MP3 Encoding Formats

[Hannah's_Knight]

I looked into the best sounding MP3 formats a while ago and eventually came up with a few theories as to the best sounding MP3 encosion ^^
A lot of people encode in Default 128kbps CBR which has a good sound quality but can sound tinny and lack body and bass. Also as an optional check point in most MP3 ripping tools there's a "high quality" tab that when kicked, encodes your audio in Joint Stereo (an advancement over Stereo).
Myself, I use CDex's LAME MP3 Encoder with my own personal settings that may be a bit heavy on the file size but sound close enough to perfect.
http://www.cdex.n3.net/ You can get the Ripping Engine there and if you would like to test my audio stats, please go here:
[url]http://server5.uploadit.org/files2/251203-VBR-PJS-TYPE%20(NEW).JPG[url]
and copy the settings exactly into CDex's LAME MP3 Encoder.
It uses a VBR method with a range from 192kbps to 320kbps, prooviding a high quality range that suits most volumes. It has a heavy advantage over CBR because of it's intelligence and will not mess up the ID-V3 tags or make mistakes in the time or ABR like most VBR methods do.
Please enjoy ^^

[Forse]

Mp3 sucks and it should die...it was around for too long, time for better things to take them place Here is better alternative to crappy mp3 http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/listen.html

[Hannah's_Knight]

I heard of Vorbis a while back when I was researching FLAC...never thought to try it though. Is it that good? I heard there wasn't much support for it in players other than Winamp XD

[Forse]

I suggest reading docs once in a while...it helps. Anyway after installing ogg filter anything can play ogg from MediaPlayer to Winamp. Also even my portable CD player can play ogg

[Hannah's_Knight]

*meows in pain*
After all my hard work glomphing over MP3 too ¬_¬ lol
Never mind, guess it's out with the old and in with the new *cries* lol

[bOcyOgl]

Um, so... What is the bitrate for Ogg to be 'near cd-quality'?

I heard that new mp3 players support Ogg files, is it true ?

[Forse]

Originally Posted by bOcyOgl

Um, so... What is the bitrate for Ogg to be 'near cd-quality'?

I heard that new mp3 players support Ogg files, is it true ?

Well yes. ALL mp3 players (for PC) support ogg nowdays. Also almost all new made CD/portable mp3 players support ogg.

A large majority of people are under the assumption that an mp3 at 128kps is 'CD-quality.' This bitrate does not accurately reproduce the sound from the original source material. As a matter of fact, no lossy compression algorithm will be able to accurately reproduce that signal. For mp3 to achieve what most people would consider CD-quality sound, it is most often necessary to encode at bitrates of 192kpbs or even higher. Needless to say, this is a significant increase in file size. To enjoy adequate quality audio with mp3, larger files are needed.

With Vorbis, however, there is no need to sacrifice storage space to enjoy high quality audio. Vorbis uses different and improved technology to better compress audio. The result is a file that sounds better than mp3 but that takes up less space. Hence, there is no need to compromise.

Traditionally, quality has been closely related to bitrate. Unfortunately, this is a notion that has evolved and been popularized by mp3 and other encoders where bitrate directly affected quality. Vorbis takes a different approach. Instead of having to deal with specific bitrate settings, Vorbis encoders use a quality setting from zero to ten. This setting determines the final sound quality of the file and its size.

Let's use an example. I took a six-minute track (This Song is Over) from an album by The Who and ended up with a sixty-six meg .wav file. I encoded it at 192kbps with lame, a popular mp3 encoder. The resulting mp3 takes up nine megs of space. I compressed the same wav file and set the Vorbis encoder to quality setting 4.99, a setting that approximates an mp3 encoded at 192kbps. The Vorbis file size is 6.1 megs, a savings of about 30%. There is a clear and immediate benefit from using Vorbis. You save space.

See more here: http://www.vorbis.com/intro.html

[Hannah's_Knight]

Testing OGG in 192kbps...not bad at all...I think the file size is a tad heavy though...I think I'll stick with my MP3 format...cleaner tags too ^^ lol
Nothing against OGG but I just can't say goodbye to my old ways ~_^

[Forse]

I guess u didn't understand ogg...ever heard of RTFM? Ogg at lower bitrates allows for same quality and less filesize. Try to encode song in 192kbs with mp3 and then encode with ogg at 96kbs (or 92 I don't remember) and see that filesize will be smaller, but quality will be the same. If you're paranoid then encode with ogg at 128kbs


P.S. Really read docs...before you say something

[bOcyOgl]

Originally Posted by Forse

P.S. Really read docs...before you say something

Just woke up and having hangovers .... headache couldnt bother to read long essays... had too much whiskey last night haha

Thanks for the info, I shall start using Ogg ^^

[Hannah's_Knight]

Hehe ^^
You're right, Ogg does rule *is ripping all his CDs in it* Thanks for the info!

[Cruzz]

Originally Posted by Forse

I guess u didn't understand ogg...ever heard of RTFM? Ogg at lower bitrates allows for same quality and less filesize. Try to encode song in 192kbs with mp3 and then encode with ogg at 96kbs (or 92 I don't remember) and see that filesize will be smaller, but quality will be the same. If you're paranoid then encode with ogg at 128kbs


P.S. Really read docs...before you say something

Ogg at 96kbit is definitely not equal to 192kbit MP3. Ofcourse it depends on personal preference as the two codecs will alter different things to achieve compression but the Ogg will still be farther from the original than the MP3 at those bitrates. MP3 might not be great but it's not *that* bad.

[bOcyOgl]

May I ask which software Ogg encoder do you recommend ?

[Shii]

I've use Winamp 5 and QCD to encode to Ogg... the "cleanest" way to do it is Exact Audio Copy, but that takes way too long compared to Winamp.

Ogg at 96kbit is definitely not equal to 192kbit MP3.

It's really close, though.

[bOcyOgl]

Thanks ashibaka. Are the 2 softwares free?

So is ogg 96kbit good enough then ? I start to think mp3 128kbit is not enough and 192kbit is better.

[Shii]

Ogg Vorbis quality is on a scale of 1 to 10, I think, and 6 is good enough for most people. 3-5 will make OK quality and a smaller size than MP3.

QCD is free, you can get it here: http://www.quinnware.com/
and download the Vorbis plugin on the same website

Winamp is free but the Vorbis plugin is secret and you're not allowed to download it

[Cruzz]

Originally Posted by ashibaka

Ogg at 96kbit is definitely not equal to 192kbit MP3.

It's really close, though.

No, I wouldn't even say it's close. With certain songs a ~128kbit Ogg might be as good as a 198kbit MP3 but on average I'd say you can achieve comparable results with Ogg with about 25-30% lower bitrate than MP3. So that would mean that q5 Ogg would be roughly comparable to 192kbit (ABR naturally) MP3

As for the encoding side, I've used Besweet&Oggmachine(http://dspguru.notrace.dk/) and OggDropXPd(http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showtopic=15049) and both have worked okay for me.

[RebootEDC]

Hi guys...
You're treating MP3 as a whole thing... But there is a lot of difference between different codecs: Xing, LAME, the older linux codecs... etc.
And Ashibaka, you say something about speed... There is a phrase in Spanish that says something like "The cheapest, at last is more expensive", I mean, before using lame at full quality, when I had a Pentium 100, time was golden, so I encoded allways with Xing, which is much faster than any other. But man, quality was not so good. When I switched to Linux I used... Mmmhh.. I can't remmember now... blade ? And the quality was even worse.
I'm telling you, allways with the same configurations.
Then I switched to win again (with a more powerfull machine) and I discovered LAME. It's pretty slow, but it's quality is by far, one of the best (when configured correctly, bitrates, notch frequency, etc...)

I haven't tried OGG format yet... Time to time, but I agree with Forse: MP3 has been around here for too long.

[dbzgundam]

as for me..I prefer Ogg over MP3 anyday. Also MP4/AAC is just as good IMO.

[GipFace]

Myself, I use CDex's LAME MP3 Encoder with my own personal settings that may be a bit heavy on the file size but sound close enough to perfect.
(insert whacked settings here)

LAME has a tweaked VBR setting that is superior to that. In fact, you don't need to deal with any messy bitrate options or doodads. The only option you need is --alt-preset standard. That's it. Nothing more. Use it.

Also almost all new made CD/portable mp3 players support ogg.

You're joking, right?

(Insert OGG technical BS here)

I won't even bother with this.