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Topic: lower bitrate VBR (Read 22250 times) previous topic - next topic
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lower bitrate VBR

Everywhere I see people using 200+ bitrate VBR.  Why don't people use 192 and lower VBR?  192 cbr already sounds good enough for portables.. 180 and less will sound even better AND use less space.

does everyone just like bigger numbers?

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #1 –
Everyone has different music tastes and not everything encodes well at lower bitrates (or sometimes using a certain codec at all).  Most portables have more than a gig of memory so space is not a big issue anymore.
foobar 0.9.6.8
FLAC -5
LAME 3.98 -V3

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #2 –
Quote from: DoomzDayz on
Everywhere I see people using 200+ bitrate VBR.  Why don't people use 192 and lower VBR?  192 cbr already sounds good enough for portables.. 180 and less will sound even better AND use less space.

does everyone just like bigger numbers?

Has something to do with the history of ha.org. The comm started out with a strongly idealistic mindset (you know, those people who are a bit "overcareful", sometimes also called "midly paranoid" ;-). Also, at that time LAME wasn't as efficient at lower bitrates as it is nowadays. Since about 3-4 years, when lame started to show very good results in public listening tests at V5, a slow shift in mindset began.... partially i suspect also because a bunch of veterans found common sense and began to think more "practical".

So, medium bitrate V-settings are actually on the rise now. Especially v3 and v4 is starting to attract people who previously used V2.
I am arrogant and I can afford it because I deliver.

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #3 –
Quote from: DoomzDayz on
Why don't people use 192 and lower VBR?

Well, a lot of people do.

Those who stick to -V2 and above are just staying on the safe side. While modern encoders can usually deliver excellent, often transparent, quality at much lower bitrates, there are still cases where they don't perform as well.

Also, storage is a lot cheaper than it used to be. Most people have plenty of space for higher-bitrate files. Heck, my collection is lossless.

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #4 –
I would have to think that storage space plays a big part in the bitrate/setting that people use to encode their music.  There are some people who have 160GB iPod classics filled with 10,000 songs so they see no need to use anything less than 192kbps VBR AAC/-V 2 Lame mp3.  I never had a lossless archive of my music and used to stick with 128kbps VBR iTunes AAC files back in 2005 (although I think that the iTunes VBR AAC encoding option was released after that) with my simple 80GB hard drive in my notebook, my desktop also had an 80GB hard drive.  I then purchased a 500GB external hard drive for my notebook for about $100 and then an internal 750GB hard drive for my desktop for a little under $80.  That was when I decided to rip my entire music collection into lossless and then have to libraries: one lossless and one lossy.

After getting higher capacity hard drives, I switched back to -V 2 as I hadn't used that setting since Lame 3.90.3 was released for a little while.  It didn't matter to me as storage was and is still not a factor.  I then did some ABX tests when Lame 3.98 came out and determined that -V 2 was too high for me so I am looking at using -V 3 which is about my ABX threshold depending on the songs being tested.  I am waiting for Nero to come out with their new AAC encoder so I can test it and make a final decision before jumping into either format/encoder.  I recently tested the iTunes AAC encoder and 160kbps VBR was my threshold for most song as well.

Either way, I think that people stick with high bitrate encoding because they have either trained their ears to really ABX the differences, they like sticking to the older recommended settings (it was --alt-preset standard before and then changed to -V 2 --vbr-new) as they have been using that setting for years now, or they just don't care about storage space.

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #5 –
Quote from: DoomzDayz on
180 and less will sound even better AND use less space.
How do you work that one out? If lower is better then maybe we should all encode at zero bits per second and have perfect reproduction.

Cheers, Slipstreem. 

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Slipstreem on
Quote from: DoomzDayz on
180 and less will sound even better AND use less space.
How do you work that one out? If lower is better then maybe we should all encode at zero bits per second and have perfect reproduction.

Cheers, Slipstreem. 

I think he was saying that 180 VBR sounds better that 192 CBR, which most of us might agree with.

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #7 –
I think it sometimes has to do with a perceived mindset about quality - everyone has been trained by our market oriented culture to believe that they cannot do without "the best".   

With ripping and compressing, I think it's the same thing.  It probably would be better if the -V settings were not in numerical order, because a numerical ranking tends to influence a person's choices subconsciously - the middle settings (4 thru 6) will likely get shorter shrift than they deserve simply because of their placement.  In some ways, the older "- preset insane, etc." settings were less predjudicial to lower variable bitrates, if that make sense.

I use -V 5 (since 3.98, -V 4.5 for certain things, live rock music, for example) and find that it is just fine and saves me a lot of space.  Average bitrates on this setting for me generally run ~135 kbps.

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #8 –
Quote from: DoomzDayz on
192 cbr already sounds good enough for portables..

Because I don't (and I'm not the only one) use my audio files only with my DAP!
I don't want to have 3 different files (at different bitrates) for 3 different uses. So I picked the highest bitrate.

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #9 –
I find the "192 cbr already sounds good enough for portables.." statement way too general personally. The MP3 decoding hardware and analogue stages in my £35UK portable MP3 player benefits from higher bitrates in exactly the same way as my PC media centre-based Hi-Fi system at home when using the same headphones, at least according to my ears.

Why make the automatic assumption that all portable players WILL be of lower quality than anything else? Are there any public ABX tests out there to confirm this one way or the other?

Cheers, Slipstreem. 

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Slipstreem on
Why make the automatic assumption that all portable players WILL be of lower quality than anything else?

According to my personal experience, I would say that if there is a problem with the quality, it comes (most of the time) from the headphones!

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #11 –
It seems many people think 320 CBR or similar is lossless 
I have seen many people in forums ask for a 320 CBR rip 'cos they just have a 192 CBR   

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Slipstreem on
Why make the automatic assumption that all portable players WILL be of lower quality than anything else?


It's not about the players, it's about the listening conditions. "Good enough for portables" means something like "good enough for being listened to outdoors", in a rather noisy environment where even distinguishing between HE-AAC and lossless can become difficult.
Nothing is impossible if you don't need to do it yourself.

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #13 –
But that's making an assumption about people's listening conditions. I almost always listen to my portable player in a very quiet listening environment. I doubt that I'm the only person on the entire planet doing this.

Assumption makes an ass of u and me.

Cheers, Slipstreem. 

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #14 –
Well, I think it would be safe to say that the general DAP population listens to their music mainly on the go with their iPods.  That being said, there are still plenty of other people who listen to their music in other environments.  I use my iPod touch for about 20% of my music listening needs.  I mainly use my computer and car for music listening both more so than my iPod.  I have been using my iPod touch more so though simply because of its remote features and being able to control my iTunes library from the other room.  Still, I am not listening to the music through my iPod.

So the statement of "192 cbr already sounds good enough for portables" would have probably come off better by stating it this way: "I think that 192kbps CBR is already good enough for portable listening environments."

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #15 –
But the "192 and lower VBR?" comment in the original post gives the impression that the OP has no understanding whatsoever of what VBR actually is. There is no such thing as VBR192. Maybe he needs to read the Hydrogenaudio LAME WIKI, the URL of which I'm reluctant to post yet again in this thread as I've posted it plenty of times in recent posts.

The search feature works wonders for those who actually want to find facts rather than ill-informed speculation. How much more of this c**p do we have to tolerate before it becomes a rule to read the LAME WIKI entry before posting ridiculous comments concerning MP3 encoding? I smell a troll in our midst, again! 

Cheers, Slipstreem. 

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #16 –
how exactly does that give the impression that I have no understanding of what VBR is?  VBR is categorized often by 1) quality setting or 2) average bit rate.  Clearly this is the latter.

This isn't a question of quality, but people's preferences.  There are tons of 192 kbps files floating around and people think that is good enough for their needs. 

I think you would be hard pressed to find a song that sounds worse at an approximate average 192VBR (not 192 ABR) than 192 CBR with the same version encoder.

Yes, I know the actual reason is that those who take the time to learn about encoding and all that actually are interested in audio fidelity and try to get as transparent as possible.  However, there are still those who don't care all that much and are wasting space with 192 kbps when they could be just as well off using less space.  I guess I cared about those people back then, and also was maybe just sick of 'getting' 192 kbps files when i would be much happier with a average bitrate of 180 kbps VBR.

Personally I have gone the audiophile route with a dedicated DAC,AMP, and far too expensive headphones in attempts to hear every nuance.  However, I am still always a stickler for waste, and CBR is wasted space, especially with a lot of songs with quiet and silent passages that I listen to.

yeah yeah, i'll use flac when my 1.5TB hd comes.

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #17 –
Quote from: Lyx on
Has something to do with the history of ha.org. The comm started out with a strongly idealistic mindset (you know, those people who are a bit "overcareful", sometimes also called "midly paranoid" ;-). Also, at that time LAME wasn't as efficient at lower bitrates as it is nowadays. Since about 3-4 years, when lame started to show very good results in public listening tests at V5, a slow shift in mindset began.... partially i suspect also because a bunch of veterans found common sense and began to think more "practical".

So, medium bitrate V-settings are actually on the rise now. Especially v3 and v4 is starting to attract people who previously used V2.
I agree fully here.  When I first started visiting everyone seemed to be using -V2 (edit: and by that I mean --alt-preset-standard with v3.90.3) at a minimum (many appeared to be using --alt-preset-extreme).  The good work done by the LAME team, along with some listening tests from guru and Sebastian Mares, began persuading people that -V5 really wasn't as bad as people believed.  I remember hearing that guru(boolez) used -V5 for DAP listening, and that was quite an endorsement at the time.

I personally think that there are now a lot more people using lower quality settings than a few years ago.

If I, or you, could be bothered to look at the last few polls we would probably see evidence of this.
I'm on a horse.

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #18 –
Quote from: Slipstreem on
But that's making an assumption about people's listening conditions. I almost always listen to my portable player in a very quiet listening environment. I doubt that I'm the only person on the entire planet doing this.


Likewise. If you have a decent set of in-ear phones with ear molds, you're unlikely to hear much of what's going on outside even with the player turned off. Westone UM2s + UM56s = awesome noise reduction and excellent sound

I've dropped down to -V 3 now as I'm happy after lots of listening it's as good as -V 2 used to be for myself and my listening habits. Though it's damned annoying having to keep two libraries up to date, one for portable use and one for home use.

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #19 –
Quote from: probedb on
... Though it's damned annoying having to keep two libraries up to date, one for portable use and one for home use.

I think this is an essential point. And with storage space on DAPs becoming bigger and bigger on an ever increasing choice of DAPs, it's growing meaningless (and for many users it is right now) to target at minimum filesize.
Probably it is a bit paranoid taking extreme care of quality even for the strangest samples, but it is also a bit paranoid being scared of wasting bits (when using a certain security margin) in the face of currently available storage space on DAPs.
lame3995o -Q1.7 --lowpass 17

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #20 –
Quote from: DoomzDayz on
how exactly does that give the impression that I have no understanding of what VBR is?

I got the impression from the wording of your original post that you didn't know what VBR was due to the usage of the term VBR in relation to what appeared to be specific bitrates. Your following post clears up the fact that you do know what VBR is and I apologise for my misinterpretation of your wording and labelling you as a Troll.

All I can say regarding those who insist on using sub-320Kbps CBR in preference to VBR when encoding CD-quality source material is that they either must have specific hardware limitations that make it impossible for them to play VBR files or they have no understanding of even the basics of how an MP3 encoder works. Either that or they sincerely believe that they have a better understanding of the minimum bitrate required than the encoder does, which they clearly don't if they choose sub-320Kbps CBR over VBR.

There are rare occasions when even 320Kbps isn't enough to reach perceptual transparency even when listening on relatively cheap equipment, so it makes no sense to deliberately cap the bitrate below this with sub-320Kbps CBR encoding when VBR can intelligently pick an appropriate bitrate for you on-the-fly to reach your desired level of quality. I've encoded my entire CD collection in VBR at -V3 and frequent use is still made of 320Kbps blocks despite the average coming in at around 165Kbps for my particular collection.

If I take a VBR encoding that makes frequent usage of 320Kbps blocks and make a CBR encoding with a bitrate that matches the average bitrate of said VBR file, I can usually ABX the difference in favour of the VBR encoding. This is proof enough for me that the encoder is far more intelligent than I am when it comes to deciding what bitrate to use and when to use it in order to achieve the maximum quality possible for a given overall file size. If the CBR brigade took the same approach, I think they'd almost all jump ship in favour of VBR immediately.

Cheers, Slipstreem. 

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #21 –
Quote from: halb27 on
Quote from: probedb on

... Though it's damned annoying having to keep two libraries up to date, one for portable use and one for home use.

I think this is an essential point. And with storage space on DAPs becoming bigger and bigger on an ever increasing choice of DAPs, it's growing meaningless (and for many users it is right now) to target at minimum filesize.
Probably it is a bit paranoid taking extreme care of quality even for the strangest samples, but it is also a bit paranoid being scared of wasting bits (when using a certain security margin) in the face of currently available storage space on DAPs.


My only problem is Apple and not being able to use FLAC on my iPhone....I suppose I could keep it in ALAC but I don't want to

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #22 –
Quote from: probedb on
...My only problem is Apple and not being able to use FLAC on my iPhone....I suppose I could keep it in ALAC but I don't want to

No need to necessarily go lossless IMO. On the background of several posters here pointing out that it seems to be a value not to waste bits I just wanted to say that many of us don't have to be afraid of wasting bits right now and more so in the near future. I replied to you as you don't feel very content with having 2 encoded versions of your collection, and I feel the same and don't do it any more. But we can avoid it by using a very high quality lossy codec. I personally use lossyWAV | FLAC, but very high quality mp3/aac/vorbis does the job as well. As you use an iPhone your best option IMO is to use very high quality AAC (or mp3 if universal usability is important to you).
lame3995o -Q1.7 --lowpass 17

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #23 –
Quote from: probedb on
Though it's damned annoying having to keep two libraries up to date, one for portable use and one for home use.

Yeah, it's pretty difficult. I've yet to come across a good set of tools or a good, semi-automated method of doing this kind of stuff. Recently, I've been converting my lossless to LAME V2 for my older iPod to use as a "media server" in my car, since my other iTunes library (which syncs to the iPhone) is primarily Nero AAC at around 80-90kbps, which I "feel" is probably inadequate for use in the car. So, I now officially have three libraries I'm trying to maintain, and I've gotten pretty meticulous about the way things are kept. So, it's a hassle (understatement of the century).

I could probably set up batch files to automate certain tasks involved with the process of "forking" lossy libraries from my lossless library, but there are still a number of things that just have to be done by hand.

On the subject of using lower bit rate VBR, I don't mind using it at all. Like I mentioned, my iTunes library primarily hovers around 85kbps. No doubt most of it is transparent to me on my home rig, not that I would generally listen to music at those bit rates on my PC. So, I'm not fearful of low bit rates -- not in the slightest.

lower bitrate VBR

Reply #24 –
I use -V 0 --vbr-new on my portable because I cannot be arsed to transcoder everything, again. It's simpler to just copy over the files I already have on my HD, even if it means I get 1 less album. This is with a 512mb mp3 player.