compress mp3 of powerful electronic music from 320 to 256 kbps, Moderation: Which would produce a better ~256 kbps result, CBR or VBR? Options

[goa pride]

I found on the web many 320 kbps dj sets to listen on to the USB flash drive 8 GB of portable stereo SONY CFD-RS60CP; i want to compress to put more files.
I compressed with the awesome Xrecode free and Lame 3.99.3 external encoder as well keep the tags (LameDropXPd is not capable, produces a wav file is not an mp3 file)
I ask the experts whether it is better parameter -b 256 or -V 0.3 (~ 256kbps) for better quality listening; not known listenable differences between the original mp3 and the compressed mp3.

[saratoga]

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=32379

This might be better then reencoding if you just want to save a bit of space.

[DVDdoug]

There is a good chance you won't hear any difference, since 256kbps is a high quality setting. But, there is potential quality loss wnenever you re-compress an MP3 (I think even if you re-compress to a higher bitrate...)

The general rule is that VBR (variable bit rate) is better since it can use higher bitrates on hard-to-compress music and lower bitrates on easy-to-compress music. CBR (constant bit rate) uses the same amount of space without "thinking".

And, it might be better to get a bigger flash drive rather than to re-compress every time you add more music to your collection...

[slks]

I would second Saratoga's motion for MP3packer. It's really the best option for cutting down 320 kb/s MP3s, as it doesn't actually re-encode the files, it just reorganizes the frames somehow to save space. That way there's no further quality regression from encoding the audio a second time.

How far MP3packer can compress your files depends on which encoder and which settings were used to make them, so it varies a lot. On some encodes it only got me 1% extra compression, but on other encodes I got an extra 10-15%. (320 kb/s to 256 kb/s would be 20%).

Now, if you really need further compression than what you can get with MP3packer, you could use LAME at -V1 or even -V2 and the files will probably come out OK. I'd advise you to just do a few encodes and listen. For me, personally, I'd just take whatever gains I could get with MP3packer and not even have to worry about the quality degrading.

This post has been edited by slks: Jan 14 2012, 03:34

[goa pride]

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=32379

This might be better then reencoding if you just want to save a bit of space.

WinMP3Packer:
151 MB mp3 320 kbps to 146 MB mp3 309 kbps = 5 MB bit saved

Xrecode with Lame 3.99.3 -V 0.3:
151 MB mp3 320 kbps to 126 MB mp3 267 kbps = 25 MB saved

This post has been edited by goa pride: Jan 15 2012, 22:28

[testyou]

Xrecode with Lame 3.99.3 -V 0.3:
151 MB mp3 320 kbps to 126 MB mp3 267 kbps = 25 MB saved

So? You can re-encode anything, but you create Generation Loss.
eg:

Re-encode with Lame 3.99.3 --abr 96
151 MB mp3 320 kbps to 45 MB mp3 96 kbps = 106 MB saved

But using MP3packer is Lossless.

This post has been edited by testyou: Jan 16 2012, 04:47