Print

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

[Harry_The_Hipster]

According to the HydrogenAudio discussions of Lame settings, --alt-preset extreme should be returning average bitrates in the neighborhood of 224 kbps+/- (I'm doing this from memory). However, when I use that setting for transcoding from APE in MC9, I'm finding a lot of bitrates in the 180-190 range, sometimes even lower.

I've read elsewhere that Lame VBR can be over-aggressive in compressing the quieter passages, and that it is better to add a minimum bitrate command to the setting to make sure this doesn't happen.

Is MC reporting correct data? If so, what is the correct command line setting if I want a minimum bitrate of (say) 192? Or should I just ignore it?

Thanks...HTH

Listening to: 'I Fall In Love Too Easily' from 'The Art Of The Trio Vol. 1' by 'Brad Mehldau' on Media Center 9.0

[MachineHead]

I wouldn't put too much into this HTH. I use APS Fast Extreme for everything. It has a few switches that 'may' be noticable between extreme. But very unlikely. You'd have to listen very close to tell any kind of difference.

Being a VBR file, it is going to have a lot of swings in bitrate. I have some files that I thought would be very high. Nope. Others, just the other way. I guess you should play with a few samples and see, or rather hear, if there is something about them that would dissaude you from using the preset as is. There are some command line parameters you can add if you want. I think there is a sticky in HA on settings for LAME. You can check that out and see how to add a set minimum for the preset to use.

[rocketsauce]

The bitrate can vary quite a bit depending on the type of music you're encoding. For example, heavy metal generally requires higher than average bitrates, while older mono recordings will use lower than average bitrates. This is true of any vbr codec. I used mpc extreme (which usually ranges between 180 to 220kbps) to encode Elvis 30 #1 Hits, and the older mono tracks came in at around 100kbps and they sound great.

Rob

[Harry_The_Hipster]

That clears things up. The tracks showing lower bitrates are almost all older monaural files. I'll stay with the presets for the time being.

HTH