Does audio bit rate matter for VHS capturing?

[Kaitou]

This might be a silly question but I'm just curious, it wasn't until now that I truly noticed an option on Amarec for the audio bit rate quality of capturing videos through that program itself. I have mainly used Amarec for capturing VHS tapes (sometimes I capture DVD's but it's usually of a VHS converted to a DVD anyway), so I was just curious as to whether a higher bit rate really makes any difference in audio clarity/quality at all.

I tried capturing a couple of small clips in 128kbps and also 320 kbps but I couldn't tell any difference between the two. I've always captured audio in 128 kbps but was wondering if there really is any noticable quality difference in audio itself in the output file if I set it to a higher bit rate.

Thanks!

[Alwyn]

I'd stick with Uncompressed. You want the maximum amount of info recorded off the tape.

[darkknight145]

I've always noticed that low bit rate audio is more noticeable than low bit rate video, the ears are not very forgiving on poor audio, a lot depends on the quality of the original audio, ie if there is a lot of background noise the main audio will suffer from a lack of bit rate as the noise will steal bitrate.

[Kaitou]

I'd stick with Uncompressed. You want the maximum amount of info recorded off the tape.

I don't use any audio compressor (the option selected says "uncompressed") but it still gives the audio bit rate option. If it's listed as uncompressed, does this actually mean it's uncompressed or is it still using a specific bit rate? The bit rate options are 128, 192, 256 and 320 kbps.

EDIT: I would assume the audio is uncompressed, since when I look at the properties of the file, it is showing 1536 kbps as the bit rate, unless I'm looking at that wrong.

[Alwyn]

Yes, not a very "clear" interface. The bitrate setting is not applicable to "Uncompress".

I can't even record with MP3 selected: I get a "acmstreamopen" error.

Mediainfo is another good source of info about your video/audio files. It is 99% correct. On some, few occasions, it get's thing wrong but for general use, it's great. Use the "Tree" or "Text" view.

[themaster1]

Back in the mp3 heydays it was said 320k was undistinguishable compared the og source, as far as human ears. 1536 kbps is PCM audio which is plenty good
Then a codec like AAC came out, more complex & tailored, allowed even lower bitrate for the same rendition level (just like H264 did for video)

There are too logics: one is archival (Master, higher possible), one is distribution (audio can be more compressed).
Which one is yours ?

[pandy]

Technically higher sample rate means lower quantization noise i.e. better signal to noise ratio - this is foundation principle behind oversampling - later you can reduce sample rate.
Usage of term "bitrate" imply rather compression than sampling - it is not recommended to sample signal with compression (especially lossy compression).