Re: TVBR vs CVBR
Reply #18 – 2020-08-16 03:13:58
I read that TVBR can sometimes give an unreasonably too low bitrate. This is true? In terms of a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer to you, ill leave that for someone else to answer. but to give some comments... it seems with TVBR the bit rate can vary a bit more wildly (up or down) where as CVBR the bit rate is more stable around your selected bit rate. so I would imagine it's possible CVBR might be the 'slightly' safer option for sound quality, especially for lower bit rates (say something around 96-128kbps and less). also, there are occasions where TVBR can output larger files than CVBR at same bit rate. but over a wide range of music, TVBR will almost certainly be a bit smaller than CVBR on average which is why I prefer it since it's a little more efficient but maybe has a chance to be a tiny bit worse on sound quality once in a while. but it's not common enough for me to worry about and is likely brief enough (like if there are slight sound quality drops it's likely very brief in a random song) not to be a real concern for me. basically... using TVBR or CVBR is largely a personal preference thing since it appears the differences are very minimal in general as I don't think there is any definitive conclusion on which is overall better even though I imagine some users around here prefer CVBR while others prefer TVBR. bottom line... if your a little paranoid with sound quality, on a side of caution, CVBR is probably the overall safer choice. p.s. I tend to see AAC (like standard AAC-LC) to be good enough from 96kbps (q45 TVBR) and higher as I am confident the average person would not complain even at that bit rate since the sound quality does not obviously sound worse than the lossless source file on typical-ish sound equipment the average person is likely to be using and I think this is especially true if a person is not really young and has a bit of age on them (which throughout ones life, they won't be very young for all that long). plus, I was always of the mindset that if someone has to start focusing quite a bit to spot sound quality differences between the lossless and lossy file that basically tells you the lossy file is easily 'good enough' overall when your just enjoying the music like is typical when listening to music (as it's not like one can easily notice the sound is off just from casually listening without comparing to the lossless source file etc). or for my basic minimum suggestions for the following encoders (which should be safe enough for most people)... Opus = 96kbps (although 64kbps is a good alternative, especially if your low on storage space, and is still close enough to the 96kbps range), AAC = 96kbps+, MP3 = v5 (130kbps).