Put All Audio Questions Here

No reason really. -V 0 (aka --preset extreme) will go to 320kbps when the audio is suitably complex, not decreasing percieved quality at all. LAME does a very good job with this, which is why rock albums encode at >280kbps and Sega Genesis VGM rips encode <128kbps with -v 0.
If you want anything sounding better than 320kbps LAME mp3s, go with AAC, Musepack, Ogg Vorbis at 256kbps or just go lossless.

Would someone (or some people) be able to review this track for problems? It's a sample rip from Gamecube, and IMO I think the bass sounds a bit scratchy.

I'm not sure whether it's caused from recording too loud, or the music itself.

Originally Posted by soniclover

So then, is there any area of quaility or anything that is a disadvantage of having it in VBR? Is there any reason to have an album in VBR as opposed to 320kbps? (Besides the massive amount of size)

Just the massive amount of size, yeah.

The way VBR works is by choosing a bitrate between 32kbps and 320kbps on a frame by frame basis. If the signal is simple then it doesn't need a high bitrate, so it gets a lower one. If it's complex, it will need a higher bitrat so it gets a higher bitrate.
CBR 320 just uses 320kbps (the highest possible bitrate, remember) for every frame.

Originally Posted by soniclover

So far I've heard that 320kbps doesn't have as good 'highs' and 'lows' as VBR does.

I really doubt that.

So, wouldn't having a 320 CBR for a less complex song hurt it's quality?

Originally Posted by soniclover

So, wouldn't having a 320 CBR for a less complex song hurt it's quality?

No it'd just waste space. Encoding a song with 5 minutes of silence (like bonus tracks on CDs) would be an utter waste, as those silent frames would be perfectly encoded at 32kbps.
It'd be like encoding a 8000Hz 8bit Mono file at 160kbps, which is even above the lossless bitrate, Shure, you'd have the best representation of the original audio, but you could do 99.99% as well with -V 0 or similar preset.

Thanks for all of the help guys. I'm sorry for pestering you all so much will all of my questions but I've had some of these questions for a while. :juggler:

I'm glad you guys were nice enough help me.

I'm using a Batch Processor on Goldwave to take all of my albums and songs in CBR and convert them to VBR. What I'm wondering though is, how is it possible to actually convert a song from CBR to VBR? I though Birate is permanent and that no program can change it when it's ripped in CBR.

Another question is, would it have the same quality as directly ripping a song from the actually CD in VBR?

Originally Posted by soniclover

Thanks for all of the help guys. I'm sorry for pestering you all so much will all of my questions but I've had some of these questions for a while. :juggler:

I'm glad you guys were nice enough help me.

I'm using a Batch Processor on Goldwave to take all of my albums and songs in CBR and convert them to VBR. What I'm wondering though is, how is it possible to actually convert a song from CBR to VBR? I though Birate is permanent and that no program can change it when it's ripped in CBR.

Another question is, would it have the same quality as directly ripping a song from the actually CD in VBR?

In any case, it's always best to rip the VBR mp3 from the source material, and not the CBR mp3. The only reason I could see to convert an mp3 from CBR to VBR is to lower the bitrate (like 320kbps to -V 2), which has its purposes, or if you have something like Ogg Vorbis files you can't play on a certain media player.
If you must convert CBR mp3s to VBR, I do believe LAME should be able to accept the mp3 without question. Just use whatever VBR preset you want and LAME will re-encode the file. There's no point in going for a higher bitrate BTW, so if you wanted 128kbps CBR mp3s to sound like 192kbps VBR mp3s, it's not going to happen. Like I've said, re-rip the CD tracks and keep as lossless copy if you can, then re-rip the tracks to mp3. THIS is the reason many people use lossless, so they can re-encode when it proves advantageous without having to do the nasty lossy to lossy process of transcoding.

Long story short... making an MP3 from another MP3 will never improve the sound quality. It will always diminish it. Make the new MP3 from the original source instead.

You might wanna take a look at Mp3packer. It seems convert 320kbps to smaller vbr files without loss. I never tried it myself though.

Originally Posted by Slogra

You might wanna take a look at Mp3packer. It seems convert 320kbps to smaller vbr files without loss. I never tried it myself though.

Unlikely. If you transcode 320kbps files to -V 5 (~130kbps VBR), you won't really hear any differences unless you have extremely good hearing.

Originally Posted by Kaiten

Unlikely.

Unlikely or not, it's for real. The guys at HydrogenAudio have tested it MP3's shrunken with it give bit-identical input to their original copies.

Mind you, it typically only saves a few kB per minute.

Originally Posted by Kaiten

If you transcode 320kbps files to -V 5 (~130kbps VBR), you won't really hear any differences unless you have extremely good hearing.

You don't need "extremely good hearing" to tell the difference.

Hi there, i don't know if this is the right place to ask this but here goes, i wanted to know the link to a website that had the directsound resampling plugin for winamp. These forums even had a guide on how to improve quality in winamp and etc. i already grabbed shibatch but i wanted the ssrc for winamp version 2.2.6 if not mistaken. thanks everyone hope someone can help.

Originally Posted by Arucard

Hi there, i don't know if this is the right place to ask this but here goes, i wanted to know the link to a website that had the directsound resampling plugin for winamp. These forums even had a guide on how to improve quality in winamp and etc. i already grabbed shibatch but i wanted the ssrc for winamp version 2.2.6 if not mistaken. thanks everyone hope someone can help.

I do believe shibatch's directsound plugin inlcludes SSRC, I don't use WinAmp anymore, so I can't confirm this.

Before the GF forums went down there was a pretty good program listed for converting lossless files to .mp3 files. Any recommendations for this, for coverting lossless files to lossy?

I use ALL2LAME or Multi Frontend (by the same author) depending on the situation.

Multi Frontend - Nice for encoding to lossless formats or transcoding lossless to lossy.
ALL2LAME - Can only encode to MP3, but gives you the ability to use LAME's --nogap command which Multi Frontend doesn't.

These programs are just "frontends", meaning that they are workable interfaces for CLI software. You can find just about all the CLI encoders and decoders you'll ever look for at RareWares.

Would anyone know a good program for converting file formats? I have to convert an album in .ogg format to Mp3 format and I'd like to know a good program that would do it well without lossing too much (or any, if possible) quality?

I use dBpowerAMP (a cracked version). However, converting a lossy format to another lossy format will make you lose some quality, but not a lot. Just for the safe side, I'd convert lossy to lossless and then back to lossy again.

Ex: OGG > WAV > MP3

Again, there's no possible method in converting a lossy file to another lossy file without losing quality.

Originally Posted by soniclover

Would anyone know a good program for converting file formats? I have to convert an album in .ogg format to Mp3 format and I'd like to know a good program that would do it well without lossing too much (or any, if possible) quality?

Originally Posted by ArrowHead

Multi Frontend, RareWares

:lolsign:

I'm ashamed to say I actually missed that when skimming through.

Oh Well, thanks for the info guys.