128 nor 192kbit/s are equal to CD quality, only because some people do not hear a difference.

It's ok, if they say it won't make a difference to them, but I can hardly accept it to be put as a general statement or fact.

Compare it to color blindness, ie. only because some people cannot differ between red and green, does that reverse the meaning of all traffic lights ?

[Wombat]

Maggi,
What do you do your encoding with? I haven't looked at VBR in quite some time. The last time I did, the VBR camp was small, and crappy. Are there good encoders that do VBR now? I suppose I should look and see if LAME supports it now.

[Liquid Snake]

Actually, LAME has pretty much the best VBR engine out there (but not perfect). I don't use VBR right now, but I eventually plan on re-encoding all of my songs to VBR. It seems that electronic and heavy metal music tends to cause MP3 to create more audible artifacts. Using --r3mix with LAME, I encoded some Metallica songs and each one ended up with an average bitrate of more than 220kbps.

[nehalmistry]

maggi: well this is different, if everyone was listening to my mp3's then i should encode it to 192.... also the difference is not huge to those that can actually notice it

wombat: im using dbpoweramp, it has the LAME encoder and yes it has VBR support!

[TnT]

I tried VBR a long time ago, but it caused a lot of artifacts and ringing. So I swore never to do that again, but in the past month or so I broke down and tried it again. Now I only do VBR with 224 high, 128 low at 3 quality. Everything sounds great to me, but I'm sure I'm not the most sensitive. Although maybe more than nehalmistry

[Maggi]

I use Wavelab ...

its CDDB capabilities are crap, though