Hi everyone,

I'm new to the board, been reading through the FAQs and I'd consider myself an advanced MP3 user, however there's something I just don't get :

Why does EncSpot (2.0 build 817) report my MP3s as "Quality 58" although I'm encoding with Lame 3.90.3 --alt-preset insane ? As far as I know, that's the highest possible quality one could achieve with Mpeg1-Layer3 ... so what gives? Even VBR files around 192 kbits get a higher quality rating.

Ideas, anyone?

Yes. My idea is that everything EncSpot reports should be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

Ultimately, you should only trust your own ears to decide about sound quality.

The fault is not in Encspot. It is in Lame. That value is written by lame on the lame tag. (even -r3mix has 88 (or 80something)).

The reasoning under all this is that this is calculated by the switches used and some other internal settings, and this was never upgraded to reflect the real results after the making of alt-presets.

In the end, you can really ignore that information. It's innacurate.

(errrm.. am I clear enough? I think i've spent too many hours browsing today.. )

Just to throw my 2c worth...having used Encspot recently to root out Xing-encoded Mp3's (I actually used Audiocatalyst once...I know, and I'm trying to rid my collection of them )
Encspot doesn't seem to grasp much of what we assess as quality as I've seen Xing-encoded VBR's (VBR75) been rated at quality 100 while my Lame 3.93 apx been rated at 58 or something. Based on this, don't let Encspot's quality rating bother you in the least.

This quality value from the vbr header is not computed by EncSpot. It is stored by the encoder.

So if your alt-preset extreme files have a bad value, it is fair to say that it is Lame's fault.