quality of amazon and itunes mp3s Options

[crodgers]

Does anyone know what the quality of mp3s is from Amazon mp3?

What about the quality of mp3s from iTunes (the store, not ripping on pc)?

How are either of these qualities compared to buying a CD and ripping it myself with EAC and lame?

[crodgers]

For my own ripping and encoding, I use EAC and let it launch RazorLame. My current (EAC) settings for RazorLame are:

path: G:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\lame.3.97.b2.exe
Additional command-line options: -V2 --vbr-new

Bit rate: 224 kBit/s
[X] Delete WAV after compression
[ ] Use CRC check
[X] Add ID 3 tag
[X] Check for external programs return code

(*) High quality
( ) Low quality

Looking at the properties of an mp3 in foobar2000, it shows encoding settings as:
lame.3.97.b2.exe -h -b 224-V2 --vbr-new

Does that seem reasonable? How does that compare to what amazon and itunes are releasing?

This post has been edited by crodgers: Jun 22 2012, 15:49

[slks]

For my own ripping and encoding, I use EAC and let it launch RazorLame. My current (EAC) settings for RazorLame are:

path: G:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\lame.3.97.b2.exe
Additional command-line options: -V2 --vbr-new

Bit rate: 224 kBit/s
[X] Delete WAV after compression
[ ] Use CRC check
[X] Add ID 3 tag
[X] Check for external programs return code

(*) High quality
( ) Low quality

Looking at the properties of an mp3 in foobar2000, it shows encoding settings as:
lame.3.97.b2.exe -h -b 224-V2 --vbr-new

Does that seem reasonable? How does that compare to what amazon and itunes are releasing?

The "-b 224" forces a minimum bit rate of 224 kb/s, which is going to inflate the file size and makes your files not "true" VBR. EAC is adding the "-b 224" to the command line because you've selected that bit rate in the drop-down menu. I never liked this behavior of EAC, since it only makes sense if you're encoding CBR. It's been a while since I used EAC, but there should be a drop-down menu somewhere that lets you select your format (which is currently going to be "MP3" or "LAME" or something) - What you need to do is change it to "User-defined encoder" or "Custom encoder" or equivalent. If you have it set to custom encoder, EAC isn't going to add any extra command line arguments besides what you manually type in.