I ripped a while ago the album "White Boy Blues", a VA recording with some old stuff by Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and a couple others. I used Q6 with xlevel. What's a bit worriying to me, is that all the songs, except one, got a really low bitrate: only between 102 and 114. What is also a bit weird, is that one of the songs still got 208kbps, even though I don't see it as anything so exceptional, although the stuff is somewhat varying along the record.

So, should I be worried at all? What's the lowest bitrates you've gotten with Q6? I haven't (yet) compared to the original, because I don't own it, it's my friend's. I guess, I could borrow it again to do some testing, tho.

if the recordings are not stereo, the bitrates will be extremely low, perhaps that low, even lower.

with a CD of old recordings from old Christmas TV specials, i got bitrates from 96-112 with q6.5

altho the CD is of course stereo (it has 2 channels), the 2 stereo channels are the same, so the resulting MPC file is quite low bitrate.

That could sure explain it . Apparently, one of the songs is normal stereo anyway .. Is there any way to check if the songs are in mono then? They do sound really lo-fi all the way, but that could be just because the stuff is so old.

Aerosmith's "Kings and Queens" is 115kbps with Musepack -q5. From what I can tell, there is very very little difference between the left and right channels even though the song is in stereo. Same case with the song "Same Old Song and Dance", it was 119kbps.

Also remember, the older the album is the more likely fewer higher frequencies were recorded. As a result, Musepack needs less bits to make a quality encode.

The mono Beatles songs from their "1's" album are in the 95kbps range.

Well, I guess that's about it then . Thanks for the answers.