iPod users - what is your bit rate of choice?

james.miller · 17 Jul 2006 at 16:29

well if thats what your intended use is then you cant really beat it.

SexyGreyFox · 17 Jul 2006 at 19:56

FunkyT said:
Do you encode your MP3s @ 128Kbps, 192Kbps or some other bit rate?

128 is quite good enough for me and I play them at the maximum volume through decent headphones.
My suggestion would to take your favourite song and encode it at several bit rates and then get somebody else to play them in a random order and see which ones you can tell the difference on and from there make your choice.
If you choose 64 go and see your doctor.

FunkyT · 17 Jul 2006 at 20:00

dmpoole said:
128 is quite good enough for me and I play them at the maximum volume through decent headphones.
My suggestion would to take your favourite song and encode it at several bit rates and then get somebody else to play them in a random order and see which ones you can tell the difference on and from there make your choice.
If you choose 64 go and see your doctor.

Nice one dude :cool:

Journey · 17 Jul 2006 at 20:02

192Kbps or greater, using a 3G iPod and Shure e4c's the 128kbps sounds muddy.

james.miller · 17 Jul 2006 at 20:02

dmpoole said:
If you choose 64 go and see your doctor.

LOL.

Meatball · 17 Jul 2006 at 21:03

320Kbit AAC. I have no choice really as I you can't use a different bit rate on your iPod without messing with your library

Journey · 17 Jul 2006 at 21:18

Lost-Prophet said:
320Kbit AAC. I have no choice really as I you can't use a different bit rate on your iPod without messing with your library

So use winamp with the ml_ipod plugin.

I despise iTunes

SexyGreyFox · 17 Jul 2006 at 22:00

I've spent about 30 minutes on this and surprised myself so please download and look at the test results.

I grabbed an audio track at full WAV bandwidth and then encoded at 320, 192, 160, 128 and 64.

The picture shows the Spectrum Analyser graphs and where the roll offs occur on each sample.
The graphs start with -

Full frequency Wav file
320 bit MP3
190 bit MP3
160 bit MP3
128 bit MP3
64 bit MP3

Spectrum Analyser results of different Bit Rate MP3's (500k)

have fun

james.miller · 17 Jul 2006 at 22:05

you're right, that IS interesting, and not expected. What encoder and settings did you use for that?

SexyGreyFox · 17 Jul 2006 at 22:14

james.miller said:
you're right, that IS interesting, and not expected. What encoder and settings did you use for that?

Spectrum Analyser results of different Bit Rate MP3's (500k)

james.miller · 17 Jul 2006 at 22:19

do you have options to pass command line settings to an external encoder? if you've got time, can you test 320k using the lame 3.97 beta 2 encoder with the following settings please?

Code:

-V 2 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d

that really isnt expected, but lame 3.97 beta 2 should fair a lot better, especially with those settings and using VBR.

SexyGreyFox · 17 Jul 2006 at 22:42

james.miller said:
do you have options to pass command line settings to an external encoder? if you've got time, can you test 320k using the lame 3.97 beta 2 encoder with the following settings please?

Code:

-V 2 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d

that really isnt expected, but lame 3.97 beta 2 should fair a lot better, especially with those settings and using VBR.

Whooooosh

Links and a bit more instruction

or

send me part of a MP3 that you've encoded and I'll run it through the analyser.

james.miller · 17 Jul 2006 at 23:10

sorry yes, lol. i should explain a little

*download lame 3.97b2 for here: http://www.free-codecs.com/download_soft.php?d=1661&s=22
*extract the zip file into a seperate director in your audiograbber folder. call it lame for simplicity
*in audiograbber, where you had the internal tab hilighted in your pic, click on external hit 'browse' and find the new lame encoder.
*in the 'arguments' field, copy and paste the code i posted above, hit ok and you should be ready.

'-v2 vbr new' sets the bitrate to 190vbr, so thats a good basis to start. If you want to try 320k CBR, change '-v2' to '-b' and remove the '--vbr new' part. I hope thats clear enough lol

SexyGreyFox · 17 Jul 2006 at 23:16

bedtime - will attempt it tomorrow.

What goes in the Predefined Arguments field?
At the moment its saying Lame 128 kbit/s Joint Stereo

Ok, lets get this right.
If I want 320 bit I put the top field in and 190 for the bottom field.
What is 128 bit?

-b --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d

-V 2 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d

sinister_stu · 18 Jul 2006 at 09:39

When it was conceived, the mp3 standard was for music encoded at 96kbps to be inaudibly different to the original. This is tested using trained and certified "good listeners". This still hasn't been achieved, but certainly with good encoders, a 128kbps mp3 should sound no different to the original.

PMKeates · 7 Jan 2007 at 15:51

welshtom said:
128 is fine.
why bother with mp3's just stick raw wav in there if you want quality?

FLAC support tbh

SexyGreyFox · 7 Jan 2007 at 16:05

WOW - now thats what I call a revival thread - nearly 7 months.

FunkyT · 7 Jan 2007 at 16:09

Thread revival is the new rock & roll

Codmate · 7 Jan 2007 at 18:14

Also, if you rip to FLAC, you know you never need rip again.

You can always transcode from there if you need smaller files for portable players. The amount of storage on players is becoming so large these days that it won't be an issue soon anyway.

If you're ripping to mp3, you're going to find yourself doing what I did over xmas and re-ripping everything anyway at some point

gothic_hobbit · 29 Jan 2012 at 03:18

Cowon and FLAC is all you need.