>
> 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
>
-mj: jstereo gives better S/N ratios, but does it sound better
at high bitrates? No one seems to know. FhG by default will
disable jstereo at high bitrates, but I dont know why
they do this.
-p: uses 16 bits from each frame for the CRC checksum
which would otherwise be used for data.
-F: Not recommended. This was added to force a
minimum frame size even if the data
could fit in a smaller framesize. -F was added because
some obscure portable couldn't handle frames < 64kbs.
Originally -F had no impact on the amount of data actually
used to encode the frame, but Robert may have since changed
this.
>
> 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?
>
Again, no one knows the answer to this. In terms of S/N ratio, I
believe the analysis on r3mix.net show that VBR is better. But in
terms of sound quality, we need some expert listeners to do a series
of blind tests on high end audio equipment. The problem is that most
people (myself included), for most samples, cant tell the difference
between 192CBR and the original. (The best listeners, on the best
equipment, cannot tell the difference between 256kbs and the original
most of the time).
The thing I worry about with VBR is the following:
A VBR with an average bitrate of 180kbs may sound as
good as a 200kbs CBR 99% of the time. But 1% of the time
the psycho acoustics could screw up and use 128kbs
when it needed 180kbs. So 1% of the file might only be
as good as a 128kbs encoding. So which is better:
1: average bitrate 180kbs which sounds like 200kbs 99% of the time
and 128kbs 1% of the time.
2. CBR 180kbs which sounds like 180kbs 100% of the time
???
Mark
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