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Last post by maikmerten -
Yeah, the "malformed" files appear to be free format. I wasn't aware Helix could do those, so that's a nice finding. Lame can decode those (e.g. "lame --decode gudki.22khz.mono.mp3"). As far as I can tell, Helix did exactly what you asked it to do, sadly many decoders cannot properly deal with this form of MP3.
Helix has a few checks to discourage settings that are deemed non-recommended. For instance, for 44.1 kHz files, it won't go below -B48 and will just barf "ENCODER INIT FAIL" at the user. When taking away those checks, Helix can, e.g., create "passable" 80 kbps 44.1 kHz CBR files with intensity stereo, but I so far refrained from relaxing those checks in fear that the encoder might explode in unexpected ways.
Unlike LAME, the -B flag of Helix sets the value for each channel, [...] to get 24 kbps, I entered 12. But this time the encoding did not go as expected.
For the first files the encoding went as you specified. The mono files have only one channel so the bitrate remained at the level you asked.
a) gudki.11khz.mono.mp3 and gudki.22khz.mono.mp3 are malformed files (24 293 bytes), apps refuse to open them
The file is outside specs, also called "freeformat". There are some decoders with freeformat support, but of course it makes no sense to use such formats anywhere. I think the best option is to disallow incorrect settings, what do you think?
Last post by Case -
I shouldn't have suggested Opus, I didn't remember that it's not meant for such low bitrates. It's indeed horrible at ultra low bitrate, mp3 is muffled but Opus is metallic and glitchy. The Xiph's recommended settings page thinks Opus starts beating MP3 and others at around 64 kbps.
Thanks. The treatment looks very comprehensive so even uninformed users will get alarmed by the error messages and discourage them from creating problematic files.
Last post by anamorphic -
Yes I think it would (when the track is played) if the database has no rating set. Unless you import tags to database first like I said...
It might be useful to add a couple playlist columns - one for %rating% (database) and one for $meta(rating) (tags) - so you can compare.
After you right-click a track > Playback Statistics > 'Import statistics from file tags', and once you can see the two columns match (so database and tags have the same rating), and once you have done that for every track in the library, then it would be safe to enable Synchronize Tags option. (It only syncs when tracks are played, not immediately)
Side note: To display stars for ratings, use a display script such as %rating_stars_fixed% (database) and $pad($repeat(★,$meta(rating)),5,☆) (tags)
Last post by Kraeved - @Klymins, when people ask about extremely uncommon things without giving a use case where such things would seem appropriate, there is a temptation to assume that the person is solving an XY problem, e.g. how to hammer nails with a microscope. Could you explain why a specific bitrate, CBR mode and mono sound are important to you?
Take, for example, the point-n-click adventure game Broken Sword (1996), where the audio is mostly stored as 11025 Hz 16 bit mono. I'm going to compress a fragment, which contains speech and music, using Fraunhofer 3.1 (CBR), GXLame 5.3 (CBR & VBR), Helix 5.2.3 (VBR with forced resampling to 22.05 kHz), and Vorbis Aotuv 6.03 (VBR).
Last post by Kraeved - Rescue rangers, we have a situation related to the CBR mode with a low bitrate. Unlike LAME, the -B flag of Helix sets the value for each channel, so to get 320 kbps, we enter 160, respectively, to get 24 kbps, I entered 12. But this time the encoding did not go as expected.
a) gudki.11khz.mono.mp3 and gudki.22khz.mono.mp3 are malformed files (24 293 bytes), apps refuse to open them b) gudki.22khz.stereo.mp3 is the only file here that is both encoded as expected (24 kbps) and playable c) gudki.44khz.stereo.wav is not encoded with this setting at all, but the error message is quite vague