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Topic: Best Bitrate For Car Stereo (Read 12956 times) previous topic - next topic
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Best Bitrate For Car Stereo

This is my first post so bear with me. I've been reading this forum for months and to tell the truth im confused still on Bitrates. higher is better, that i understand. I have all my music backed up in 192 CBR.
But what Im seeing is that VBR or ABR is a better choice.
i am using the dBpoweramp program and have been experimenting with each format. EX. I ran some song at 160abr but it says they are about 149 ABR after conversion according to the program. but in the properties part it says 320. Which is right.
Second question what format works better for car stereos that can use mp3/WAV/CDA formats. Im trying to get the most music on the disc without losing sound quality. Sorry for being dense on this. I do run all songs thru MP3gain after at 88db level.
Help Please

Miniatus

Best Bitrate For Car Stereo

Reply #1 –
VBR is the most "supported" here. you'll find recent polls that identify -V2 as the most often used encoding setting.  that being said, you should figure out what works for you best. some people find even V5 to be fine - and you'll save a huge percent of filesize.

as for what is best for car stereo/mp3 players - that depends on the unit.  does the unit support VBR encodings? if so there is no difference in asking "what is the best mp3 encoding settings?"  if your unit DOES NOT support VBR, then 192kbs CBR is a fine setting. you'll probably not notice the difference with ANY version of lame >3.90.

what i would do:
* Rip CDs to FLAC
* Test your unit to test what it supports (encode the same song at different mp3 encoding settings to verify)
* Select what FLACs you want to encode to MP3 at your favorite bitrate (-V2)
* Burn awesome MP3 discs


later

Best Bitrate For Car Stereo

Reply #2 –
Quote from: xmixahlx on
VBR is the most "supported" here. you'll find recent polls that identify -V2 as the most often used encoding setting.  that being said, you should figure out what works for you best. some people find even V5 to be fine - and you'll save a huge percent of filesize.

as for what is best for car stereo/mp3 players - that depends on the unit.  does the unit support VBR encodings? if so there is no difference in asking "what is the best mp3 encoding settings?"  if your unit DOES NOT support VBR, then 192kbs CBR is a fine setting. you'll probably not notice the difference with ANY version of lame >3.90.

what i would do:
* Rip CDs to FLAC
* Test your unit to test what it supports (encode the same song at different mp3 encoding settings to verify)
* Select what FLACs you want to encode to MP3 at your favorite bitrate (-V2)
* Burn awesome MP3 discs


later

Best Bitrate For Car Stereo

Reply #3 –
I'm not sure why you are even sweating this. You will be able to fit quite a few songs on a disc at 192k CBR. I don't feel that the time and effort and hard drive space is worth it just to drop down to a slightly smaller VBR or ABR file. Just use what you have.
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past

Best Bitrate For Car Stereo

Reply #4 –
@MINIATUS

I'm assuming that your car stereo is playing CDs with MP3 files on them? If my assumption is wrong, ignore the rest of this.

It all depends a bit on how long your average trip is, and how noisy/quiet your car is. But a car is not likely to be the best listening room, and you're not likely to be listening attentively to the music. You do need to test if your car stereo will play VBR files OK. It ought to, but you never know. If it does, try V5. If it chokes on VBR, try 128 kbps CBR. If you hear anything that bothers you, you need to increase the quality -- might as well go straight to V2. If you don't, and I'd guess you won't, and you want more music on a disk, you can try going down one step at a time. Depending on a lot of factors, you might be happy with V6 or even V7.

EDIT homonym rectification

Best Bitrate For Car Stereo

Reply #5 –
-V5 is usually transparent in my car. Usually.

Best Bitrate For Car Stereo

Reply #6 –
As the others said. And keep in mind, in a car you usually don't perform an ABX test. No clinical situation there. Use what you have. I personally use Nero AAC at 0.4, but filesize is not really important, the 4gb usb stick I use in car is always rather empty.

Best Bitrate For Car Stereo

Reply #7 –
Hi Miniatus,

I have all my MP3 collection encoded in VBR -V0 and use Winamp's LAME Output plugin to recompress them with ReplayGain applied for my Car stereo.

Doing some simple listening test (no valid ABX testing though), I found VBR -V5 still perfectly fine for my car environment and couldn't spot a difference to -V4 or anything higher for that matter.

The resulting bitrates are ranging from 140-170 kbit/s, so they are quite a bit smaller than your 192 kbit/s CBR files, but I don't know what would happen if you'd use your existing CBR files to recompress them with ReplayGain applied to -V5.

Cheers,
Maggi

Best Bitrate For Car Stereo

Reply #8 –
Ok
I been playing around with the stereo in the Montana SV6 this and found that the factory installed player doesnt like VBR at any setting.Funny it plays best when i set the music at 160 CBR. Cant hear any clipping. When I did some at 128 you could hear clipping. Now with the car stereo which is after market it has no problems playing VBR disc, especially if it is set at around 144 to 160. Strange.
Maybe this should be a new topic, but there are 2 songs that clip no matter what settings  I use. I burned them with nero as a regular CD and the clipping was evn more noticeable, but just those two song. MP3 Gain was use to check for clipping and says there wasnt any. Anyway thanks for all the answers, as it really helped Me. Got a lot of burning to do now for both vehicles.

Miniatus