On Sun, Jul 09, 2000 at 02:19:41PM -0700, Steve Schow wrote:
> I am definitely interested in bitrates higher than 128. In my personal
> opinion, 128 is not good enough. In CBR I would have to encode at 192 to be
> happy. I was under the impression that if I use VBR mode with 128 as the
> bottom...that I would get an average about about 185 or so (which is what I
> have been getting), but the advantage is that in certain sections where it
> needs to, it uses higher bitrates...and in sections where it does not need
> to, it would use lower bitrates. Hypotheticall, this would mean overall
> better sounding music...or more efficient use of bitrates to acheive the
> best sounding playback. Hypothetically that is..
>
> This is the lame command line I have been using (3.83):
>
> lame -V1 -mj -h -p -F -S -b 128
Wow, I'm not even sure what that command line does. :-)
> With that, I've been getting average bit rate of around 185. Filesize is
> about the same as if I had just done 192 CBR, which is satisfactory for me.
Why don't you try this command line with LAME 3.85:
lame -h --abr 192
This uses Mark Taylor's new average bitrate version of VBR, and will
actually create files near 185 kbps for moderately complex music (e.g.
"Wake Up" by "Rage Against The Machine" comes out at 182 kbps).
You COULD add "-mj" or "-b112" to the command line, but I haven't seen
that much size improvement from joint stereo (sometimes the files are
slightly larger, go figure) and limiting the low end of the bitrate to
112 doesn't improve the sound any, IMO.
Besides, the best options are the simplest options. :-)
> Question is, is this VBR encoding superior to CBR 192 or not in terms of
> sound quality? If not, then why bother? I might as well just use 192 CBR
> and potentially less wierd implications and greater compatability with MP3
> players. Secondly, am I using the best command line for what I want out of
> VBR mode?
You'll have to answer that first question yourself. What kind of
quality are you looking for? What's good enough? Which one sounds
better to you? Keep in mind that VBR in LAME is still in heavy
development, and no psy model is perfect.
If you like CBR at 192 kbps, then encode at that rate.
> As you pointed out, its very difficult to tell whether CBR 192 or VBR mode
> is better in terms of sound quality. What about encoding time?
Yep, it IS difficult. :-) In my own tests, I really can't tell the
difference between the original and a 160 kbps encoding most of the
time. When I use the options I described above (ABR of 192), I've only
been able to tell the difference once out of 250 encodings -- and that
was a pretty subtle change in a passage with which I was familiar and I
knew to be difficult to encode.
But I encode my personal MP3 collection at 128 kbps. It's really small
and good enough MOST of the time. And that's the whole point of the
format, isn't it? When I want to archive my audio, i.e. save it
"forever", my preferred format is the original ".wav" file I extracted
from the CD. :-)
The newer VBR modes in LAME 3.85 are almost as fast as CBR. It's not a
big issue much anymore.
> -steve
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Mark Taylor [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Sunday, July 09, 2000 12:24 PM
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject: Re: [MP3 ENCODER] new VBR code
> >
>
> > I do all my testing at 128kbs and lower, and I still
> > feel that 128kbs CBR is on average better than VBR (128kbs average)
> >
> > At higher bitrates, (see r3mix.net for example), there is
> > some evidence that VBR outperforms CBR. But this is mostly
> > based on signal processing tests - not hearing tests. hearing
> > tests are hard to perform at such high bitrates because
> > everything sounds pretty good, and I think the evidence
> > is not conclusive either way.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> > MP3 ENCODER mailing list ( http://geek.rcc.se/mp3encoder/ )
> >
>
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--
Don Melton
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