Ok...what is the general consensus on VBR vs. CBR for your MP3's? I have been using VBR with high quality settings under lame (ie, -V1 -b160 ), and pretty happy except that the songtime display is not correct on many MP3 players, including the Empeg. This may or may not be an issue. If I do CBR it would likely be 192kb, which would render files slightly bigger than what I am getting with the above VBR modes.

So, what is the consensus?

I'm happy with VBR at about the same settings. I think the quality is more important than the time stamp.

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Murray 06000047

Well, what VBR buys you is an economy of bits. If a particular frame is silent or not "complicated" then it can be rendered just fine in 32, 64, maybe 96 kbps. Frames with lots of stuff going on musically will be rendered more precisely with higher bitrates. 192 constant will be good quality, but why not use those bits where they're really needed?

VBR time display and fast forwarding issues will be fixed in 1.1, to my understanding. If I were to re-encode my collection (a distinct possibility) I would use a decent VBR setting.

-Tony
MkII #554

I wont be re-encoding my CDs but I am sticking to VBR with LAME enc dll 3.86 inside audiograbber

(the latest AG beta is great)

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Murray 06000047

What VBR settings are you guys using..under lame...and which version of lame? I'm trying out 3.88 alpha right now. i hope that's a good call. I have been using these settings and I'm averaging about 1.5MB/minute, which is pretty equivelant to 192kbCBR in terms of filesize. Not sure if it sounds better not, but theoretically its supposed to.

lame -v -V1 -b160 -k -mj -p -h --id3v1-only

I only get low bitrates during silent passages. I have found that when I used a lower minimum bitrate, the lower bitrates only get used a little bit anyway and it doesn't make much difference in the size of the file, so I might as well just set the minimum bitrate to 160.

I have also found that when I do *NOT* use the -k option, filesizes are a bit smaller, maybe 10-20% smaller. But then the lowpass filter is being used and cutting off high frequencies. I'm not sure where the default cutoff frequency is. Anyone know? Anyone have any theories or opinions about using or not using -k or other lowpass filter settings?

How about joint stereo vs. non-joint? What other lame VBR related settings should I be considering?

thanks!

-steve