If you haven't made a blind test, I'd be inclined to believe that it is all in your head - placebo effects can go a long way I think there are a few cases in which Extreme improves some rare, difficult problem samples, but nobody I know of can differentiate them in normal music under less-than-perfect listening conditions. if Standard fails, so does usually Extreme due to limitations of MP3 as a format. Even the original developer of the preset system (Dibrom) said that he didn't expect Extreme to be audibly better than Standard, he just included it for people who want an extra margin of security and a warm fuzzy feeling.

Notice under your name where it say's JUNIOR member & under mine where it say's SENIOR member? No respect for the elderly? Just kidding!!! You are probably right but you gotta love those warm fuzzy feelings!!

I understand that you can store more to disc as MP3 on a data disc rather than an audio CD.

Some time ago I decided 192 CBR provided acceptable quality/size trade-offs.
Now I've moved on to --alt preset standard.

I was thinking of storing at 320 CBR or --alt preset extreme for storage and then re-encoding to --alt preset standard to go mobile or to de-encode to Wav.

I'm learning here that, all trade-offs considered, --alt preset standard
=> is good enough for on-hand storage
===> (originals go away in hard-to-get-to storage),
=> good to go mobile
=> and good enough to convert back to Wav.

I appreciate everyone's input.

What are your thoughts on JOINT STEREO vs. STEREO?

I was ripping --alt preset standard but just noticed that it ripped to JOINT STEREO rather than STEREO.

If the same sound is to play in both channels, joint stereo stores the "sound" once and "remembers" to play it in both channels rather than storing the same "sound" twice.

I think STEREO may preserve some quality over JOINT STEREO.

Weather I'd notice it on my equipment is questionable.

I ran a test with two CD's and found the total file size difference between the 2-albums worth of MP3 files in JOINT STEREO and STEREO form was 6MB.

--alt preset standard also uses VBR-OLD style.

I can select VBR-Default which is a combination of the OLD and NEW form, set quality to Normal (q=5) and VBR Quality stays at VBR 2 as it would be with --alt preset standard. I set mode to STEREO with Bitrate Min 128kbps and Max 320kbps.

If --alt preset standard sets Quality to q=5 then I think I'm gianing a little quality without giving up much space with using VBR Default over --alt preset standard.

Just use the presets as they are, with joint stereo. I use preset extreme because I can occasionally tell the difference in snare drum or cymbal sounds, and mostly because I'm bored and felt like reencoding my files. Most lossy encoders are optimized for joint stereo and I thought that it didn't change the filesize. The only way that I can think of that the file sizes would be different is if you tried to make something similar to a preset using a bunch of command line parameters or if you changed between vbr old and vbr new. Until, or if, the LAME developers change the presets to vbr new, instead of vbr old, you should stick with vbr old. I would like it if vbr new was the norm because it is a lot faster with a similar file size and quality to vbr old.

"Joint Stereo" didn't increase the files size.

Selecting "Stereo" increased the total file size of two complete albums combined by only 6MB. I thought that was an acceptable trade-off to maybe gain a little quality over Joint Stereo.

I seem to remember reading in an MP3 book that Joint Stereo wasn't as good as Stereo.

The program I'm using allows me to choose VBR OLD, VBR NEW and VBR Default among many other settings.

VBR Default is a combination of VBR OLD AND VBR NEW that combines the best of both.

I have never heard of VBR default. What program is this?

I think the original Xing MP3 encoder did a poor job with Joint Stereo, but LAME does a very good job. I still say stick with Joint Stereo, but if you honestly believe that Stereo sounds better then go with what you like, not what other people tell you.

The program is CDex.

In almost all cases, you are more likely to lose quality with simple stereo instead of joint stereo because of the bitrate limit of MP3 - the maximum frame size is 320k. Sometimes, this is too little when using simple stereo because the encoder cannot exploit the similarities between left and right channel and has to encode everything twice. Using joint stereo is essentially lossless compared to simple stereo, it is just more efficient. All lossless codecs like FLAC or Wavpack also make use of joint stereo to improve their compression ratios.
BTW, you really shouldn't mess with the quality and VBR mode settings in CDex, just use Lame 3.90.3 or 3.96.1 as an external encoder with just the plain "--alt-preset standard" commandline. If you use the internal encoder in CDex, you should check which version it uses, it may be outdated.

I'm using Lame MP3 Encoder (version 1.32 engine 3.96 MMX).

CDex allows you to drop the lame dll file into the CDex directory to remain current.
This allows you to do on-the-fly MP3 Encoding.

Alternatively, you can direct to the lame executable as an external encoder if you wish.

Choosing VBR Default is supposed to give me the best of VBR Old and New.
Quality of q=5 and VBR 2 is the same as --alt preset standard.

The only thing I've changed from --alt preset standard is the stereo setting.
Learning from your post, I see that J-stereo may be preferable.

Thanks

Has anyone had a problem with VBR not displaying information properly in the LED view screen of your MP3 player?

There is no "best of VBR Old and New", you can only use one or the other. "Default" will default to VBR Old.
--alt preset standard regularly uses q=3, as you can see in the DOS window if you call this preset via the external encoder option. However, Lame may override your q=5 and use the default setting q=3 anyway because --preset settings usually override user defined settings, but it depends how the settings are communicated to the lame.dll, which you never really know when using a frontend.

The following is from the CDex manual:

VBR Method Setting

The VBR method setting allows you the change the VBR algorithm which is used for the encoding (detailed information can be found in the LAME user documentation - see http://www.sulaco.org/mp3/doc/html/index.html). The following selections are available

Disabled:
Don't use VBR; instead encodie with a Constant Bit Rate (CBR)

VBR-Default:
Use the default VBR method (currently set to VBR-MTRH)

VBR-Old:
LAME's first functional approach, based on masking, bisection in the bit domain.

VBR-New:
LAME's second approach, based on masking and direct noise allocation.

VBR-MTRH:
a combination of old and new (VBR) routines

VBR-ABR:
The Average Bit Rate (ABR) setting, the encoding principle is similar to what AAC uses as VBR encoding, it is based on perceptual entropy, but more like CBR than VBR. When you select the ABR option in the VBR Settings box, the ABR edit box will be enabled. In this edit box you can specify the target average bit rate. Of course, a larger bit rate will yield generally better-sounding (but larger) MP3 files.

Sorry, but the manual is really outdated - since a long time. See e.g. changelog of Lame 3.90 from December 21 2001(!):
" --vbr-new code disabled (outdated and lower quality) and replaced with --vbr-mtrh (Both --vbr-new and --vbr-mtrh now default to mtrh)" So this manual must have been written about 4 years ago, before even the --presets existed.
I'd bet that default now defaults to vbr-old.

I've found info on Joint Stereo that looks pretty good except that sound can drop out below 19Khz and I believe any surround sound info is lost.

Some webpedia site I found concluded that there is no subjective difference between JS and S in file size or sound quality.

My simple test showed a negligable reduction in filesize.

A pro-JS site showed a negligable improvement in the mid-channel of JS.

What would a command line look like for ...
-> VBR between 128 and 320
-> q=3
-> Stereo

How would it differ if I wanted Joint Stereo?

Are two commands needed for "q" quality and "VBR Quality" ?

Thank you

Don't bother with Stereo; it has absolutely no benefit over J-Stereo.

So in the end what you're looking for is:
-> VBR between 128 and 320
-> q=3

So, try --alt-preset standard, and --alt-preset medium.

Or, you may want to try ABR, such as --alt-preset 144

Please see my other post at ...

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread....56#post1011584

I used the same --alt command with CDex and EAC but got dramatically different file sizes and a few other differences.

Thanks

Your test is inconclusive. You have incorrectly configured the external encoders and so sepending on other factors, you either get left with the PCM-WAV file and no MP3, or a 1kb dud MP3.

When configured properly, you should see a difference of only a few kb or kbps between MP3's, because the only factors will be 1) the drive's offset, and 2) the quality of the rip from CD->HDD.

Thanks NRen2k5.

I think it's the %s%d I left out. I've been away from my computer for a couple of days and wont be able to try it for a couple of more days but believe that is the problem.

Thank you all for being a tremendous resource.

VBR 192-bitrate minimum to 320-bitrate maximum (extreme)
Is very good for mp3 encoding
I use
- EAC settings: --alt-preset extreme %s %d
- and lame 3.96.1


I don't understand people who use CBR 320. It is as it says "insane"
You don't hear the difference on any portable mp3-player.
If you like quality that bad why don't you choose lossless ?

Stauntonel,
Do you notice a difference between
--alt-preset standard %s %d
and
--alt-preset extreme %s %d
?

I thought there'd be no noticeable sound difference but a large increase in filesize.

I just downloaded bonkEnc (www.bonkenc.org). GPL ripper for XP (great so far, just a few questions).

I'm using Lame "VBR - MTRH", is this the latest and greatest?

These are all the options for encoding:
abr
"vbr rh"
"vbr mtrh"

I set the target bitrate at 192kb, with max at 320kb. Sounds is good.

One thing that is odd, is that during the process of ripping, I see the files .mp3 show up in the directory, and then they seem to get overwritten again during the process.

Is it doing a second pass or something?