Need explanation of KBPS & Sample options in Freemake

[ranchhand]

I use Freemake to download Youtube videos, extract the sound tracks and convert to MP3 then burn to CD for my own custom music disk. In the MP3 Output Paramaters screen they give several options, all in KBPS: 96, 128, 192, 256, and 320. Then if I click on "Add Your Preset" at the bottom of the list, options for several sampling choices appear. I have tried a couple of different KBPS downloads, and I (for one) can't really tell any difference when I play back through my computer sound speakers (Altec Lansing). I sometimes use Audacity for this and I notice that Audacity will strip the sound, and the KBPS is 192 with no other choices.
I'm not asking for a encyclopedia-type answer, but can anyone give me a header on what the purpose of different KBPS and Sampling choices are for? Is there an advantage to one over the other?
Thanks in advance...

[manono]

In general, the higher the better. However, if the source is crap to begin with then the difference between those different choices will be very slight. And since you're listening on computer speakers, you'll be even less able to pick out any differences.

If I were you and if I really wanted the best out of what is pretty poor quality audio to begin with, I'd try and improve it a bit in Audacity. I don't use it for reencoding, so I don't know if its MP3 encoder is any good. But mine does have several different choices for reencoding MP3, and not just 192KBPS.

[ranchhand]

Thanks.... yes, I do use Audacity regularly for enhancing and tweaking; the Steve Brambley Boost filter is great for that. The MP3 export filter is excellent (IMHO).

[manono]

Oh, then I misunderstood. When you said:

I sometimes use Audacity for this and I notice that Audacity will strip the sound, and the KBPS is 192 with no other choices.

I thought you were referring to its MP3 encoding options. Instead, you were talking about what you get when opening an MP3 in Audacity (I guess). I convert everything to WAV audio first, partly because my Audacity is older and I can't open MP3 anyway.

And yes, when I mentioned improving the quality of the audio, Steven Brambley's Boost Filter is also what I had in mind. I agree that it's very good for improving lousy audio.

[hello_hello]

The sampling option lets you pick how frequently the audio is sampled (44.1Khz or 48Khz etc). Generally you don't want to change the sample rate and you'd just keep it the same as the source.

The bitrate is a factor in determining quality. It sounds like the MP3 bitrates you mentioned might apply to CBR (constant bitrate) encoding. Does Freemake have any variable bitrate MP3 options. The standard VBR LAME MP3 preset is simply called V2 and gives you an average bitrate of around 190Kbps..... very roughly. It's a quality based encoding method so the bitrates will be different from file to file.

Can Freemake save the audio in a lossless format (ie wave files)? It sounds like you might be encoding the audio as MP3 and then opening those with Audacity only to re-encode them as MP3 again. Ideally, if you're using filters etc, you'd want to keep the audio lossless until you're done and then convert it to MP3.