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]

All benefit of techinfo to ZeroPaid has beeen removed.
Theees little postie has beeen Skorched! :-)

[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). Do some of your own comparisons and make your own call.

I agree with Rickio's comments as well.

Recommended LAME settings here.
Recommended LAME compiles here.

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.

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.