LAME, CBR, VBR,.... I'm confused! Options

[Immo]

Hi!

This is my first post on this board, and the reason why I'm posting is to find an explanation for one particular, interesting issue of LAME MP3 compression...

I took a sample from a live instrumental concert with clear high-frequency sounds. I compressed it with two different settings, using LAME 3.91.

-b 192 -m j -h -q 0 (= 192kbps constant, joint stereo, quality-optimised, max. quality) and
--alt-preset standard, which produced a slightly larger file, the bitrate averaging at 200kbps.

The results were both quite good and I couldn't tell the difference in sound - maybe I lack the equipment.

I performed a spectral frequency analysis on each of the results.

Here's what it looked like:


Let's look at the left image: the frequency meter suggests thet there's a sharp cut at 16kHz. Nevertheless, some sounds are given higher frequencies, but then there is another sharp cut just under 19kHz, above which nothing can be seen.

Now the right image: up to about 16kHz the frequencies are generally preserved. Then they gradually become thinner in a varying manner, depending, i suppose, on their importance. There is no sharp cut below ~19.8kHz.

I do not know much abot audio compression - maybe I'm misunderstanding the whole thing - so I'd like you to ask you first: which picture do you think corresponds to which compression method?

Immo

[evereux]

YOU CANT' SAY SOMETHING SOUNDS BETTER BASED ON A PICTURE.

I don't believe he said it did?

The regulars here know that looking at graphs is pretty irrelevant when coming to the actual listening. But I still think it's interesting from a technical point of view to see what the codecs are doing.