Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ton]

I have 2 questions concerning the options for ripping and encoding:
1) Under advanced settings I can choose between normal, high speed and high quality. What is the difference between these settings ? I understand the settings for the bitrate for CBR or VBR but it's not clear to me what the mentioned settings bring about.
2) I can choose for normalizing. Does this the same as the probably wellknown program MP3Gain ? From Mp3 Gain I understood that it has advantages over other normalizing programs, although being rather non-technical the reason was not completely clear to me. So is it still better to use MP3Gain or does MC exactly the same ?

[Alex B]

1) I don't know that exactly, but I suggest using a custom setting for MP3 VBR: --alt-preset standard. It won't encode very fast, but it makes superb quality MP3 files at a reasonable size (quite often the bitrate averages around 200 kbit/s). Make a test and listen to the results.

2) Normalizing levels audio files to the same maximum volume. It makes permanent changes to the file data and it also adds some noise (in theory, you may not hear it). More important is that differences between quiet and loud songs in the same album are lost.

Instead normalizing you can analyze your audio files with MC and use Replay Gain when preferred. You can find instructions in the MC Help and also here in the forum.

[modelmaker]

mp3gain makes permanent changes to your files; the advantage is that all your files will be "normalized" for any player.

MC's analyze/replay gain saves the "normalization"changes to the MC database, hence your music files themselves will remain unchanged.

[Sauzee]

mp3gain makes permanent changes to your files; the advantage is that all your files will be "normalised" for any player.

MC's analyse/replay gain saves the "normalisation"changes to the MC database, hence your music files themselves will remain unchanged.

But presumably if you normalise during the MC rip, the file is changed?

[pipsqueak]

Ton

1) the presets (high, medium etc) are just different levels of quality. i cant remember the bitrate for each, you will need to try them out for yourself and see whats good enough for your ears. i agree with alexb that there are custom commands that are better. with my mp3's i used to use MP3 VBR: --alt preset extreme (varied from 192 to 320kb) (there is also an insane ending for even higher bitrate).

2) normalise actually changes the volume level of the track = permenant
replay gain applies an adjustment to the track to level the volume = non-permenant as its stored in the tag


pip

[Ton]

Thanks for your replies, but it's still not clear to me as far as the ripping and encoding part is concerned. I understand the settings for bitrate etc. My question however was about the normal-high speed -high quality settings under "advanced". What are the effects of these settings ?
As for the normalizing part I think that for me MP3Gain is of better use, also because I play my files on my iRiver IHP 120. It also can be reversed.

[pipsqueak]

aah, i see what you mean. im not entirely sure i would guess its to do with how much cpu power it takes up while ripping and how small it makes the files.

im sure someone can come up with a better reply though... xen?

[xen-uno]

The highest quality setting for Lame mp3's is --alt-preset insane (set quality to custom and put that string in) which produces a tuned version of 320 CBR. The fast (aka highspeed) option speeds up encoding a bit (sacrificing a little quality)...so quality wise, --alt-preset standard is better than --alt-preset-fast standard. The quality settings do what is implied, they ratchet up quality and also, filesize. But keep in mind that filesize is no guarantee of quality either. For instance, a mp3 encoded with Xing (say at 320 CBR) will be twice as large as a Lame encode at 160 CBR...yet I guarantee that the Lame mp3 will sound noticeably better. VBR is preferred over CBR, as Lame will throw around extra bits where needed, yet keep the filesize more reasonable.

Futher explanation here (from lame_392.zip)...

http://home.revealed.net/xen/node6.html

R_x

[Ton]

Thanks xen for your explanation, but it's still not clear to me what the high speed and high quality settings exactly do. I assume that the bitrate stays the same. Is it more a question of better or lesser error correction ? Sorry if it seems I am pushing but I would like to know.

[Alex B]

The principle is this: Chosen bitrate stays the same. High Speed is what the name implies - faster encoding, but lower quality than Normal. High Quality is the opposite: better, but slower. So the encoder works harder and spends more time when trying to make higher quality compression at the given bitrate.

I guess that Media Center uses rather old LAME switches with those settings. "--alt-preset" settings mentioned earlier in this thread are introduced later with recent LAME versions.

If you are interested to know more about LAME settings, you could read MP3 FAQ at the Hydrogen Audio Forums:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showtopic=7516&#entry74068