Suggest ~160kbps VBR setting. Options

[guidryp]

Hi,

Looking at the suggested settings/presets I am dismayed at the lack of a VBR setting that operates at a lower bit-rate.

There is APS standard, which on my music easily averages over 200Kbps. In fact my latest Rush albums are averaging over 220Kbps.

I can see noisy metal taking over 220kbps, but a song like Rush-Nobody's Hero taking 230Kbps?

For me, it calls into question the validity of the VBR model if the answer to lower than 230KBps encoding is to use the ABR/CBR settings.

ABR doesn't seem much better than CBR after watching it encode 90+ % of its samples at the target rate.

Surely a VBR setting can be cooked up that can encode the above track at ~160kbps in VBR and still sound better than 160 ABR.

PS - I want to use this setting in my compact Flash based portable, in my car etc. My max space average is 160Kbps do to the size of the portable memory. But I want the best quality in that space.

Peter

[JohnV]

Originally posted by pacohaas
2. While -Y does bring the bitrate down, because all -Y really is is a lowpass, some of the wrong tracks get lower bitrates(3, 4) and higher bitrates(1, 2) than they should according to aps.

Again... -Y is not a lowpass.
Just to put it simple (I've explained this so many times already during few days), using -Y can directly affect to the bit allocation of the whole frequency range of MP3. If it affects, the effect will be lower bitrate. -Y also can retain some high frequency content, so it's not a lowpass.

It's totally expected that those tracks/CDs which give the highest bitrate with APS, show the greatest drop in bitrate with -Y (unless the music is really complex). The reason some trakcs/CDs give higher average bitrate doesn't necessarely mean it's "harder to encode" complex music. It's just as likely that the bloating is because the SFB21 issue, and if this is the case, -Y gives very high drop in bitrate.