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Topic: OPUS bitrate equivalent to MP3 V2 (Read 314 times) previous topic - next topic
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OPUS bitrate equivalent to MP3 V2

What would be approximately the equivalent OPUS bitrate (in quality terms) to MP3 V2?

Thanks in advance.
 

Re: OPUS bitrate equivalent to MP3 V2

Reply #1 –
I'm not aware of a listening test that has directly shown an equivalent Opus bitrate for LAME V2 (~192kbps VBR). But I'd guess somewhere around 128kbps.

(I'm suggesting an encoder setting of 128kbps; the actual average bitrate may bit a bit higher, especially if your collection is highly tonal, e.g. some classical. That's a good thing; Opus's advantages over MP3 are a bit smaller for tonal music.)

Kamedo2's tests showed that Opus at 96kbps achieves roughly the same perceptual score as 192kbps LAME CBR. Since allowing LAME to use VBR will notably improve quality, you'd need an Opus bitrate higher than 96kbps. (The 2014 public listening test did show that, even with an Opus encoder which is now outdated, 96kbps Opus was much better than LAME's 128kbps VBR.)

Opus at 192kbps outperforms LAME V0 (~256kbps) and performs much better than LAME V2. 192kbps is well into the regime of diminishing returns for Opus. It's safe to say Opus at 160kbps would still be better than LAME VBR 192kbps.

Note that non-expert listeners, myself included, may only rarely notice any audio distortion with 128kbps Opus. With any modern codecs, comparing quality at higher bitrates than 128kbps is mostly the domain of a few expert listeners.