"qval" on LAME, best setting?
2005-11-15 09:13:40
Hi, I was ripping some cd's and noticed something while trying settings: Currently I'm ripping my cd's on EAC to mp3 @ 320kbps CBR (That's the setting I need to use, and that's another story, so, no "lossless" suggestions please ) so: I tried first on the same song/CD LAME 3.90 with the --alt-preset insane switch and I got this reading while the encoder is working: "Enconding as 44.1kHz 320 kbps j-stereo MPEG-1 layer III (4.4x) qval=2" Then I tried LAME 3.97b1 with the -b 320 switch and got this reading: "Enconding as 44.1kHz 320 kbps j-stereo MPEG-1 layer III (4.4x) qval=3" Then I tried the same LAME 3.97b1 with the -b 320 -h switch and got this reading: "Enconding as 44.1kHz 320 kbps j-stereo MPEG-1 layer III (4.4x) qval=2" As you may notice the reading is the same on the 3.90/--alt-preset insane and when using the -h switch on 3.97b1, I'm not a tech expert but I assume that the "qval=" is the quality value, I asked before if I needed to use the -h switch in 3.97 to achieve better quality but someone sayed that it was not neccesary 'cause it was already implemented on the recommended -b 320 switch, now some questions: Is the "qval=" actually a quality value with "1" being the best and "3" the worst and if so is there a switch to achieve that "qval=1" and thus preffering that one over "qval=2" or "qval=3"? Currently I don't have in here high quality speakers/headphones to make a real listening test, I did some A/B/X on foobar but didn't noticed differences 'cause I was using some cheap headphones but I'd like to make my mp3's the best quality possible, again, I NEED to convert to mp3/CBR because of a dj software application I use that recommends those settings to avoid artifacts because of the time-stretch/pitch-shifting it uses, so quality is THE main thing I want to achieve And as i said, I'm not a tech expert so excuse me if I'm asking something stupid or nonesense, but I'm curious Thanks!