I have always encoded with CBR. I don't know, something makes me wary of using
VBR, maybe it's the sound quality I got using VBR with the Xing codec, or maybe
I'm just crazy. I'm just afraid it will reduce sound quality (which is most
important to me, more so than file size; still I want the best quality-size
trade-off) or that VBR MP3's will not play on some obscure MP3 player. Please,
prove me wrong. :)
> Hi Ivo.
>
> I am also not part of the development team but I am interested in the progress,
> mostly in VBR.
> The beta versions are generally bug free. I have not found any versions that have
> introduced any noticeable problems and I can recommend using the latest one (3.60)
> which has had a large improvement in VBR quality. There have been some substantial
> gains in sound quality & speed since 3.50. From what I gather, the next release
> (3.61) will provide a substantial increase in the speed of VBR encoding so I am
> looking forward to that.
>
> If you are using VBR then the following switches are manditory (IMO):
> -h -V5 -b32 -B320 -k --lowpass 24
>
> I'm not sure if -k is necessary anymore but will do no harm. Maybe a developer can
> comment on that.
> The lowpass switch is really a requirement, otherwise the high frequencies start
> reducing above 13khz which is not acceptable (IMO). I seriously think this filter
> should be removed or altered to not affect any frequencies below 16khz.
>
> Cheers,
> Ross.
>
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