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Topic: Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate? (Read 5006 times) previous topic - next topic
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Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate?

I've been out of the loop for a while due to RL issues so I' wondering if some conclusions are still correct. From what I've read LAME does not encode very well on low bitrates such as the ones I'm going to use to rip my audio books to use on my portable for running.

Years ago I started out with the hacked Radium codec which often locked up on several files so that I switched over to Fastencc 1.02, the Fraunhofer mp3 codec which produces fairly acceptable mp3s at 64/44 with high quality setting.  Now is there a better mp3 encoder for this bitrate around already?

As neither my standalone, car audio nor portable does support Ogg Vorbis I'll be staying with mp3 for the time being.

Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate?

Reply #1 –
Fraunhofer is said to be better than LAME at bitrates <128kbps, though personally I don't find LAME bad at all at 80/96/112 at 44.1khz. I just have bad hearing 

Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate?

Reply #2 –
Hi Moon, welcome to Hydrogenaudio.

ArsonDragon is right, Fraunhofer should give better results than LAME at ~ 64kbps bitrates (but this applies mainly for music. Fraunhofer can use intensity stereo, LAME can't, which results in an advantage for Fraunhofer).

For encoding speech you should be able to get decent results with 64kbps lame. There are several threads about this already. Using the search function you'll find e.g.:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....lame,and,speech
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....lame,and,speech
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....lame,and,speech
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....lame,and,speech
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....lame,and,speech
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....lame,and,speech

In short:
- first try using a preset (--alt-preset 64 or --alt-preset cbr 64 (or only --preset ... if you're using lame 3.95.1))
- to keep sampling rate at 44.1kHz at low bitrates (do this only if necessary!) use --resample 44.1
- use mono instead of stereo: -m m
- use a lowpass as low as possible. This will decrease artifacts like ringing/warbeling. A too low lowpass will result in dull sound. You'll have to find a good tradeoff for you: --lowpass 8

So a good starting point (for lame 3.90.3) would be:
--alt-preset 64 --resample 44.1 -m m --lowpass 8
Let's suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is feeling negative? The rain? Or YOU? What's causing the negative feeling? The rain or your reaction? - Anthony De Mello

Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate?

Reply #3 –
Quote
So a good starting point (for lame 3.90.3) would be:
--alt-preset 64 --resample 44.1 -m m --lowpass 8

All are very good advice. One nitpick though, to use 64kbps profile he will need to use LAME 3.92 or higher. LAME 3.90.3 does not support below 80kbps profile.
-- Floydian Slip

Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate?

Reply #4 –
Hi Moon,

Tigre's post should win an award - concise and uberuseful!

Do you have to stay at 44.1khz?  Lame automatically goes down to 22khz and lower as you drop the bitrate - which, well, you may as well do (unless your portable doesn't support <44.1khz) 

The other thing - Audio books whilst running?  I totally zone out with Audio books on, and cant ride, jog or even walk without running the risk of waltzing out in front of a car!  Remember the Darwin Awards guy that totally zoned when he jogged and jogged off a cliff... Be careful

Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate?

Reply #5 –
Quote
Quote
So a good starting point (for lame 3.90.3) would be:
--alt-preset 64 --resample 44.1 -m m --lowpass 8

All are very good advice. One nitpick though, to use 64kbps profile he will need to use LAME 3.92 or higher. LAME 3.90.3 does not support below 80kbps profile.

The version of 3.90.3 I use does.  Just tested with --alt-preset 64 and --alt-preset 64 --resample 44.1 -m m --lowpass 8.

BTW, Moon: If your player is picky about what kind of mp3s it plays, it could have problems with mono (-m m) as well (-> give it a try). In this case you might want to downmix to mono and upmix to stereo before encoding and leave out the -m m. The encoder will encode in joint stereo, so the "dublicated-mono" pseudo stereo input will be encoded almost as good as mono.

You can do this with foobar2000 diskwriter with DSP chain "Downmix channels to mono" -> "Convert mono to stereo" enabled.
Let's suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is feeling negative? The rain? Or YOU? What's causing the negative feeling? The rain or your reaction? - Anthony De Mello

Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate?

Reply #6 –
Quote
The version of 3.90.3 I use does.  Just tested with --alt-preset 64 and --alt-preset 64 --resample 44.1 -m m --lowpass 8.

You're right. 3.90.2 has problem not 3.90.3. For some unknown reason I had version 3.90.2 under my version 3.90.3 directory.  That's why it rejected that commandline on my system. Sorry about creating noise. 
-- Floydian Slip

Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate?

Reply #7 –
I think it used to be that John33:s modified compiles of 3.90.x supported preset below 80, but the standard compile did not. However, i vaguely recall seing somewhere that the latest standard compiles of 3.90.3, may have supported them as well. Maybe John33 can correct me if I am wrong...

Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate?

Reply #8 –
Only the "modified bundle" 3.90.3 allows alt-presets below 80.  The "stable bundle" compile does not.  However, for a few months the stable bundle on rarewares accidentally contained an old version of the modified compile lame.exe.  See this thread for details.

If you think you've got the stable bundle but --alt-preset 64 works then you've probably got this old modified compile.  You can check this because if it is the case then you will also be able to encode using --preset without the "alt-".

The lame.exe from the current stable bundle on rarewares definitely does not allow --alt-preset 64.  But the modified bundle is just the same as the standard with useful extras, so you may as well use that.

Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate?

Reply #9 –
Thanks to all for your extensive advice. I was anxious to see whether I could save myself some time by posting here but I guess I just gotta do it like always and do a few test runs myself  At least I have a few good pointers to begin with.

I did my previous encodes on 44 khz joint stereo so as to able to convert them back to wav easily without any additional steps and because the 22050 encodes I did always sounded a bit dull to me.

Speaking of LAME versions, the german mp3 portal http://www.mpex.net mentions in their download section that the best quality with LAME presets is offered by version 3.90.3. Using presets in versions after 3.92 (which I've been using for a while with --alt-preset standard for music encodes) could even result in a decrease of quality. Any confirmation on this and how come?

Anothering thing: following the threads mentioned by tigre I came across certain limitations of the different mp3 formats, e.g. mpeg 1 layer 3 does not support frequencies < 44 khz. Where can I read more about this? Thanks.
 

Best MP3 codec for audio books at low bitrate?

Reply #10 –
Quote
Speaking of LAME versions, the german mp3 portal http://www.mpex.net mentions in their download section that the best quality with LAME presets is offered by version 3.90.3. Using presets in versions after 3.92 (which I've been using for a while with --alt-preset standard for music encodes) could even result in a decrease of quality. Any confirmation on this and how come?

Well, it's just that 3.90.x has been tested extensively, while newer versions haven't been (at least for high bitrates like --alt-preset standard). For the low bitrates you're planning to use, it should be easy for you to find out yourself what version sounds better to you.

Quote
Anothering thing: following the threads mentioned by tigre I came across certain limitations of the different mp3 formats, e.g. mpeg 1 layer 3 does not support frequencies < 44 khz. Where can I read more about this? Thanks.

E.g. in the html documentation included with lame.
Let's suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is feeling negative? The rain? Or YOU? What's causing the negative feeling? The rain or your reaction? - Anthony De Mello