Bitrate or quality for mp3's?

[Ghtpua]

Hi,

What is a good bitrate or quality for .mp3's? Please and thank you.

I started going for 56 or something low. It worked great in the computer, however, not other things outside, like a portable .mp3 player, DVD player, and so on. So then I up the bitrate to 192 because I read in many places that 192 is cd quality, however, I have noticed that a lot of others go for 128, which is also the default in converting .mp3 software with cd's. Is 128 a good bitrate to get in .mp3's also, or is there anything lower then 128 a good bitrate to get .mp3's also? Please and thank you.

How come the bitrate maters for other players makes a difference because they work very well in the computer and will those other players ever be fixed so they are able to pretty much play any kind of bitrate like the computer? Please and thank you.

[ZippyP.]

It's really up to you and your ears. I find 128 to be too low and I prefer 192 or more. I can hear the difference, and 56 is just plain bad. I guess it depends on what equipment you use for playback. How small do you need the files to be?

[Cobra]

I use Vorbis (www.vorbis.com) - gives CD quality at 100kbps or so, depending on the music. If you need very compact storage of music on your PC, give Vorbis a shot.

You probably can't use it with your portable player, so it won't be much good if this is necessary.

Cobra

[bugster]

Somehow you managed to post the same question twice about 30 mins apart. Hopefully this was an error. Please try and avoid doing this again.


/Moderator bugster

[haloblack]

It's really up to you and your ears. I find 128 to be too low and I prefer 192 or more.

I second that. I thought 128 was bad until I got good speakers. Now it's all but unlistenable. I use high-rate VBR for all the mp3's I make and I won't download something at 128 unless it's impossible to find elsewhere. I'll move to OGG or mp4 someday, but not until my car stereo supports it.

[Ghtpua]

Hi,

I apologize about the double post. I was trying to reply and I do not know what happened.

Thanks for helping me.

128 is a bad bitrate then, how come the default .mp3 converting softwares is at 128 then? Please and thank you.

Is Vorbis able to work in portable .mp3 players, DVD players, and so on also? Please and thank you.

[Grimey]

128 isn't a bad bitrate, it's just not the best. it's so commonly used becasue its a good balance between quality and filesize. i personally like 192 or up, but it's really up to you. if you don't notice a difference in quality between 128 and a higher bitrate, then by all means stay at 128. Also some portable mp3 players and dvd players have limits on how high of a bitrate they can play, so you should know if your players can handle a higher bitrate first.

[Suntan]

No bitrate is bad. It is just conventinal wisdom that people say 128 MP3 is "CD quality". All people judge music quality differently. Generally people aknowledge 128 for MP3 as the bare minimum for music quality when trying to replace a CD with 160 or 192 being preffered for people that want better quality. Higher bitrate, higher quality simple as that.

You need to decide which bitrate is "good enough" for you. This gets harder to do when you want to use the files on more than one platform. It means a lot of testing.

All anyone can do (or should do) to help you is tell you what settings they use and why they use them.

I personally encode with Vorbis because I only use my computer and IPAQ to listen to it and I think Vorbis sounds better than MP3, but it is just starting to be supported on standalone DVD and "MP3" Players. For playback on my computer (through my setero system) I encode with a quality of 5 (about 160kbps) for my music and 4 (145kbps) for her music. For Xvid encoded/converted movies I use a quality of 3 (120kbps). For my IPAQ, I encode a copy at -1 (45kps) for when I want to pack them in and use the computer copy when I don't need to take a bunch of song with.

-Suntan

[vitualis]

IMHO, encode for quality. Now that I've got a HDD based MP3 player, I'm regretting that the majority of my MP3s are in 128 kbit/s.

128 kbit/s is definitely NOT CD-quality and the term "near-CD quality" is really rather subjective.

In any case, you can definitely and clearly hear the differences between the source audio and 128 kbit/s MP3 on good quality equipment on many tracks. The more you listen to MP3, the more you identify MPEG encoding artifacts and perhaps it's just me, but they really detract from the listening experience.

My recommendation if you use MP3 is to use an up-to-date version of the LAME MP3 encoder. My favourite setting is in fact one of the presets --r3mix. This is pretty much "transparent" to the source audio (i.e., the vast majority of people can't tell the difference in an A-B test) and you tend to get better average compression rates than straight 192 kbit/s CBR (which is probably only close to transparent).

Best regards.

[Ghtpua]

Hi,

Thank you for all the help everyone. I really appreciate it. I am getting my mp3's at 192, and I was thinking about changing it to 128, however, now I am thinkining I will just keep at 192 and continue getting them that way also. Thank you very much for all your help everyone.

oh ok thanks. I use lame. I like it. CBR or VBR which is better?

[Suntan]

VBR makes better use of available space than CBR, but is not as universally accepted (portable MP3 players might not handle it and a lot of MPEG4 DVD players have a problem with audio sync when the audio is VBR MP3). If you verify that all of your playback equipment (and future playback equipment) play VBR without problems then go with that. Otherwise stick with CBR.

-Suntan

[vitualis]

Most hardware players (now) will be able to play VBR encoded MP3s just fine. Many will still have problems with correctly displaying the playtime/playlength, however.

Regards.

[energy80s]

I wouldn't recommend VBR for MP3s. There is still a lot of hardware / software out there that doesn't like it. If you want VBR try Ogg Vorbis. A 192k .ogg file will be a damn sight better than a 192k MP3, and being VBR will also be smaller. Probably the best "new" format to try is AAC, but it is still quite a closed format - the only free encoders are with iTunes and Nero Digital.

[vitualis]

MP3 is entrenched, however. Support and compatibility is widespread. Also, I think "VBR incompatibility" with MP3 is overrated.

I've made VBR MP3s for years now and I've rarely had a playback problem... As stated, the only problem I generally face is incorrect playlength reporting.

VBR MP3 support is still a hell of a lot better than Ogg Vorbis or AAC.

BTW, MPEG-2 AAC is not a new format as such. I was playing with it with a command line encoder long before Ogg Vorbis was around...

Regards.