Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player. (Read 8405 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

I am curious as to what sort of bitrate one should use for a portable player. I will only listen to the mp3s on this portable player. I listen to the actual cds on my stereo. Is 320kbps overkill for a portable player? By the way, I use Cdex to make my mp3s.

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #1 –
Quote from: Netherworld on
I am curious as to what sort of bitrate one should use for a portable player. I will only listen to the mp3s on this portable player. I listen to the actual cds on my stereo. Is 320kbps overkill for a portable player? By the way, I use Cdex to make my mp3s.


Probably not necessary.  You can do some samples to prove it to yourself but for most people the Lame V3 or V2 settings are way more then enough for portable listening (or any kind of listening).  V4 and V5 Lame files are excellent quality for portable listening for my own purposes.

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #2 –
It all depends on where you will be listening with this portable player.  -V 5/-V 3 should be more than adequate for actual portable environments such as walking down the street, listening in a car (don't use headphones), on the subway/bus, and so on.  You might want to go with -V 3 or -V 2 if you are listening to your files in a quiet environment on good headphones.

You must determine what setting is right for you.  Just know that portable environments are the best when it comes to listening to music as you have so many outside influences that mask the music.  Cars are terrible as you have the road noise, wind noise, vibration inside the vehicle, positioning of the speakers inside the vehicle (moving a single speaker by less than 1 cm can change the perceived audio quality of music), and noise from other vehicles.  There are even all sorts of noises when walking such as other people, cars driving by, weather (wind), and so on.  All of these outside influences eliminate the need to use higher bitrate music.

Now, I am just speaking from my personal experience (and blind ABX tests) but I recommend going with -V 3 and Lame 3.98.2.  I have found it to be a good compromise between, file size, and sound quality.  I even use -V 3 for listening to music at home in a quiet environments.

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #3 –
Excuse my ignorance, but in Cdex it seems difficult to choose settings. I don't even know where to start to tell you the truth.

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #4 –
Start with the Lame wiki.  This will fill in the details and help you understand the language that we use.  The different -V numbers represent different variable bitrate settings with -V 3 producing files at around 170kbps VBR, -V 2 is about 190kbps VBR, and -V 0 is about 250kbps VBR.

As for adjusting the setting of CDex, I have no idea.  I don't use CDex for my CD ripping needs as I go with either dBpowerAMP or EAC.  I think that most people on these boards use EAC as it is free, secure, and can communicate with the AccurateRip database.

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #5 –
Quote
Excuse my ignorance, but in CDex it seems difficult to choose settings. I don't even know where to start to tell you the truth.


The setup is attrocious and needs to fixed. Just ignore all of the options in the boxes for LAME and go with the preset settings that's all you need to worry about.


Quote
Start with the Lame wiki. This will fill in the details and help you understand the language that we use. The different -V numbers represent different variable bitrate settings with -V 3 producing files at around 170kbps VBR, -V 2 is about 190kbps VBR, and -V 0 is about 250kbps VBR.

As for adjusting the setting of CDex, I have no idea. I don't use CDex for my CD ripping needs as I go with either dBpowerAMP or EAC. I think that most people on these boards use EAC as it is free, secure, and can communicate with the AccurateRip database.


I am part of the small minority on here, but I actually use CDex. I prefer convenience over having to configure that monster and wait 5 hours for it to do a secure extraction (I am exagerating). 
budding I.T professional

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #6 –
IMO mp3 encoding is the least of your problems in the audio chain. I'm using -V 3 - for classical orchestral music on ECHs which separate you pretty much from the outside noise. Most important is the headphones; an important questions is e.g.: How do your headphones handle complex passages? ...

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #7 –
With current Lame 3.98 any setting from -V5 on is a very good solution within the restrictions the chosen setting necessarily implies.
As far as we know so far quality divergence of -V5 has gotten smaller compared to previous versions which means that even for tracks which are hard to encode quality still is relatively good.
Absolute quality sure improves when going -V3 or -V2 or even -V0, leaving behind an ever decreasing number of tracks having a slight quality issue.
For the utmost quality IMO --abr 280 --lowpass 17.5 or similar is an appropriate setting. I'm just experimenting with it as I plan to use mp3 more in the future than I did in recent times. Some time ago I found that with settings like these there is no improvement over -V0. VBR has become real strong with 3.98 even with critical tracks. With my current trials however I can hear an improvement with very critical tracks. The differences are very subtle though and it's a matter of taste whether they are worth while the higher bitrate compared to -V0.
To me CBR 320 doesn't bring an advantage over ABR 280 or similar.

I think the most important question is: can you afford using high bitrate with your DAP?

Thinking in terms of highest useful quality makes you independent from usage context considerations. (-V5 sure is more than enough when in a train or a car, but what when you want to use your DAP also in quiet hotel room? [-V5 then is still an excellent solution most of the time, but it's not optimum if you want that]).

Within your capacity restrictions I'd use the highest quality setting which you think can give you a real quality bonus compared to say -V5. If you look at the latest mp3 usage poll most people consider this to be -V2 (or -V3), with the second strongest group being in favor of -V0.
lame3995o -Q1.7 --lowpass 17

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #8 –
Quote from: HotshotGG on
I am part of the small minority on here, but I actually use CDex. I prefer convenience over having to configure that monster and wait 5 hours for it to do a secure extraction (I am exagerating). 
You can wait 5 hours, or 5 days, or 5 weeks or even more!  Or you can just wait until Exact Audio Copy finishes, usually less than 30 minutes on secure, no-cache, no-C2 and Test&Copy rips. And I do it only once for each CD. For me nothing else then EAC.

Back on topic: I suggest you start with lame3.98 -V4 setting (you'll get about 145-165kbps results), if you don't concentrate hard on listening you'll probably find the sound transparant.

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #9 –
Another vote for Lame at the -V3 setting.  Files sizes aren't too big or small, DAP can handle it, works well with Sennheiser headphones....can't ask for more from mp3.
foobar 0.9.6.8
FLAC -5
LAME 3.98 -V3

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #10 –
I'd probably also use VBR on the DAP if it were short on space, but as there's enough memory (48GB) on my Cowon D2, I'm fine to stick with 320kbps. For now, at least..

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #11 –
My best advice would be to figure out what is transparent to you. 

Before i found HA, i was positive that 192k or higher sounded much better than 128k mp3's. 

Foobar2000's abx tool, will easily allow you to figure out that it's not necessarily the case.

Take a lossless track, convert it to a few different bitrates.  Lame v5, v3, v1, etc.  Then use the abx tool to see if you can really tell the difference between the mp3 and the lossless track.  Repeat this over different types of music that you listen to, and even try some of the challenging samples you can find here. 

After this, you'll have a much better understanding on what bitrate you either can't hear, or can live with.

v5 is transparent to me on pretty much everything i tried, even challenging samples.  Others can hear the difference, but i cannot.  I'm comfortable using v5 for all my listening, and if I ever do find an annoying problem with something, i can always re-encode it from my lossless files at a higher bitrate.

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #12 –
When using CDex Version 1.70 Beta 2 with LAME, these settings produce identical output to the -V3 switch...

VBR Method - VBR-new
Bitrate Min - 32Kbps
Bitrate Max - 320Kbps
Mode - J-stereo
Quality - High (q=2)
VBR Quality - VBR 3
Output Samplerate - Auto

Just play with the VBR Quality setting as this sets the -Vn value. It's the only way to do it with CDex via the Options/Settings/Encoder tab as it doesn't allow direct selection with the modern -V presets system.

Cheers, Slipstreem.

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #13 –
Sorry for being off-topic, but I can't let this go unchallenged...
Quote from: Alexxander on
Or you can just wait until Exact Audio Copy finishes, usually less than 30 minutes on secure, no-cache, no-C2 and Test&Copy rips.
Or you can wait a fraction of that time using burst T&C or with secure T&C with C2 pointers and a non-caching drive and get a result no less secure when the CRCs match.    Your parroting of the least efficient method is not going to win over any non-EAC users.  Let's face it though, EAC is no longer the only solution of secure ripping, in many (most?) cases it's no longer the best solution.

I think the suggestion of trying -V4 is a good one.

Not so sure halb27 is following TOS #8.  "IMO" does not absolve you from it.

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #14 –
I found my sweet spot on my portable (a Nokia N70) at V8! Try to find at what vbr level you'll find it comfortable to listen at your device and not by abx'ing at your computer. Why? Because the results on your computer is not comparable to your device. It only shows if your ears can hear differences (or not) from a reference file. Can you abx at your device? It is possible, but it would be very tedious. You might be needing another person to help you get blinded.  There is still yet a rational way of doing it, by deduction/elimination.

As a suggestion, encode your most favorite and familiar track, starting at V9 (most likely you'll spot this easily later) or V8 up to V5 (or even up to V0 if you have golden ears based on abx results in your computer). Drag and drop them in your portable (don't forget to rename track files or tags with identifiers, unless your player can tell you what bitrate the file is), play them randomly (without looking at the screen yet) and if you first find an annoying encode, then look if what file it was. Of course, you wouldn't want an annoying encode, so you might want to delete it from your device. After that, continue playing randomly and eliminate unwanted tracks until all tracks left are comfortable for your ears.

After everything, please do let us know at what V setting you'll end up.

Mabuhay! (Long Live!)

EDIT: typos
"Listen to me...
Never take unsolicited advice..."

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #15 –
Quote from: greynol on
...Not so sure halb27 is following TOS #8.  "IMO" does not absolve you from it.

What's wrong with it? I didn't give an ABX result, yes (I don't see why it should be necessary), but if you like to and now that I know I can ABX herding_calls (setting given against -V0, -V0 against original, but not the setting given against original) I'm sure I can repeat my ABX result and present it here. I think mentioning this setting was oaky because the op had CBR320 in mind. Apart from that I'm not really sure myself yet whether I'll use it or not as it gives a non-essential improvement on very rare occasion over -V0 as -V0 is great already. I think I addressed this, as well as what most people think is appropriate.
lame3995o -Q1.7 --lowpass 17

A Simple question about bitrate for portable mp3 player.

Reply #16 –
I appreciate all the help and advice and I have decided to use the v2 setting and I am quite happy with the results.