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Topic: Question about EAC/LAME volume levels (Read 4108 times) previous topic - next topic
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Question about EAC/LAME volume levels

Hi all,

I've recently become aware of the quality differences between MP3 encoders/bitrates, and have been working at re-ripping my CD collection to MP3s using EAC and LAME 3.97. Everything seemed to be going okay, but when I started listening to some of the MP3s I found that from time to time, some of the CDs or tracks seemed to have been encoded at a much higher volume level than the CD plays at, and that at the loud parts of those tracks, the sound becomes clearly distorted and fuzzy. It doesn't seem to happen to all of them, but it's pretty distracting.

The command line I am using is: -V 2 --vbr-new --id3v2-only --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d (I just copied it from the basic EAC tutorial)

I ruled out it being a problem with my speakers, because the CDs themselves sound fine when I play them on the computer. Anyone have any advice on what the issue might be and how I could solve it?

Thanks for any help!

Question about EAC/LAME volume levels

Reply #1 –
Quote from: Rifftide on
Hi all,

I've recently become aware of the quality differences between MP3 encoders/bitrates, and have been working at re-ripping my CD collection to MP3s using EAC and LAME 3.97. Everything seemed to be going okay, but when I started listening to some of the MP3s I found that from time to time, some of the CDs or tracks seemed to have been encoded at a much higher volume level than the CD plays at, and that at the loud parts of those tracks, the sound becomes clearly distorted and fuzzy. It doesn't seem to happen to all of them, but it's pretty distracting.

The command line I am using is: -V 2 --vbr-new --id3v2-only --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d (I just copied it from the basic EAC tutorial)

I ruled out it being a problem with my speakers, because the CDs themselves sound fine when I play them on the computer. Anyone have any advice on what the issue might be and how I could solve it?

Thanks for any help!


well make sure parameter passing scheme is user defined under compression options, then make sure EAC's normalization is disabled as well. If you aren't MP3Gaining your files afterwards, you might want to add --scale 0.98 to that command line also to avoid clipping on modern (overcompressed) music. 98% scale is an inaudible adjustment, but it will avoid distortion.

Question about EAC/LAME volume levels

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Rifftide on
Hi all,

I've recently become aware of the quality differences between MP3 encoders/bitrates, and have been working at re-ripping my CD collection to MP3s using EAC and LAME 3.97. Everything seemed to be going okay, but when I started listening to some of the MP3s I found that from time to time, some of the CDs or tracks seemed to have been encoded at a much higher volume level than the CD plays at, and that at the loud parts of those tracks, the sound becomes clearly distorted and fuzzy. It doesn't seem to happen to all of them, but it's pretty distracting.

The command line I am using is: -V 2 --vbr-new --id3v2-only --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d (I just copied it from the basic EAC tutorial)

I ruled out it being a problem with my speakers, because the CDs themselves sound fine when I play them on the computer. Anyone have any advice on what the issue might be and how I could solve it?

Thanks for any help!


I'm in the same boat as you!  I ripped with EAC in secure mode and encoded with LAME with --preset extreme --vbr-new and the appropriate tagging parameters.  I'm noticing that a lot of my newer discs which seem to mastered at the verge of clipping (or actually are clipping) were encoded with that fuzzy distortion at the points where it gets near clipping on the CD.  It's not on all tracks or on all discs that I've ripped but it's present on quite a few where the audio level gets up there.  It is very annoying and I'm wondering if anyone knows what may be going on.

Question about EAC/LAME volume levels

Reply #3 –
Quote from: dru858 on
Quote from: Rifftide on

Hi all,

I've recently become aware of the quality differences between MP3 encoders/bitrates, and have been working at re-ripping my CD collection to MP3s using EAC and LAME 3.97. Everything seemed to be going okay, but when I started listening to some of the MP3s I found that from time to time, some of the CDs or tracks seemed to have been encoded at a much higher volume level than the CD plays at, and that at the loud parts of those tracks, the sound becomes clearly distorted and fuzzy. It doesn't seem to happen to all of them, but it's pretty distracting.

The command line I am using is: -V 2 --vbr-new --id3v2-only --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d (I just copied it from the basic EAC tutorial)

I ruled out it being a problem with my speakers, because the CDs themselves sound fine when I play them on the computer. Anyone have any advice on what the issue might be and how I could solve it?

Thanks for any help!


I'm in the same boat as you!  I ripped with EAC in secure mode and encoded with LAME with --preset extreme --vbr-new and the appropriate tagging parameters.  I'm noticing that a lot of my newer discs which seem to mastered at the verge of clipping (or actually are clipping) were encoded with that fuzzy distortion at the points where it gets near clipping on the CD.  It's not on all tracks or on all discs that I've ripped but it's present on quite a few where the audio level gets up there.  It is very annoying and I'm wondering if anyone knows what may be going on.


Tracks that are mastered on the verge of clipping will tend to clip when compressed into a lossy format because of the added noise/rounding in the compression process pushing some peaks slightly higher.  Try using some form of replaygain to adjust the gain before decoding (as in foobar or directly via mp3gain if you prefer to not use foobar).

Question about EAC/LAME volume levels

Reply #4 –
Well, the thing is I don't remember these scratchy/fuzzy clipping distortion artifacts when I was using MusicMatch or iTunes in the past.  Is anyone else experiencing this at all?  I'll retest with MusicMatch and iTunes just to double check but I mean this is new to me since I started using EAC and LAME. 

Question about EAC/LAME volume levels

Reply #5 –
Quote from: dru858 on
Well, the thing is I don't remember these scratchy/fuzzy clipping distortion artifacts when I was using MusicMatch or iTunes in the past.  Is anyone else experiencing this at all?  I'll retest with MusicMatch and iTunes just to double check but I mean this is new to me since I started using EAC and LAME. 


Same for me... I was using RealAudio to save mp3s previously and only started having this problem when I switched to EAC and LAME.

The other thing I've noticed is that sometimes, saving the track again corrects the problem; I'll notice some distortion, reencode the MP3 and the new file will sound great. With my (very limited) understanding of how mp3s are encoded, I really don't understand why this would be happening.

Question about EAC/LAME volume levels

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Rifftide on
Same for me... I was using RealAudio to save mp3s previously and only started having this problem when I switched to EAC and LAME.

The other thing I've noticed is that sometimes, saving the track again corrects the problem; I'll notice some distortion, reencode the MP3 and the new file will sound great. With my (very limited) understanding of how mp3s are encoded, I really don't understand why this would be happening.


When you say "saving again" and "reencode" what exactly do you mean?  Re-rip the track and re-encode it or just re-compress the existing (distorted) mp3 file?

Question about EAC/LAME volume levels

Reply #7 –
Quote from: dru858 on
When you say "saving again" and "reencode" what exactly do you mean?  Re-rip the track and re-encode it or just re-compress the existing (distorted) mp3 file?


Rerip and reencode. Sorry for not being clear on that.
 

Question about EAC/LAME volume levels

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Rifftide on
Rerip and reencode. Sorry for not being clear on that.


Oh, okay.  Well, I had been using my laptop with a Sony CRX830E CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive so maybe I'll just give it a shot on my desktop once I get a chance to.