bit rate

[sulisdog]

I did a search on this ? and didn't find anything.
I was wondering what bit rate most people listen to.
I've heard that 128 is cd quality. Some songs sound better
at a higher rate but are they really that much better
at 320? Just curious.

[MoonMan]

Everyone around here keeps ranting about how variable bit rate is awesome and sounds the best.. well I rip all of my songs at 192 (mostly because I am too lazy to change the settings) and they sound excellent on my computer and (when burned to a CD) sound excellent on my friend's car stereo. Some people, however, think 192 is crappy. To each his own.

[sulisdog]

192 is what I have been using too. Sounds good to me,
and of course I can put more on a cd.

[Foreverboard]

i'm in with moonman on this one. I rip all my MP3's @192, but I can only tell a small difference on my home sterio to my car\computer if the bitrate is like 512 or whatever. But I dont like to take up that much extra space. It is deffinently a personal preferance and will also depend on the quality of your sterio equipment if you will be able to tell any difference.

[PatientSaint]

192 is pretty much cd quality rate of mp3. I havea few at 320 becasue at the time ws all i could find. matter of preferance i guess i'll go along with that. i generally don't do lower than 160 as a rule of thumb for me. 160 is decent qulaity an can fit a few more songs onto Cd.

[Ken17625]

I use FreeRIP and usually encode at 256 CBR. Although I usually rip the same album twice, one in MP3 format with the specs above and then I rip the album in OGG format with a nominal BR of 256. I noticed that OGG sounds a bit better and takes up much less space being its VBR.

[SkorchedHeads]

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[Mr. Mainstream]

thanks for that SkorchedHeads i learn a great deal of that. i thought 320 basiclly was cd quality. i have a Nomad Juke which is 10gig and i rip most stuff at 192 except techno and hardhouse which i rip at 320. ta again.


God Defend New Zealand

[Rickio]

Originally posted by sulisdog
I did a search on this ? and didn't find anything.
I was wondering what bit rate most people listen to.
I've heard that 128 is cd quality. Some songs sound better
at a higher rate but are they really that much better
at 320? Just curious.

The Lame codec is now considered THE best mp3 encoder.
it comes with CDEX or EAC both cd rippers and mp3 encoders.

--alt preset standard is considered the optimum setting for quality and size. it also has 2 settings above that. alt preset standard and the other settings are variable bitrate settings.

their has been some people who do not agree but the leading developers of lame have worked hard on the variable bit rate.
and todays computers have no problem with them.

it sounds great and the idea behind it is that it allows more bandwidth when the music being encoding needs it and less when it does not. so your file size is optimised the sound quality is high.

check them out. search google.

bottom line if you need to save space and want the best quality use --alt preset standard (it averages out to 192kbps) with EAC or CDEX
personally I would take 192vbr over 192cbr but encoding at the highest bitrates thier is no reason to use vbr.

[WhitePony]

dBPowerAmp Music Converter, which I use, also comes with the LAME Encoder (3.9.2), and also allows the --alt preset standard settings.
I just prefer ir because it´s a very simple and small program. Just takes a few clicks to convert or rip.

So, that´s the setting I use, to come up with very good sounding VBR MP3´s... on my PC speakers(from Cambridge SoundWorks), for example, it is possible to sense a small difference in relation to 192 CBR.

[nasrules]

I rip with WMP9 into WMA9 at 48kbps and it sounds great to me. No, I don't have 5.1 speakers but yes they are good. Everyone has a different preference, I suppose I got used to 128 MP3 before I discovered KL.

[goweropolis]

Originally posted by sulisdog
I did a search on this ? and didn't find anything.
I was wondering what bit rate most people listen to.
I've heard that 128 is cd quality. Some songs sound better
at a higher rate but are they really that much better
at 320? Just curious. My goal when encoding to MP3 is to achieve the best sound quality possible with the smallest filesize. Using the LAME MP3 encoder and the --alt-preset standard setting will ensure that 99% of your MP3s sound identical to the original CD track. These are VBR MP3s with bitrates varying between 180-220 kbps, usually averaging around 192 kbps.

It's all depends on your own priorities. If filesize is an issue (using MP3s on portables) you might want to use lower bitrates. If you want to waste a lot of hard drive space and gain no advantage in sound quality, encode at CBR 224 kbps or above. If you're only listening to music on your computer, try using the MPC audio format (info here (http://users.du.se/~kdo/mpc/)). Do some of your own comparisons and make your own call.

I agree with Rickio's comments as well.

Recommended LAME settings here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=15&t=203).
Recommended LAME compiles here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=15&t=478).

SkorchedHeads:Any time you make an mp3, it has to compress the original song data and throw some out to make a smaller file, so no mp3 is equal to the original CD. They are all non-cd-quality.But MP3s can sound identical the original CD if encoded properly. It's never exact but it's possible to make it so close that very few people (even professional audio people) can tell the difference. The only way to get true identical (bit for bit) to the original CD is to use a lossless compressor like FLAC (http://flac.sourceforge.net/).

If you digitize at VBR256, it will still be lower quality than CBR320. It's just that VBR will reduce the bitrate at times when the audio material does not require 256 to represent it faithfully, thus making a smaller file. However, upon playback, your decompressor is going to be wavering all over the place adjusting on the fly to a perpetually changing bitrate.Digitizing at VBR256 (if done properly using the LAME MP3 encoder) can sound better (or at least the same) than 320 kbps. And you also get the benefit of a smaller filesize. The fact that the bitrate fluctuates all over the map when decoding does NOT affect the sound quality of playback. The default decoder in Winamp is more than adequate for MP3 decoding for playback. You can change Winamp settings to show the average bitrate, instead of the fluctuating bitrate, but this affects only the display, not the actual sound quality.

[eclectica]

Real CD quality would be 1408 bitrate. So even 320, which is an astoundingly good quality, is compressed pretty well.

Bitrate is the same thing as internet speed. It is a measure of the amount of data per second allocated towards the file. The more data allocated, the better the quality and the larger the filesize will be.

When you hear the term "128 bitrate", it is actually 128 kilobits per second, or 15 kiloBytes per second. So if your internet connection speed allows you to download at 256kbs, you could download a 5 minute song that is encoded at 128 bitrate in 2.5 minutes, or you could download a 5 minute song encoded at 256 bitrate in 5 minutes.

The mp3s seem to be in multiples of 32. I always avoid the oddball ones with the strange bitrates. Those tend to be the variable bitrate files. I've gotten trouble from Nero when trying to burn those onto an audio CD.

The way the mp3 compresses the file is through a few tricks, but the noticeable one is the cutting of the high frequencies. We hear up to 20 khz, but the mp3s start cutting the frequencies off below that to save file space. The reason it is cut there is because that is where the smallest wavelength and most data exist. This same trick is used for DSL users to simultaneously talk on their phones and use the internet at the same time. A DSL filter forces the people to talk along lower frequencies which are the norm, and preserves the higher freqencies for the data transmission.

So if you want to test an mp3 bitrate, test it on a song with a lot of high notes. Or another way to look at it, is that if the song has a lot of high notes, then a higher bitrate is needed. My own guidelines are to use 160 kbs for regular pop music, and 192 for classical. I know others who use 192 for pop and 256 for classical.

From what I've read, no one has been able to say that 256 bitrate has a corrupted sound. Well, unless you believe the lunatics who think records are better sounding than CDs...then anything goes. So to me even 320 is excessive.

I consider 192 to be the gold standard. There is one time when I encoded some glass harmonica tracks, which are very shrill and have many high notes. After listening very carefully I decided that indeed I needed 256 instead of 192 for those, but that was only after carefully comparing the original wav (1408) to the 192 and 256 derived mp3s many times. Don't try that at home, because the shrill piercing noises cut into your head and cause permanent psychological damage.

[sulisdog]

mucho gracias, curiosity satisfied

[x71us]

The one subject that people constantly discuss is bit rate includeing codecs. There is no real comparison between a cd played on a high end system & any bit rate or codec. To me the best compromise is 256 KBps useing Lame. Thsi is because I actually cna hear the difference. There may be other codecs that are better than Lame but they are hard to use --as in burn to a cd or even play back. Ther is absolutely nothing wrong with MusicMATCH JUKE BOX. I find that it offers a very good compromise for ease & performance. No one actually rips very much with Lame or any other ripper. They are just too difficult to use. Use a jukebo & forget it. The best ripper & fraunhoff coder is in Sonic Foundry Siren. It uses th ehighest quality encoder available & sounds better than any one elses encoder or ripper. The only problem is that Sonic Foundry doesn't market it anylonger. So you have to locate it well you know how. As far as quality is concerned 20 bit audio is the max that will amke a difference for performance. 24 bit audio is a waste as is cbr recording. Why would anyone encode silence & think it will make a difference. The next big thing in Audio will be SACD or Dolby Audio. The current cd is obsolete by at least 10 years. In the next few years the cd will be phased out in favor of this format. The fact that no one has found a way to crack the encryption is iceing on the cake but has anyoone tried yet? The big problem is when evryone ( the consumer) finds out all his equipment & cds are obsolete. As far a the lp record is concerned I feel that the "so called nuts " are correct. Analog sound played back on the very highes quality system will yield a n ambience & feel that digital audio cannnot do. Try & listen sometime & you wil agree. You can even hear the difference on old 80s equipment. This is why the 20 bit audio formats were developed.

[collideous]

Originally posted by sulisdog
I did a search on this ? and didn't find anything.
I was wondering what bit rate most people listen to.
I've heard that 128 is cd quality. Some songs sound better
at a higher rate but are they really that much better
at 320? Just curious.

I'm one of the lucky fellows whose ears must be shot, and whose speakers must be crap. This has the advantage that I can fit more songs on my two harddrives. Most of my stuff is 128, 160, and above 192 I won't even download MP3s. So, I'd say rip at what sounds best for you.

[SkorchedHeads]

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[SkorchedHeads]

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[CrAzYMaNiAk54]

I dont really care, I just download 128, 160, 190 bit rate songs... =D Happy with that.

[grab_grab_the_haddock]

you wrote a couple of nice pieces here scorchie.
couple of questions.
first of all you say your graph shows CBR is better than VBR, with the CBR being closer to the original than VBR. but i can see that the VBR has a target bit rate of 128kbs while the CBR has a constant bit rate of 256kbs. isnt this a little unfair?
id prefer to see the graph with 256kbs CBR compared with something like LAME VBR using the alt-preset extreme command, which gives an average bit rate of 200-250kbs.
i agree with you about Xing, it is an absolutely horrible encoder. But does the Xing frame headers used when encoding LAME vbr really have such a deleterious effect on sound quality?
Your claim that EAC and CDEX both offer a secure mode is far from proven. EAC certainly does, and will report errors on any partr of a track which doesnt read properly so you can go back and check it. CDEX on the other hand, despite offering various "paranoia" settings doesnt have a secure mode yet.
these are just minor quibbles though, most of the stuff you posted here i like, especially the links. and encspot is a first class utility. also jrivers media jukebox is an fine piece of software giving excellent burning performance in particular. strange that its less well know than a piece of crap like musicmatch jukebox.

[goweropolis]

SkorchedHeads:

Graphs are not a good way to test which MP3 encoder is the best. True 256 kbps more accurately represents the WAV, but I highly doubt anyone could hear the difference. Encode some MP3s with LAME --alt-preset standard VBR , and then compare to LAME @ CBR 256 kbps. Let us know if you can hear the difference. The graph doesn't tell you what you hear. You're wasting bits for no reason at all, except to make your graph happy, not your ears.

Albert Faber is the lead writer and contributor to the team working on the LAME encoder project. I believe that Alexander Leidinger is the lead on the MP3 project, and there are many more frequent contributors than Albert, like Takehiro Tominaga, Gabriel Bouvigne, Robert Hegemann and others.

I'm not trying to pick on you SkorchedHeads, but I just want to make sure that people are clear on their information.

[PowerMan57two]

i don't tell any difference, i have recorded at 320 and 128, and tell no difference just that 320 takes up more hard drive space, so now all my songs i record onto the compter are at 128, and the highest i download off the internet is 192, and the lowest i go is 128, but i don't tell that much of a difference

[SkorchedHeads]

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[SkorchedHeads]

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[MoonMan]

Originally posted by SkorchedHeads
PowerMan57two writes: "
____
Look,
If you had one shot,
One opportunity,
Everything
EMINEM - "8 Mile Soundtrack" From the hit song "Lose Yourself"

-If I had one shot.... One opportunity,..... I'd fire the shot in Eminem's ass so he doesn't vomit up any more terrible music.

LMFAO!! Now THAT is some hilarious shit!

[SkorchedHeads]

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[goweropolis]

SkorchedHeads: I can see you've done your homework which is great. Just a couple of things. The reason why I don't think Albert Faber should be portrayed as a lead on the project is this link (http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/history.html) here. As you can see, Albert Faber has contributed, but he's nowhere near being a leader, let alone a major contributor. I'm not trying to discount the fact that he's contributed to the LAME project (because he has) and CDex is a good program (because it is). In addition, most of his work seems to center around making DLLs which is useful in terms of usability, but not so much in terms of quality.

As far as the disagreement over graphs used to evaluate codecs, I wish I could give more extensive proof, but I really can't. Here's a comment from FF123's site (http://http://ff123.net/signatures.html), someone who has done extensive testing of MP3 codecs.Please note that I advocate subjective listening tests of real music to evaluate codec quality. One might be tempted to hypothesize that one codec should sound better than another because it has a better-looking response, but listening tests are the real proof of the pudding! I can't really add anything to that, so I guess we just have different opinions on the subject. Nothing wrong with that. Good discussion though!

[Sockfulloflove]

128-192 bitrate does it for me.

[SkorchedHeads]

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[phalkon30]

Originally posted by Sockfulloflove
128-192 bitrate does it for me.

i agree with that, for now anyway....

using lame and Cdex 1.5 beta 7, i started a test to see what works the best, i would be willing to send my "package" of different bit rates to anybody intrested

the "package" consists of a cd from apocalyptica (its a symphonic rock group, Metallica songs on 4 Cellos), I ripped it in 96kb, 128kb, 192kb, 256kb, 320kb, and VBR (Alt preset extreme, VBR4, 128-224kb)

tonight if i have time I will play it on a few different players in my house with a few different ppl to get a consensus on when bit rate seems to stop mattering, and if VBR sounds bad

I would be willing to send a condensed version of my "package" to anybody that wants to test it, hopefully it could actually get some results and solve a few questions here, right now when zipped, its 357 meg....I cant send that over my 14k upload, but i could condense it to just a song or two in each category

I would really like any comments/questions you have, and i think i may set up a seperate thread for this study if i have intrest, feel free to PM me

[SkorchedHeads]

We don't want to see your 'package'.


:-P

[Rahwgwar]

Originally posted by SkorchedHeads
We don't want to see your 'package'.


:-P

LMFAO oh man i dunno, that just was hella funny to me at that moment, maybe cuz its 1:15 in the morning and I'm screwed in my english class tomorrow............Anywho, I would be interested in seeing your "package" (please keep it only audio related). It would be cool to see what results u got

[SkorchedHeads]

Lol.

[phalkon30]

you sick minded people

SICK SICK SICK!!!

lol, ok, I think I'll make a hash for it tonight, I have to get to school right now, but I can make it for winmx and kazaa

I think I'll find 2 songs that sound good, that should bring it under 50meg i think (2 songs from each category bitrate)

I wonder if I can post a sig2dat link here.....anybody know?

PS, it will be an audio related "package", in a Zipped folder

[TC75580]

Originally posted by phalkon30


i agree with that, for now anyway....

using lame and Cdex 1.5 beta 7, i started a test to see what works the best, i would be willing to send my "package" of different bit rates to anybody intrested

the "package" consists of a cd from apocalyptica (its a symphonic rock group, Metallica songs on 4 Cellos), I ripped it in 96kb, 128kb, 192kb, 256kb, 320kb, and VBR (Alt preset extreme, VBR4, 128-224kb)

tonight if i have time I will play it on a few different players in my house with a few different ppl to get a consensus on when bit rate seems to stop mattering, and if VBR sounds bad

I would be willing to send a condensed version of my "package" to anybody that wants to test it, hopefully it could actually get some results and solve a few questions here, right now when zipped, its 357 meg....I cant send that over my 14k upload, but i could condense it to just a song or two in each category

I would really like any comments/questions you have, and i think i may set up a seperate thread for this study if i have intrest, feel free to PM me
Orchestrated pieces can sound better at lower bitrates then dance songs, or pop tunes. So it would be best if you tried different kinds of music.

Also, you may want other people to test it for you, not everyone can tell the slightest difference in bitrates (I know I can't distinguish between 128 and 192 kb).

[SkorchedHeads]

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[phalkon30]

Originally posted by TC75580

Orchestrated pieces can sound better at lower bitrates then dance songs, or pop tunes. So it would be best if you tried different kinds of music.

Also, you may want other people to test it for you, not everyone can tell the slightest difference in bitrates (I know I can't distinguish between 128 and 192 kb).

yeah, i could try some Paul Oakenfold, that seems to have quite a range, as well as quiet spots where poping comes out, along with other digital noise

when i get a few minutes (too much goin on in my life right now, my moms funeral is on friday and company is coming), I can try to get this test set up

when i get this all figured out, i will make a new thread dedicated to this "survey", and send out my "package", hopefully it will be under 50 meg so i can get it to more than a few people, so an orchestrated peice and some techno, one of each maybe?

[Rickio]

Originally posted by phalkon30


yeah, i could try some Paul Oakenfold, that seems to have quite a range, as well as quiet spots where poping comes out, along with other digital noise

when i get a few minutes (too much goin on in my life right now, my moms funeral is on friday and company is coming), I can try to get this test set up

when i get this all figured out, i will make a new thread dedicated to this "survey", and send out my "package", hopefully it will be under 50 meg so i can get it to more than a few people, so an orchestrated peice and some techno, one of each maybe?

dude,
my condolences...

you know the work on bitrates has been done over and over again and much info is on many websites.
I'm to lazy to go find the urls. If you really need to see more info I could find it. or that scorch bro, I am sure he would if he was inspired. he seems to very aware of quite a bit.

It was just a re-hash for me but noobs are a never ending wave crashing these shores. :-)


peace!

[SkorchedHeads]

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[phalkon30]

thanx guys.....

rickio, has this really been done many times? ok, that was a stupid question, i bet it has.....

either way, i think i might do it for myself just to see how it sounds to ME on MY speakers, i dont want to re-rip my 7gig of mp3s too many times, lol, most of them i used easy cd creator, which made 128 sound like about 4, but lame is sweet!

if anybody is still intrested, i could send them a copy (eventually), but i dont think ill turn it into a big deal anymore, the more i think about it, the less i care right now

gnite guys

[PatientSaint]

my condolences as well... it is hard losing a loved one i know. Love is a strong bond and it breaches all planes of existance and distances. I am sure she's smilin down mate. My enrgy and prayers go out to you during this difficult time. Take care and peace.

Saint :wings

[MoonMan]

I'm so sorry to hear about your loss phalkon... I have had some losses lately and I know exactly how you must feel. Again, I am sorry for your loss.

[grab_grab_the_haddock]

hey i just read over this thread, genuinely sorry to read about your mother man. it kind of puts a perspective on the dumb dick measuring contests that go on here sometimes.

[The Hunter]

:wings Sorry to hear about your loss, and take care of yourself.

[phalkon30]

again, about all i can say is thank you, i really didnt intend for my comment to take the topic away from the thread...

and about my "package", it got smaller (LOL), i tested it very quickly today, so its not ultra conclusive, but i do see what i was missing with 128, 192 sounds quite a bit better, 256 is slightly better, and 320 sounds the same, the vbr song sounded decent to, about 192 quality, but i dont think ill bother using that, takes a little bit longer, and i dont care about file size that much

again, thanx for all your support