The best MP3 VBR preference when encoding audio?

[Xpenguin17]

My whole life I've been listening to my music on 22.5 KHz 56/64 kbps because it bore little to no difference to the original for me, and cuz I felt like 128 kbps was unnecessarily wasteful. Everyone was telling me "Man, how can you listen to that garbage, like how do you even make out the words in that song with such shit quality?" I thought they were all being tightasses. But I did realize my choice of quality was in fact atypical, so I asked one of my friends what exactly is the difference between 64 kbps and 128 kbps audio to him. He said that it's pretty hard to explain, but "instead of listening to music with headphones that block out all the surrounding environment audio, try comparing it at a party with real speakers and you'll notice the difference."

Now, recently I was at the Doctor and had my ears done, and now I hear 10x better than before and FINALLY I noticed what I've been missing my whole life... 56 kbps is just so friggin' DULL as if the singers got their mouths stuffed full of cock. It appears before I could not perceive higher frequencies (e.g. 44.1 sounded the same as 22.5 to me) and so I could tolerate lower bitrates and... I dun think you guys need more details, cuz the difference between 64 and 128 would probably be OBVIOUS to you.

So, I've re-downloaded all my songs and now most of 'em are at 80, 96 and 128 kbps but NONE below 80 anymore. However, I wanna know the best, most economic way to encode or re-encode audio to MP3 and keep the quality.

Currently, I use this script:

lame.exe song.wav -o song.mp3 --abr 128 [80-160] -q 0

A couple questions:

1. Does the choice of frequency (e.g. 44100) significantly affect the bitrate, and vice versa? If so, is 48 KHz really necessary for most songs?

2. Are there any disadvantages to using Variable Bit Rate when encoding?

3. Does constantly re-encoding the audio fuck its quality up -- especially when switching from constant bit rate to VBR?

4. How do I know the bit rate I've chosen is ideal? By which I mean: when I encode at 160 kbps and the output MP3 results with an average of 137 kbps, was this the right choice? And when I encode at 144 I get 132. Which of these is the better choice?

Most of the time the average bitrate was lower than the target bitrate set, does it mean I have picked an ideal range? I tried to encode the same song to 64 kbps once and I got 70 kbps instead. My guess is that if the output bitrate was higher than the target, it means more bits were required than chosen and the encoder was straining to keep the quality while at the same time trying to satisfy the demand to be more or less 64 kbps.

5. Is 96 kbps good enough for general purpose audio instead of 128? I notice no difference between the two, with some exceptional fast-paced songs with hypervarying frequency.

Thanks in advance.

[ArgonPlasma2000]

%100 fidelity.

Then again, I prefer wav audio to mp3.

[MunkeyQ]

Depends on what speakers you have. If it's a $1000 hi-fi you're wired to then you want a pretty high bitrate, but if it's a shitty pair of normal PC speakers then 128 is fine. I can hear a distinct difference between 128 and 256 on my setup.

[Xpenguin17]

Originally Posted by MunkeyQ

Depends on what speakers you have. If it's a $1000 hi-fi you're wired to then you want a pretty high bitrate, but if it's a shitty pair of normal PC speakers then 128 is fine. I can hear a distinct difference between 128 and 256 on my setup.

No speakers, just headphones.

[Sho]

1. Yes, double the sample rate and the filesize will double. Always use 44.1 or 48kHz unless you want to listen to pure poo.

2. Put simply, no.

3. Yes, re-encoding/transcoding any lossy format(s) will reduce the quality. There's no point re-encoding a file from CBR to VBR as it's not going to sound better, and likely going to sound worse.

4. If it sounds good, and the file isn't too large, then you've made a good choice. Try using VBR instead of ABR, it should give better results.

lame.exe song.wav -o song.mp3 -b 128 -m j -h -V 1 -B 256 -F

This sets a minimum bitrate of 128, maximum of 256. For smaller files reduce the maximum bitrate to something like 192

5. If you can't tell the difference then yes it's fine. Personally I think it's going to sound horrible.


Again, avoid re-encoding/transcoding if possible. If you really have to do it for whatever reason encode the files with a higher bitrate than the source

[MunkeyQ]

I think the best way of choosing a good bitrate is to encode the same track from a CD in several different bitrates and listen to them. Choose the one which is acceptable for your ears. 128kbps sounds like ass to me but some people with a different setup may think it's perfectly acceptable.

[jesus_is_my_homeboy69]

Originally Posted by MunkeyQ

I think the best way of choosing a good bitrate is to encode the same track from a CD in several different bitrates and listen to them. Choose the one which is acceptable for your ears. 128kbps sounds like ass to me but some people with a different setup may think it's perfectly acceptable.

Yeah, I fucked up by downloading all my songs at 128, and then buying a decent pair of 5.1 speakers.
__________________
†Jesus†

[xcarc]

ogg vorbis q6 preferably

otherwise lame ~192kbps

[Xpenguin17]

Originally Posted by Sho

This sets a minimum bitrate of 128, maximum of 256. For smaller files reduce the maximum bitrate to something like 192

5. If you can't tell the difference then yes it's fine. Personally I think it's going to sound horrible.

Holy shit! 128 kbps minimum? 96 sounds horrible? What the fuck, y'all are autistic mofos!

Originally Posted by ArgonPlasma2000

%100 fidelity.

Then again, I prefer wav audio to mp3.

...especially you.

WAV > MP3? Are you fuckin' serious?

[Sho]

Well why would I bother with anything less? I can tell the difference in a lot of songs and hard drive space is not a concern like it used to be. I know people with massive collections entirely encoded in FLAC