Gone back to CBR Options

[shadowking]

Well I've had it sort of. Everything these days is too complex. My sansa M250 wont handle vbr mp3 well -stutering / volume issues. I really like this player so im keeping it.

I did some abx tests with recent and lame 3.90. CBR 192 is the minimum acceptable and 224 yields very decent quality on par with V2 ~ V0..
The old encoders (before presets) are very fast too. I settled for -h -b 224

I don't want to keep up with the latest and greatest anymore. VBR , joint stereo .. no more. Just an old version of EAC and lame because it just works.

[halb27]

Strange that VBR doesn't work with the sansa m250. Everything's fine with my sansa clip+.
Anyway, from former listening tests my result (with 3.90.3) was also: CBR 224 is very good; even hard problem samples become very acceptable. At that time using gpsycho was my favorite too, but today I probably wouldn't give away the benefits of joint stereo when using CBR/ABR though at high bitrate it isn't that important. Just like you, if I'd use CBR or ABR I'd do some listening tests, but if in doubt I'd also go for an older version like 3.90. CBR was much more popular then, that is it was better tested, and I expect no significant Lame development for CBR/ABR since the days of Lame 3.93.

This post has been edited by halb27: Dec 30 2011, 10:07

[shadowking]

Strange that VBR doesn't work with the sansa m250. Everything's fine with my sansa clip+.
Anyway, from former listening tests my result (with 3.90.3) was also: CBR 224 is very good; even hard problem samples become very acceptable. At that time using gpsycho was my favorite too, but today I probably wouldn't give away the benefits of joint stereo when using CBR/ABR though at high bitrate it isn't that important. Just like you, if I'd use CBR or ABR I'd do some listening tests, but if in doubt I'd also go for an older version like 3.90. CBR was much more popular then, that is it was better tested, and I expect no significant Lame development for CBR/ABR since the days of Lame 3.93.

Thanks for your input. My quality tests involved gpsycho so i went with those older encoders (3.90.3)

[saratoga]

Strange that VBR doesn't work with the sansa m250. Everything's fine with my sansa clip+.
Anyway, from former listening tests my result (with 3.90.3) was also: CBR 224 is very good; even hard problem samples become very acceptable. At that time using gpsycho was my favorite too, but today I probably wouldn't give away the benefits of joint stereo when using CBR/ABR though at high bitrate it isn't that important. Just like you, if I'd use CBR or ABR I'd do some listening tests, but if in doubt I'd also go for an older version like 3.90. CBR was much more popular then, that is it was better tested, and I expect no significant Lame development for CBR/ABR since the days of Lame 3.93.

Thanks for your input. My quality tests involved gpsycho so i went with those older encoders (3.90.3)

Did you end up figuring this out? If not, I might be willing to trade you for a newer, rockbox capable Sansa player. That way i could look into the m200v4 port.