best mp3 encoder?

[jamespoo]

i have a 512mb mp3 player i really like because battery life is like 30hours if every song was 5mins long (almost all songs are less then 5mins long) i can fit 100 songs on it at 128kbps CBR

but what i wanted to do encode some of my old flac cd rips to 128kbps VBR mp3 what would be the best mp3 encoder to use?

[Mr_khyron]

https://www.videohelp.com/software/Lame-MP3

[davexnet]

128 kbps sounds marginally poor, no matter the mp3 encoder.

[jamespoo]

128 kbps sounds marginally poor, no matter the mp3 encoder.

128kbps sound ok to my ears

[davexnet]

128 kbps sounds marginally poor, no matter the mp3 encoder.

128kbps sound ok to my ears

Yes it's not a problem, I've a load of ripped mp3's I did years ago @ 128kbps.
I would think the encoders have been improved since I did mine back then (about 20 years ago)

[jamespoo]

128 kbps sounds marginally poor, no matter the mp3 encoder.

128kbps sound ok to my ears

Yes it's not a problem, I've a load of ripped mp3's I did years ago @ 128kbps.
I would think the encoders have been improved since I did mine back then (about 20 years ago)

Opus is the best audio format for high compression 128kbps sound really good way better then mp3

i have not used mp3 since 2015 i was just hoping there was something by now better then lame

nice to see lame still being updated

[davexnet]

128 kbps sounds marginally poor, no matter the mp3 encoder.

128kbps sound ok to my ears

Yes it's not a problem, I've a load of ripped mp3's I did years ago @ 128kbps.
I would think the encoders have been improved since I did mine back then (about 20 years ago)

Opus is the best audio format for high compression 128kbps sound really good way better then mp3

i have not used mp3 since 2015 i was just hoping there was something by now better then lame

nice to see lame still being updated

I still don't fully understand your point. At 128kbps, so much of the high frequencies of the source WAV file have been lost,
I don't think it makes any difference what mp3 encoder you use.

At the higher bitrates Lame sounds great - I was using 3.99 last, encoded them in FooBar2000

At 128kbps, aac sounds better, Opus also good, but not much hardware support (yet)

[redsandvb]

i have a 512mb mp3 player i really like because battery life is like 30hours if every song was 5mins long (almost all songs are less then 5mins long) i can fit 100 songs on it at 128kbps CBR

but what i wanted to do encode some of my old flac cd rips to 128kbps VBR mp3 what would be the best mp3 encoder to use?

I'd think Lame using -V 4 or -V 5 would eek out as much quality as you can get from mp3 at those bitrates.

[jamespoo]

i have a 512mb mp3 player i really like because battery life is like 30hours if every song was 5mins long (almost all songs are less then 5mins long) i can fit 100 songs on it at 128kbps CBR

but what i wanted to do encode some of my old flac cd rips to 128kbps VBR mp3 what would be the best mp3 encoder to use?

I'd think Lame using -V 4 or -V 5 would eek out as much quality as you can get from mp3 at those bitrates.

thanks just found LameXP and encoded 1 song to mp3 v5 and it took 2seconds and the mp3 sounded decent

[redsandvb]

i have a 512mb mp3 player i really like because battery life is like 30hours if every song was 5mins long (almost all songs are less then 5mins long) i can fit 100 songs on it at 128kbps CBR

but what i wanted to do encode some of my old flac cd rips to 128kbps VBR mp3 what would be the best mp3 encoder to use?

I'd think Lame using -V 4 or -V 5 would eek out as much quality as you can get from mp3 at those bitrates.

thanks just found LameXP and encoded 1 song to mp3 v5 and it took 2seconds and the mp3 sounded decent

You could try -V 4 for a little bit better quality and bitrate probably ~140-150

[Hoser Rob]

+1 on lame or anything that uses it for a backend.

I agree that 128K is a bit low but it depends. Much popular music released in the last 2 decades has been compressed to death in the mastering stage, which fortunately is being done less now that most streaming services normalize by default. But such recordings won't sound worse at 128K because they've been compressed so much that there's nop low level information to lose. I compress to 320K, if I re encode the track at all.