Personal evaluation at ~130..135 kbps, 200 samples
Reply #145 –
I'd like to test the harpsichord, sax solo, and any other classical music samples that are extremely distorted at v5 lame, at least to guruboolez (--I hope at least barely noticeable to me), to see if I need to go up to v3 or v2. Is there a link to download those samples?
Thanks.
In tis thread: LAME problem samples you'll find harp40_1 which is the worst harpsichord sample to me.
It's not just a problem for Lame but a problem for many encoders (not just mp3), and usually it requires a higher quality setting than is usually necessary.
I don't know a sax problem but may be trumpet problems are similar.
There can be a tremolo issue with trumpets. There's a sample 'Trumpet: My Prince' (guess you'll find it when doing a HA Google search above) which has this tremolo issue with Lame 3.97 and 3.98 when using VBR, but also when using FhG CBR (I tried FhG which ships with current dbpowerAmp).
You can also find a trumpet problem in the above link (this was the very problem I started worrying about problem samples), but this problem is rather Lame specific at least when looking at mp3 (it's a problem to some other formats as well). 3.97final has improved on it, and with Lame 3.98b3 the problem is overcome (at least at a higher bitrate which I always use for having a safety margin).
I encourage you to use such a safety margin as well if you can afford the larger filesize. Looks like you're out for that.
Use for instance 3.98b3 -V1 or an ABR or CBR setting in the 200+ kbps range, for instance -b224 -h.
With such a setting music usually is transparent, and in those rare cases when it's not it's at least acceptable.