Looking for advice from the Pro's

[Mr Slabi]

I am in the process of renewing my monthly contract with my dnas host and need to lower the bitrate due to cost increases. Here is my question to you all.

My upload is at 135k. I was casting 96k 44,100 stereo, and 24k 22,050 mono and getting the odd skip if I browsed to much. Due to the increased pricing It's a good time to lower the bitrate to solve this problem.
My question is....Is 56k 22,050 stereo worse than 64k 44,100 mono? What in your opinion sounds better?

I am also open to other recomendations as far as a good high low combination goes.

Thanks in advance for your help

[GeraghtyJa]

I think at lower rates, a Mono sounds better than Stereo.. Just my opinon,

[global_groove6]

At 56kbps mono sounds better then stereo so 64kbps stereo vs. mono would be close. I would probably stick with mono though, sounds alot less "tinny".

[jesseg]

alot of more current music has the bulk of the clarity or treble within the stereo effect itself. so when you sum the channels to mono you are killing alot of the clarity in the mix.

for voice, 64k 44.1kHz would sound better... 44.1kHz sample rate above 22kHz sample rate alone is a large improvement for voice, and stereo is not generally needed.

for music at low bitrates, the mp3 codec has alot more trouble encoding 44.1kHz at 64kbps, rather than 22kHz at 56kbps. especially in stereo.

so yea basically its between mono and stereo, and is your preference to what it does to the sound. if you want to test low-bitrate mp3 to its fullest, i suggest either

a)
using shoutcast dsp 1.8.0 (dont use cutoff)
and a good fraunhoffer codec
like v4.2 in Nimo Codec Pack (slow, dl here)
also newest lame (right now) sounds good, get it here

b)
getting oddcast here
getting latest lame build (right now) here


and experiment with everything, have fun, trust your ears, and get a decent spectrometer tool, preferably a scrolling sonogram for the most ease of viewing (imo), amber tones or temperature-colored ones are my favs. the best one, and probably most acurate for winamp, is here.

i suggest researching the subjects of 'resampling', and 'antiphase' and also what happens with it when summed to mono.


ttfn
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