I have "Golden Ears" Which AAC VBR Bitrate is acceptable? Options

[KmanKaiser]

So, yes, I have the "golden ears" everyone refers too...

I can actually hear the difference between FLAC, and MP3 320 kbps

I can hear the difference between 1,536 Kbps DTS, 800 Kbps VBR AAC, and 384/640 Kbps AC3 when I watch films, and my equipment isn't very fancy either


I just finished transcoding my FLAC discography of Eminem to 128 Kbps VBR AAC

I am thinking of retranscoding (again, from flac) to 192 Kbps or 320 Kbps VBR AAC
but is it necessary? (this is going to be for playback from my ipod touch)

My FLAC files look something like this...
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec
Duration : 6mn 42s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 2 849 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 96.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Stream size : 137 MiB (100%)

This post has been edited by KmanKaiser: Aug 29 2012, 09:37

[shadowking]

Do a proper abx test. Forget current trends, dont look at bitrates and spectrograms . Once things get difficult you stick with that setting or go *a little* higher - If 128k aac gives good results then: encode with 128..150..170 etc