VBR Settings?

[Drooling Dog]

For a few years now I've been ripping to mp3 using CBR at a bit rate of 160. Most people tell me that VBR is better, but I've always avoided it. Fear of the unknown, I guess.

If I'm accustomed to (and happy with) 160 fixed, what setting should I use if I want to try VBR? That is, what settings should give me the same quality, but a smaller file. And what settings should give me better quality and the same file size?

I'm sure "it depends" on a lot of different things, like what each song is like. But I'm looking for a default setting to use for everything, that is similar to the 160 CBR that I'm used to.

Thanks.

[Triton4]

Actually, if you're ripping to mp3 from Audio CD or converting from WAV, you'll notice that VBR gives you a 'slightly better' quality than the conventional CBR. This is because the encoder adjusts the bitrate according to the effects in the music at every position, hence all effects of varying types are given sufficient bitrate/quality & the overall quality is thus much better than CBR, in which all effects are forced to a Constant bitrate & hence slightly poor quality.

The only drawback of VBR is that Hardware (and a few software) mp3 players do not support it well - as the player has to continuously adjust to the varying bitrate, hence causing 'skipping' or unwanted effects.

If you're listening to VBR mp3s using Winamp, you won't have any problems

160 kbps average is a good bitrate setting.

[Moguta]

All software players should handle VBR just fine. The better hardware players (iRiver, Rio, newer Sonys) will also have no problem. Some old portables only supported 128Kbps, or wouldn't go as high as 320Kbps or as low as 32Kbps, and most VBR files will have some 320Kbps frames in it (and 32Kbps for digital silence).

You should use LAME 3.90.3 as your encoder, 'tis the best quality you can get from MP3 & free at that. (LAME is a command-line program, so you'll want a graphical front-end program. I recommend Speek's MultiCodec Frontend, or Exact Audio Copy for ripping & encoding right from CD.)

For same filesize & better quality, encode files with only the custom command --alt-preset 160 (which is "ABR", VBR that attempts to keep the average bitrate around 160). For excellent quality & true VBR, use the custom command --alt-preset standard. Filesizes from that can range from 128Kbps to 200Kbps+ entirely dependant on how complex the particular audio piece is to encode.

More details... http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showtopic=203

[Drooling Dog]

Originally posted by Moguta
[B]For same filesize & better quality, encode files with only the custom command --alt-preset 160 (which is "ABR", VBR that attempts to keep the average bitrate around 160).

Thanks Moguta! Since I posted this, I've actually been experimenting with LAME a little bit, from within EAC.

This is the default command line:

%l--alt-preset 128%l%h--alt-preset standard%h %s %d

But there are also other settings to choose from menus. Here are the settings I've been using:



So I'm kinda trying to figure out how the two (command line and menus) work together. If you have any clue, please don't hesitate to let me know. I'm trying to get the same filesize & better quality results you mentioned above.

I'm going to post this on the EAC forum too.

Thanks again.