Roxio CD Creator 8 LAME, ATRAC to MP3

2006-02-05 22:01:35

I have accumulated several questions and thought I'd run them through the GURUS here.  Just as background, I use an ipod and itunes on a PC.  I encode using mp3 to maintain maximum compatability, even though aac is thought by some to be better.

First my compliments on the latest 128 mp3 vbr listening test.  That was pretty awesome.  I've dowloaded lame 3.97b2 and use it with EAC, sometimes.

Question 1!  I just got Roxio CD Creator 8.  The LP and Tape assistant says it uses Lame for MP3 encodes and links to a page for lame v. 3.96.  You get two choices, cbr or vbr.  But when I use the vbr option, I set it at 192 kbps, and wind up with files that say they are 192 kbps, or once in a while, it will say 256 kbps.  Is it using some sort of lame abr encoding?  Does anyone know?  The LP and Tape assistant is wonderful with this software.  I use it to get LPs to wave and tag them (the auto tagging is truly awesome) and make CDtext CDs from the wave file.  However, I'm a little torn as to whetheer to use the faux-vbr lame encoder that comes with it.  It's nice to use simply because it's integrated so well with the software and the auto-tagging is wonderful.  Does anyone have any insights about this?

Question 2!  I have some Lps on ATRAC 4 and ATRAC R minidiscs.  As some of you know, there's no way to upload these files, even with hi-MD.  So I record from a home MD deck optical out to PC wave file.  Then I encode in MP3 to get it on my ipod.  In essence, I'm transcoding from ATRAC 4.0 or R (about 256 to 292 kbps, if I remember correctly) to MP3.  I try to do overkill on the transcoding so it won't cause any audible problems.  Usually, depending on the orignal quality of the recording, I rip the waves to 192 to 225 vbr MP3s.  Is there anyone who knows or has a guess as to whether this is going to cause significant artifacts?  I'm not into perfection using difficult samples, I'm just into not losing any audible sound quality for day-to-day music enjoyment purposes.  Does anyone have any real-world guesses or intuition on this?

Question 3!  Has anyone noticed that the mp3 vbr encoder in itunes has recently changed quite a bit?  If you rip at vbr at a given lowest possible bitrate and highest quality, you generally can wind up with much higher bitrates for more demanding recordings.  AT the 160 kbps mp3 vbr setting, for example, what would have ripped at 175 kbps may now rip at 220 kbps, for exampe.  Does anyone have any specific knowledge about this?

Question 4!  Finally, I recently downloaded foobar and it's pretty cool.  I'm not too expert at this stuff.  Is there a way to get it to use my LAME 3.97b2 that I now use with EAC?

Oh yeah, Question 5!  Just something I'm curious about.  It seems to be that the bitrate the vbr encoders select is very highly correlated to the level of high frequency content.  Is that the hardest area of the spectrum to encode without artifacts, and that's why the bitrates go higher if there is a lot of high frequency (drum cymbals, for example) content?

For anyone who takes the time to respond, thank you so much!  I don't have a fraction of the knowledge as many of you so please take it easy one me!:unsure:

Regards, Steve

Roxio CD Creator 8 LAME, ATRAC to MP3

Reply #1 – 2006-02-06 01:19:20

yes, high frequencies are generally harder to compress, higher quality vbr settings have a higher lowpass frequency

and yes, you can use any version of lame you want with foobar2000, in much the same way as you would with EAC, look in the foobar2000 folder, I'm sure you can figure it out

I can't help on the rest, I don't use roxio or itunes

edit: forgot something