Ok, I've been using EAC to rip CDs...and Audacity to rip Cassettes....now, both have configurable MP3 rates in which to encode to. Coming from 1140+ bitrate ( CD/Cassette quality wav files ) which is the best to set them to when encoding to MP3? 192 224 256 320?
Personally, I would rip at 256 Variable bit rate. Space is not an issue with me. So 256 works well for me. Variable bit rate will adjust the rate for the type of music.Well, for what's going on within the music anyways. If the music is slow & mellow it will encode at a lower bit rate(less information needed for good sound quality). If the music is really "Busy" like Heavy Metal & stuff like that, then it encodes at a higher bit rate.
Definately stick with either 192 or 256, but make SURE to use VBR. the quality if much better than CBR. we have a guide here on how to get the best out of EAC/lame to make the best sounding mp3s: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/mydeneaclame.cfm
If space isn't an issue then use 320 CBR ( --alt-preset insane ). If space is a little issue 256 VBR ( --alt-preset extreme ) will probably out preform the 320 CBR by saving you space while giving you the same sound quality after mastering. 192 VBR is great for car sessions and portable Mp3 players. <off_topic> I personlly feel that Mp4 and MPC out preform Mp3 (LAME). I don't have much prof except what my ears tell me and a few encoding tests. MPC at its standard setting desimates all but sadly is unsupported by the mainstream hardware and software manufactures. Mp4 sounds great and makes files a fraction smaller than there Mp3 counterparts and is supported by the iPod and 3ivx. </off-topic> Ced
I though VBR is better than CBR because it changes bit rate at each frame of audio which sounds better than having all frames encoded at the same bit rate.
Thats why I said: You can't do better than [bold]-alt--preset insane[/bold] in terms of sound quality. Down the road? Mp4 is the standard for High def TV, portable devices ([bold]H.264[/bold]) and is very popular as a video encoding format (Divx/Xvid). Due to the success of iTunes, Mp4 (.m4a) has become a leading audio format. Lets not forget that Mp3 is over 10 years old! While it is the most popular codec for P2P users, a lot of video game producers are starting to use the Ogg Vorbis format. If it wasn't for the LAME project Mp3 wouldn't even be looked at as a suitable audio format for anything (in my opinion). Well, DogBomb that is true. But to me if an Mp3 player doesn't support the VBR encoded files then I don't want it, seeing as VBR encoding is apart of the MPEG-1 (audio layer 3) standard. Most Mp3 players nodays, in the post napster (P2P) era, support VBR. Ced
256 VBR joint stereo down the road IS mp4. so aac won't die any time soon, it may even replace ac3....? well its possible. HE-AAC from nero is too damaging for me. i'm not to familiar with noise artifact, but i think its bad, even on the highest HE AAC settings. so use LC AAC which sounds transparent. i always use extreme preset settings. as in hardware compatibility vorbis may not be in the lead. there's only a handsul of them from iriver. mainly cause its not popular. and its not really battery friendly. takes too much power to decode. when the dev at xiph first made it they weren't considering this. but all will change with vorbis II. it will not be backwards compatible though, as stated by the devs. its intended to be that way. pretty cool huh
[bold]-alt--preset extreme -b 256 -h -v[/bold] Yea, that is cool. I wish MPC had at least one well known protable player that supported it. Do you really think that AAC will replace 6 Channel AC3 (5.1 DD suround)? Is there a such thing as 6 Channel AAC, that can produce 6 descrete audio channels? Ced
there is such things as 6 channel aac. http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=cd8aeee2cc42c4c1576c22ffec2a14e2&threadid=68300 vorbis support multi cahnnel to, just it isn't optimized. so you need a high bitrate to get a good result i'm not sure if aac will replace dts or ac3. but h264/avc is mpegt and aac is mpeg4. so why not. h264 seems to be one of the contender to succeed mpeg2. though i'm not sure how it will do decoding. HD and h264 takes a lot of cpu power. really a lot.
