Re: Can anyone reliably ABX OPUS at 160kbps?
Reply #13 – 2018-08-17 05:06:40
@seventhstar With Foobar2000 it defaults to basically the best mode for Apple AAC and Opus which is VBR for Opus and TVBR for Apple AAC. TVBR or CVBR are all one really needs to use for Apple AAC and VBR for Opus is typical. I prefer TVBR over CVBR in general because sound quality wise they are pretty much the same (some basically claim CVBR is about the same, maybe a hair better than TVBR (sound quality wise) but usually at a noticeable increase to bit rates) but TVBR generally gives you smaller files (not always, but typically does) which makes it a bit more efficient and being sound quality is pretty much the same, I would rather choose the one that generally uses less storage space since it's more efficient. like on some of my music, TVBR(Apple AAC) at 96kbps can shoot down into the 6x kbps range (sometimes lower) and I have seen it hit roughly as high as the 12x kbps range (but usually in the ball park of 96kbps give or take 10kbps or so) where as doing the same thing with CVBR it tends to be more stable around the 96kbps range as CVBR seems to limit the bit rate from going too low etc. but basically... use the default mode and choose a bit rate that suits you (likely 96kbps or 128kbps or 160 kbps) and just use it as that's going to be more of a determiner of quality than the whole TVBR/CVBR stuff. but in my opinion using anything higher than 128kbps is pretty much a waste of storage space as efficiency starts to drop off quite a bit because of little gains in sound quality for a solid increase to file size (I am basing this info around sound test and other info I noticed around here). but I usually go for 96kbps since at that rate your getting a great balance of sound quality/file size and I would imagine people will be using these lossy files on-the-go which makes it that much less likely you need anything TOO high on the sound quality side of things (plus, not to mention... most people probably don't have any fancy headphones etc). hence, I tend to see Apple AAC and Opus to stick with 128kbps or less for the vast majority of people. I would start with 96kbps and then go from there but if you don't want to mess with it and want to play it pretty safe, one can't go wrong with 128kbps. just some thoughts p.s. but IgorC pretty much summed it up in much fewer words.