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[sraposa]

hi all.

I'm about to spend a ton of time ripping my entire CD collection using MC9 and I'm having a bit of a challenge settling on the "best" options for encoding.  :-/ Basically, I want high quality (who doesn't?), but I want to stick with MP3 for compatibility reasons. Also, I'd like to have somewhat "normal" MP3 file sizes, but I'm not overly concerned with file size as hard drive space is cheap, and always getting cheaper.  

So, based on some reading, I've decided to go with VBR (via the MP3 Encoder VBR) for the extra quality and the possible savings in file size. Currently, I'm only using my MP3's with Media Center 9 so I'm fine in terms of compatibility there. And by the time I add additional software/hardware, I'm just going to assume they'll support VBR (hope I'm right).

For the "Quality", I'm using Normal/High. I tried setting it to "High" for a few CD's, and the file sizes seemed to be noticeably higher. I'm not overly concerned about file size, but I figured that an extra Meg (or so) on every track in my collection would add up. Plus, if/when I decide to get a portable player, size may become more of an issue. Also, I'm using "High Quality" over "High Speed" (in the Advanced window) since I only plan to go through this process once and don't care how long it takes.

I also just tried playing with the "Normalize before encoding" option... which, even after reading the description, is a bit of a mystery to me. I had it set to 100% and didn't notice any big difference (when compared to having it turned off). Since it does add extra processing and therefore some possible extra noise, I'm thinking about leaving that off. Am I missing something valuable here?  ?

any and all opinions and comments are welcome!

thanks  
-scott

[Phil Lee]

Personally I use the following settings to get the best quality mp3's from MC9 to play on my PC and my iPod:

Under Encoding:

Encoder: MP3 VBR
Quality: Custom
Advanced: Command line: --alt-preset standard

Under Device Settings:

Advanced ripping settings:
Copy mode: Digital secure

As far as file size goes, a 76:05 CD takes up 119.6Mb. Basically I wasn't concerned with file size even though I only have a 10Gb iPod because the sond quality was noticeably better.

[LisaRCT]

I like to set the VBR for a bottom bitrate of 128 and a top rate of 256 or higher.  For me this yeilds a good balance of acceptable file size and good sound quality.

I do not use normalizing before encoding as it (to me) yields a slightly muddier sound.

Best I can suggest . . .  make some 'test strips' at different settings to find what your ears say is the optimum setting . . .  everyone's hearing and judgement here varies.

[nila]

According to the preset's in Razorlame if u want CD quality VBR encoding this is the command line they give:

-b 128 -m s -h -V 1 -B 320

or this is the settings for Archive quality by r3mix.net

--r3mix

as for your portable player, I wouldn't try keep one format that's going to work on your player too unless you plan to get a player like an ipod with a large hard drive space.
For any of the ones that are 256, 512Mb etc you'll want to re-encode them before transfering them accross.
U can get the quality (and size) quite low and still have it sound quite good on a portable as portables never sound crystal clear even with the best encoding settings as there's always noise around, your headphones, interferance etc. to mess up ur sound.

[sraposa]

wow.     3 excellent replies!  thank you!

so it looks like i'll be doing a little more experimenting.  and that's an interesting tip re: the lower size/quality for portables...  i've just assumed that i'd have one collection for all devices, but maybe that's limited thinking.

-scott

   

[jeffh]

I think the best place to read about lame options is

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=15&t=203&

[MachineHead]

Besides Phil Lees' comment...

Custom > --alt-preset fast extreme. Don't waste your time adding any other command lines unless you are setting it up for something very specific.

Files aren't huge and the quality is excellent.

r3mix is obsolete. The tuning done with the alt presets will blow that away any day. This was admitted on the r3mix forums months ago.

[PK_NYC]

I replaced the lame.exe file that comes with MC 9 with a highly tweaked compile of 3.90.3 available form hydrogenaudio.org, and am using --alt-preset standard switch. This particular version of lame has been thoroughly tested and tweaked to create as transparent encoding as possible, and with the --aps setting it produces great quality mp3s. Many audiophile agree that this is the way to go if you are going to be using mp3 format. The files end up around 200kbs on average, so you are looking at about 80 mb per album, but this is quite acceptable even with my laptop hard drive.

As for normalizing, it's a mixed bag. Using it is convenient and it really doesn't affect the sound quality in any way that I can tell. The process does alter the wave file, though, so if you don't want to risk any added noise, you might want to consider using mp3gain instead after you finish encoding. Adjusting gain does not introduce any changes into the sound data, but it requires you to go thour an extra step for every album you rip, and I am currently too lazy to do that. If anyone has strong reasons why this should be done, I'd be interested in hearing them.

[sraposa]

downloading a tweaked version of Lame and playing with command-line options?... i didn't realize that burning CD's would allow my inner geek to come out and play...

thanks again for all the info. looks like i'm going to have to cancel my plans for this weekend...

-scott

[sraposa]

As for normalizing, it's a mixed bag. Using it is convenient and it really doesn't affect the sound quality in any way that I can tell. The process does alter the wave file, though, so if you don't want to risk any added noise, you might want to consider using mp3gain instead after you finish encoding. Adjusting gain does not introduce any changes into the sound data, but it requires you to go thour an extra step for every album you rip, and I am currently too lazy to do that. If anyone has strong reasons why this should be done, I'd be interested in hearing them.

after reading your note, i went back to MC9 to experiment with the replay gain feature. i had played with it before and i was convinced that it didn't work well until... i realized that the feature is OFF BY DEFAULT! seems a little ridiculous to me that that's the case since there won't be any replay gain unless you explicitly analyze your files. in any case, i was very pleasantly surprised to see that it seems to work exactly that way i wanted (just has to be on... duh).

in that case, i don't see any benefit to using the normalize feature. i'd much rather use replay gain and have the audio analysis external to the MP3 -- and leave the MP3 clean.

and analyzing the audio is fast... especially compared to the actual encoding. and if you don't want to do it immediately upon ripping, you can easily click "Media Library", Ctrl+A (Select All) and then Analyze Audio to analyze your entire collection (and it's smart enough to skip files that have already been analyzed).  just do it before bed and it'll be done in the morning.

-s

[MachineHead]

and analyzing the audio is fast... especially compared to the actual encoding.

Tip: Encoding is fast, but....

It really depends upon your cpu. Older cpu's are going to be slower than something a little more current. To rip and encode a typical cd for me takes about 4-7 minutes. This is on a fairly stout AMD 2600+. My old PII 333 took nearly 30-40 minutes per cd.

[GHammer]

I'd say that elmination of clipping would be the only reason I can come up with.

I don't do normalizing with any tool because as you said it changes the WAV/sound.

MP3Gain is a great tool for taking care of the sound levels of mp3s. The newest version out there has improved on what I thought was a complete app.

As for normalizing, it's a mixed bag. Using it is convenient and it really doesn't affect the sound quality in any way that I can tell. The process does alter the wave file, though, so if you don't want to risk any added noise, you might want to consider using mp3gain instead after you finish encoding. Adjusting gain does not introduce any changes into the sound data, but it requires you to go thour an extra step for every album you rip, and I am currently too lazy to do that. If anyone has strong reasons why this should be done, I'd be interested in hearing them.

[paulfife]

I have just a couple comments on normalizing:

It should not affect the sound quality of the result assuming the routine is written properly. From my experience the MJ's normalize seems to work like you would expect. It raises the level of the track so that the peak is at the maximum gain. Basically the volume is increased to just below the point of clipping.

If you are pulling tracks from several albums and the levels tend to vary normalizing them all will help a lot if you transfer them to a portable that does not automatically adjust the track levels like MJ does.

I've used other utilities claiming to normalize in the past (MusicM@#ch - I think this feature has since been removed), that did stuff other than normalilze - like jack the volume up for quiet parts and reduce it back for loud parts causing noticable strangeness. This is really called compression.

MJ's normalize does not to me seem to introduce any noise or distortion, as it shouldn't. Someone from the company should be able to confirm this.

[shastasheen]

Personally I use the following settings to get the best quality mp3's from MC9 to play on my PC and my iPod:

Under Encoding:

Encoder: MP3 VBR
Quality: Custom
Advanced: Command line: --alt-preset standard

Under Device Settings:

Advanced ripping settings:
Copy mode: Digital secure

As far as file size goes, a 76:05 CD takes up 119.6Mb. Basically I wasn't concerned with file size even though I only have a 10Gb iPod because the sond quality was noticeably better.

i'm just tried this command line now, and for some reason it's going agonizingly slow.  my computer is a few years old, but i'm used to faster encoding than this, even in VBR.



Media Center Registered 9.0.175 -- G:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium III 997 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 225 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping /   Drive E:   Copy mode:ModeSecure   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
 Drive F:   Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
 Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: Yes /  Calc replay gain: No /  Copy volume: 32767
 Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: Yes  Soundfile:   chord.wav

Burning /  Drive F: LG       CD-RW CED-8080B    Addr: 0:1:0  Speed:8  MaxSpeed:8  Use MJ Engine:Yes
 Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: No
 Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None


any ideas?

[rocketsauce]

VBR encoding with the LAME preset command lines is generally slow. On my PIII 733, I'm lucky if I get encoding speeds of 2.5x.

You can also try --alt-preset fast standard. This command line will trade a slight drop in quality for faster encoding.

Rob