MP3: what quality do you guys use ?

[agallag]

I set lame to min 128, max 320, highest quality, joint stereo. Usually averages a little over 200. Works great for everything I've ripped.

[The PIT]

Got too admit when I put 128 through my Hi Fi it sounded so shit it was unbelivable.
Sounded okay through my computer system.

[Liquid Snake]

I use LAME --alt-preset standard. Average bitrate usually comes out between 170 and 200kbps. I only use MP3s when I'm listening on my PC and never on the hifi, so it's good enough.

[Jammrock]

I've started to play with Monkey Audio a lot. It's a lossless compression, only about 50%, but it sounds like the CD is int he dirve. It's very nice. When I do use MP3, I use LAME to encode, PlexTools Pro to rip, and 192 kbps variable bitrate.

Ogg is pretty good, too.

Jammrock

[Greebe]

Been messing with Monkey Audio and FLAC also, but have to put most fiddle farting around off til I get another HD, Filled this one up in short order (and my neighbor thought he had alot with 16gigs worth LOL

[Wombat]

The 200GB Seagates are around $100 these days. I love mine.

[VJ]

Oh, pehaps I should mention: the MP3 player has 1 GB of storage, Blaupunkt advertises with '18 hours of music (at 128 kbps)'.

I have tried some with Lame at -V 0 -b 96 -B 320, and the filesize seems to average approx. 2 MB/minute.


Jörg

[KeiFront]

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...?showtopic=203 gives you an explanation of all the presets (the forum also has a lot of additional information). Just test the different settings and choose the one you like.

[Maggi]

LAME.EXE -k -m s -p --priority 2 -q 0 -V 0 --vbr-old --verbose

[PAugustin]

I mostly use APE (Monkey Audio) and MPC. But if I have to use MP3, it is Lame preset extrem...

[VJ]

Originally posted by Maggi
LAME.EXE -k -m s -p --priority 2 -q 0 -V 0 --vbr-old --verbose

I read that the -q 0 setting is for experimental purpose (this has been
changed from previous versions, where this was the highest quality). Does
the priority do anything on XP ? (the help says this is for OS/2)
Also, isn't --vbr-old the default setting ?

I have now used
-V 0 -b 112 -B 320
and configure EAC to launch up to 4 encoders simultaneously. Encoding a CD
takes up about 2 minutes longer than the rippingproces (at 20x, using my
Toshiba SDM1612).
They average out at about 1.5 MB/min, resulting in approx 9 hours on 1 GB.


Jörg

[Maggi]

Hi Jörg,

to be honest, I lost track of all those little option changes that come more or less with each release ...

-q 0 seems to result in the highest possible encoding quality (noise shaping, psycho acoustic models etc.)

--priority 2 does indeed work on WinXP and lets the compression task wait for CPU idle cycles

--vbr-old was default, but I just wanted to make sure it won't use the new VBR routines until I fully checked 'em out, ie. until 3.96 there were on par quality-wise, but the new VBR routine produced slightly bigger files

-k disables all filtering (high- and lowpass filters)

Just to remind you, I encode all those MP3 mainly for listening to them on my 5.1 digital AV receiver and thus I'd like to keep the sound as clean as possible.

[VJ]

Originally posted by Maggi
to be honest, I lost track of all those little option changes that come
more or less with each release ...
-q 0 seems to result in the highest possible encoding quality (noise shaping, psycho acoustic models etc.)

Yes, I used it too until I read about the minor change. Since then, I use
-q 1 (will try to find a reference on it). q 0 does impact encoding speed
a lot.

--priority 2 does indeed work on WinXP and lets the compression task wait
for CPU idle cycles

Hmm, interesting...

Just to remind you, I encode all those MP3 mainly for listening to
them on my 5.1 digital AV receiver and thus I'd like to keep the sound as
clean as possible.

Ha, ok (hence the -k option).
For in car use, some quality-aspects are less important (due to ambient
noise)...
Still, I have noticed on the track 'Your ghost' by Kirsten Hersch that you
loose sounds : on my hifi some very low basssounds are much less present
with my current settings in comparison to CD playback. I'll see how much
the filesize increases with -k before I decide to use it (and if it is
noticable in my car)
(1 GB of storage is not *that* much)

Jörg