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Topic: Why is a higher bitrate worse, or is it? (Read 3225 times) previous topic - next topic
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Why is a higher bitrate worse, or is it?

I've seen stuff that says that if you encode at a bitrate too high it sounds worse, where do they get this from and is it true? Thanks

Why is a higher bitrate worse, or is it?

Reply #1 –
all other things being equal, higher bitrates should sound better but won't sound worse.  The only bad thing you'll do is use more bits, which is really only bad if space is a concern.  In some cases it may not sound any better because a lower bitrate will already do a good enough job on any given passage, but I fail to see how it could possibly sound worse unless something different is being done to the higher bitrate one.

Why is a higher bitrate worse, or is it?

Reply #2 –
It depends on whether you read it as "encode at a bitrate too high" or "reencode to a higher bitrate".
Former is false, latter is true.

Why is a higher bitrate worse, or is it?

Reply #3 –
The only thing I can think of for this thinking is that ogg at lower bitrates sounds better than some other formats at the same lower bitrate.  But at higher bitrates, although still sounding better than the lower bitrate, it may not sound better than the other format at that same higher bitrate.  I believe this is because the Ogg Vorbis encoder has been highly tweaked to do extremely well in lower bitrates and the tweaking has not yet been done for the higher bitrates.

Why is a higher bitrate worse, or is it?

Reply #4 –
I remember reading on ff123's website that he did actually find a case where an encoder (I think it was QDesign) did *worse* at 256kbps than at lower bitrates. But QDesign is hardly representative as an "encoder" of any kind, so don't panic.

[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'][EDIT][/span] Spotted a typo...

The page this is mentioned on is here, BTW (point 6). [span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'][/EDIT][/span]
 

Why is a higher bitrate worse, or is it?

Reply #5 –
Quote
I remember reading on ff123's website that he did actually find a case where an encoder (I think it was QDesign) did *worse* at 256kbps than at lower bitrates. But QDesign is hardly representative an an "encoder" of any kind, so don't panic.

Well, bitrate is not always a measure of quality....remember LAME's 1337 ultimate commandline....it forced pseudoVBR 256kbps encoding. If you haven't tested that line....try it, then. There are no words to describe such a catastrophic sound.  .