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Topic: Best settings for ripping metal album... (Read 5999 times) previous topic - next topic
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Best settings for ripping metal album...

hy guys, what's the best settings (mp3 or AAC) to encode metal / crossover / nu metal album? I tried with the maximum AAC quality but sound strange

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #1 –
Quote from: Jedi82 on
I tried with the maximum AAC quality but sound strange

Probably the strange sound is due to you believing that the encoding cannot sound equal. Try ripping the album to a lossless format (WAV, FLAC, ALAC) and then try a blind ABX test to find out if you really can hear a difference. You might be surprised of the outcome (I was when I did for the first time...)

Edit: Added link to ABX page on HA wiki.

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #2 –
Rip with a secure ripper like dBpoweramp or EAC. If you'll use EAC, set it up using the guides here. If you'll use MP3, here are the recommended settings.

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #3 –
Quote from: twostar on
Rip with a secure ripper
Note that this does not imply that even the most ‘non-secure’ ripper would introduce differences that would render the resulting files audibly distinguishable from the source audio.

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #4 –
In my experience, the iTunes AAC encoder encodes metal albums just fine at about ~200kbps (the next step from the ~160kbps preset which was not good enough for me). I'm usually fine with frequency response up to 19kHz but if you're young (<20), you may miss some sound above this range (mostly hihats and cymbals). I'm not sure if jacking up the bitrate adds frequencies above 19kHz.
Note that I'm talking about portable use (suboptimal conditions/equipment), for PC, I use FLAC almost exclusively.

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Martel on
Note that I'm talking about portable use (suboptimal conditions/equipment), for PC, I use FLAC almost exclusively.
What’s your usual threshold of transparency for ‘non-suboptimal’ conditions?

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #7 –
my point is: it's ok to encode my metal collection at the most high bitrate (i want my music collection and the most high bitrate with HQ quality) or maybe it's just fine at lower? Things about Korn albums, soooo disturbed uh?

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Jedi82 on
my point is: it's ok to encode my metal collection at the most high bitrate (i want my music collection and the most high bitrate with HQ quality) or maybe it's just fine at lower? Things about Korn albums, soooo disturbed uh?



Depends how much resistance (headroom) is needed for more difficult signals. Therefore, you have two settings for transparency . Many people stick with transparent setting for NON critical samples. This is OK as many have a lossless copy and they save more space. Its also acceptable to use a higher bitrate to some extent providing a 'quality headroom' . The goal here is transparency not only on 'normal' signals. These encodings should provide near-transparent  or acceptable quality on demanding samples even if rare. 'Normal' music on such a setting should not be abxable or really hard to and such scenario should be rare. Difficult samples should go by unnoticed and should also be difficult to abx. Exceptions to this should be really rare.

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #9 –
Quote from: dv1989 on
Quote from: Martel on
Note that I'm talking about portable use (suboptimal conditions/equipment), for PC, I use FLAC almost exclusively.
What’s your usual threshold of transparency for ‘non-suboptimal’ conditions?
Well, Ogg and AAC around 192 kbps seem enough for vast majority of the content I listen to even in "non-suboptimal" (!= optimal) conditions. I just listen to FLAC because I have the option and there are very few songs where it sounds (sounded) marginally better to me (but this difference might have gone away during the last year or two as I'm getting older and codecs getting better).

Quote from: Jedi82 on
my point is: it's ok to encode my metal collection at the most high bitrate (i want my music collection and the most high bitrate with HQ quality) or maybe it's just fine at lower? Things about Korn albums, soooo disturbed uh?
See above, I would keep FLAC on PC and use something 192-256kbps-ish AAC/OGG for portable (as it seems you're unnerved using "too low" bitrates). You should experiment a bit, encode some stuff at certain settings, compare and see if you hear any difference or disturbing artifacts. If you don't there's no reason to waste space.

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #10 –
If you want statistics, look at soundexpert.org. The numbers basically say that you probably won't be able to hear any quality reduction in AAC at an average bitrate of 128 kbps. If you use a little bit of headroom for being absolutely sure, already about 160 kbps should be enough. Of course, don't use constant but always a variable bitrate setting so that the encoder can save its bits for the difficult parts of the signal.

The gold standard is to really do the test yourself and see if you can hear a difference as I suggest in post #2.

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #11 –
so i did all wrong  Always ripped to True VBR target quality 127  I'm only afraid that it's maybe to much for my collection and like you say, it's ok with 192-256kbps

BTW: THANX THANX THANX to all of you!!!!!!!!!

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #12 –
Quote from: ojdo on
The gold standard is to really do the test yourself and see if you can hear a difference as I suggest in post #2.

You really should try to leave some headroom for training. I used the suggested gold standard and ended up settling for a lower bit rate than I should have. After spending time with my older MP3s, I have learned to hear the artifacts where I did not previously notice them.

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Notat on
You really should try to leave some headroom for training.

I did not propose to use no headroom in the paragraph before. Yet the best thing for him to get comfortable with "low" bitrates like 160 or 128 kbps is to really try to ABX even once. Then he will have no headache when using AAC VBR at around 200 kbps and being quite sure that he won't notice artifacts on casual listening.

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #14 –
Quote from: ojdo on
If you want statistics, look at soundexpert.org.

That's all fine, I guess, but several of us have discussed the testing approach taken on that site and believe it is flawed.
 

Best settings for ripping metal album...

Reply #15 –
Quote from: greynol on
Quote from: ojdo on
If you want statistics, look at soundexpert.org.

That's all fine, I guess, but several of us have discussed the testing approach taken on that site and believe it is flawed.


Indeed.  I still stand by my original complaint posted half a decade ago:  how do we know that the soundexpert numbers are actually correlated with some real world notion of sound quality?