I wonder why LAME doesn't get rid of the CBR mode at all. I mean most people know less about audio compressing so when you actually take a look what is offered in the P2P Networks it makes you sick. Most files are encoded in CBR mode. I encoded some files with LAME, Joint Stereo @ CBR 192 and it sounded awful. It was a song by Linkin Park; I think 'Somewhere I belong'. So I ripped it again und used --abr 192, which gave me an exact bitrate of 192kbps in average. However, it sounded much better and didn't have that noisy metallic sound as before. When using --aps I got something around 224kbps.

My suggestion would be to get rid of the CBR mode at all. At least for bitrates between 128kbps - 224kbps. I mean I don't get people who use CBR 256 or CBR 320, they could just use --aps or --aps extreme. Also it wouldn't hurt to use also an ABR mode for 96kbps files. It probably would use 96kbps all the way through anyway.

It would also stop people who are complaining about the huge quality difference between ogg <-> mp3. Because they mostly use mp3-CBR something against ogg-VBR with the same bitrate...

However, if that is all not going to work have at least some warning shown when someone uses CBR.

I believe there are some portable MP3 players that don't accept VBR files. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

Besides, P2P is frowned upon here at HA so you need not worry about CBR versus VBR, just buy the disc and then you can make high quality encodes yourself.

People who use 320kbps CBR in LAME are most likely doing so to get the utmost in quality (warm fuzzy feeling) when using portables with lots of memory.

CBR is still needed for things like streaming and compatibility, so "just getting rid of it" is not really an option for the lame devs.

I use CBR for compatibility issues... my sister portable player can't read VBR properly some work some dont... I myself only use VBR and ABR for all my encoding needs...

Laters

AgentMil

so how does ogg handles this issue then?

Vorbis has a "managed" bitrate mode, which allows you to set a min and max bitrate.

If Joe Random wants a CBR file and LAME doesn't give him what he needs, he's probably going to use Xing, Blade or worse, which does exactly what he wants.

I also own a sickening mp3 player that starts stuttering badly on preset standard or medium files... so LAME CBR 160 is the closest I can get to a quality encode.

I think a more practical option (which has been suggested before) would be to change the default setting of LAME from CBR-128 to --preset standard. That might catch some people just using the default for no reason, and would give the impression that yes, these preset things *are* recommended.

LAME --alt-preset cbr 192 -m s
sounds fine to my ears

Of course I use aps, ape and api in joint stereo, but
I doubt I can tell the difference between aps and 192 cbr...

Here we go again... Seems people already forgot about the discussions regarding dropping the r3mix preset.


Here: "Give the people what the people want"

Who the heck do you think you are to decide what people should be using?

Why didn't you bother to check RareWares first? There has been a special build of LAME for some time now over discussions a few short months ago.


"LAME 3.90.2 SPECIAL BUILD 2003-01-20
lame.exe designed ONLY to encode in --alt-preset standard (command line = lame input.wav) - ICL4.5 compile using Dibrom's switches":
http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org/ under the MP3 section

Edit: Evidentally a link to the actual HTML file cannot be used.

VBR is not fully supported as an audio stream in an AVI-file.

[off-topic]
Many important things are not supported in an AVI file. Try Matroska.
[/off-topic]

Talking about P2P is no base for quality discussion because music sharing over P2P means (in 99,9% of all cases) sharing of copyrighted material ...

There are certain (if not most of them, but I've seen MPC releases recently) release groups that still keep on using CBR192 (some even use XING for ripping) because they did so ever since (and, in case of LAME, CBR is twice as fast, compared with e.g. APS) ... in most cases, people who share music will not be able to tell a difference between e.g. APS and CBR192 (the Linkin Park music example you gave is a good example for demanding music in a sense of needed bitrate distribution for decent quality) ... but "normal" european or north-american boy-group-style pop music which you will find on compilations will very seldomly sound "lousy" (to use your own words).

So, if you share/leech music (which is illegal in most western countries by now), don't complain about a lack of quality ... go and buy the CD or encode yourself using quality-oriented encoder settings ...

Don't use -m s, since it makes use of pure stereo and doesn't use joint stereo (that's bad cause Lame has a safe joint stereo mode which gives you an overall better quality).

I use CBR 192k, because there comes a point in a man's life where he's just fed up with all the new fancy audio formats (tried ogg, mpc and aac), and just wants to enjoy his music everywhere without hassle.
And lame 192k does not sound awfully at all, as someone stated above.

Yeah,

It should be against the law to use anything but Lame APS as a minimum when you are trading illegal mp3 files over P2P

My prefered format is Vorbis, but I also have a portable MP3 player that is only compatible with cbr MP3 encodings. Crappy, I know, but it's either encode cbr for it or throw it away.

So you're saying I should use Fraunhofer for cbr? FhG sounds better than LAME? News to my ears! Or perhaps Blade? Or Xing?



**WARNING** Using a constant bitrate (CBR) mode will actually be compatible with your portable MP3 player, Chris.

:taking out soapbox:
Isn't taking away options how totalitarianism starts? Or intolerance? Or monopolies? And who writes the *holy list* of what's "OK" to use, and what's not?
:putting soapbox back in closet:

Great one!

(Now, that's that soapbox thing? Some joke that only makes sense to americans?)

Thanks...A "soapbox" is what people (for example religious zealots or politicians) used to stand on to "preach" to small groups of people on the street. It may be US-specific, AFAIK.

On the occasions I preach about something, I refer to it as "standing on a soapbox".

All right, I got it! I forgot about these cheap mp3 players that are actually named wrongly because they are not supporting vbr mp3's. However, in many cases people just don't know about the vbr options and it's benefits and that is what I'm talking about...they simply use cbr because they don't know any better and probably don't have the technical background...

So what? They are happy using CBR, so let them be.

Having sensible defaults is always a good thing for any application and lame currently doesn't exactly "shine" with its lame.exe, which features an endless list of experimental and undocumented cmd.line switches.

The biggest step forward has already been done with the --alt-presets and John33's various lame.exe "hacks"; additionally there have been many discussions about improving the current lame.exe and some of the suggestions made will hopefully be implemented during the final development stages of LAME4.

However LAME isn't primarily ment for the end-user and choosing sensible defaults is also up to the devs implementing lame in their software.

Bottom Line:
Either try advocating the --alt-presets or stop bitching about the quality of your pirated music; and if you have to bitch, bitch at afaber for setting 128kbps CBR full stereo as the default in CDex.

Not sure though...or are you saying that only professionals switch the ogg...



I never said that I got pirated music, dude. I took P2P as a reference only, because some people here probably wouldn't believe it otherwise.
How about if you read my post again? And the next time use quotes and don't just make something up.



People obviously do care about the quality or at least about the file size that can also be reduced by vbr mp3's. So my entire intention was it to find a way for newbie’s to make it easier for them.



I indeed wonder about that...I mean he could at least have set it to 'Joint Stereo', because many people still believe that this'll destroy the Stereo...and if a program like Cdex would have it as default it would get more approval.

Oh shit, it is required to be registered :-\
Maybe you could tell him to change the default properties

Uhmmm... I know that, I'm just stating that --alt-preset cbr 192 -m s
sounds fine to my ears. As I said, I use the VBR --alt-presets in
joint stereo mode.

I am saying that people want 128kbps CBR because they are happy with it and believe it is CD quality.



Well, dude, I'm sorry, but by all means, whenever somebody come up with ideas of killing the CBR mode or dropping --r3mix, people immediately suppose this somebody wants it because he found some 128kbps music on p2p and wants to get rid of it.

Try to come up with another justification to your proposal. If you are encoding your own songs, you are free to completely ignore the CBR modes. If you want it to "help newbies", well, who do you think you are to decide what the newbies should use and what they shouldn't?



Joint stereo might be feasible (I could set this as default today). But other mode than 128kbps isn't feasible. Why? Because that's what the people want! So what if some enlightened user at HA with Sennheiser or Grado cans want --aps? He can set it by himself on CDex options. The encoding modes aren't hard-coded to 128kbps.

I would wildly reckon that 90% of the mp3 users out there want 128kbps only, either because they have shitty desktop speakers or because they wholeheartedly believe in the marketing plot that 128kbps is CD quality.

If the default mode in CDex changes to --aps, people will get pissed because songs they rip will start taking almost twice the space they used to. And they won't notice any difference in quality.

Last but not least, they will get pissed because it won't play on their crappy MP3 player that only supports CBR

People here at HA must (hopefully, sometime) realize that this place is an exception filled with people with golden ears and three-figure cans. CDex isn't being developed for this people (only). It's being developed by the masses that have normal hearing and crappy gear.

Regards;

Roberto.

CDex could then at least use the --alt-preset cbr 128 option as default, and not the standard GSPYCHO mode (now *that's* something that should be removed from LAME altogether IMHO - what's the point of it?)...

Remember this? I sent you this >1.5 years ago :



This is, IMHO, how the LAME config should look like (well, something like it) - no useless options, no possibility of messing up the settings with stuff like simple stereo etc.

[Actually, there are a few design flaws in there - the separate option for "Insane" is unneccesary, and there should be a field to enter any desired bitrate for ABR, instead of the significant bitrates. Oh, and the "Path to LAME.EXE" shouldn't be there, since the DLL is used. Apart from that though, I think it's fairly realistic... ]

oh yeah, another factor that matters for a lot of people (including me) is that VBR preset encoding doubles encoding time compared to CBR, and Joint Stereo doubles it again compared to the evil -m s

APS got a little faster since 3.90.3 uses -Z, but it's still half an hour per album during which my CPU is blocked and I cant play games or compile my stuff.

And I agree with Roberto, you should advice ppl quality-wise but not push them to anything. If you dont want my -b 192 -h -m s files, fine. Good enough for me

PS: eMule took over the all-time download throne on sourceforge from CDex sorry for that Roberto

Speaking of CDex, is there any way to make it use the 3.93.1 alt-preset medium? A friend of mine was looking for a new ripper, and I tried to find one for him that could use it, but failed. The dbPowerAmp converter wasn't an option since the reason he was looking for a new one was the it stopped working

As stated already a couple of times, many older mp3 players do not function properly with VBR encodes.

One use I have for CBR LAME settings is with old monophonic jazz, country and R&B recordings - the resolution of the recording equipment was typically rather low in the older studios. Even modern transfers cannot disguise this.
192 CBR mono is basically indisdinguishable from the source on all the material of this type I've tried, and it encodes extremely quickly.

edited my syntax

Well, good luck convincing Faber to adopt your ideas. :B

Yes, and I wondered who is using ogg then? If the newbie’s only want CBR 128 since it sounds fine for them, therefore all what is left are the advanced users who use usually -aps or lossless encoder. However, IMHO I'd say that many newbie’s are concerned about the quality. So what they do is comparing ogg and mp3 at the same bitrate. Since they are newbie’s they use pretty much the default settings. The result will a much superior sound on ogg files since it has been most likely encoded in an abr mode. If they would have used also an abr mode for mp3 files they wouldn't probably be able to hear such a huge difference since the abr mode used for mp3 encoding would compensate that...

I don't want to tell the people what they should use, but I'd like to make it easier for them to find the right choice that suits their needs.

So Volcano's idea would do the trick in a very elegant way:



Don't get me wrong, I love Cdex...but if would be the author of such a program and considering that so many people are actually using it, I would feel some sort responsible that everybody will get the their personally best result. It's like the one guy who tells the people that transcoding to a higher bitrate will raise the quality...and he's also an author of a ripping program.

Also, why isn't --alt preset cbr set as default?

Not only with people with golden ears and three-figure cans (I got a pair of four-figure cans. Four figures with a decimal point in the middle ).

May be digressing a little, but to me, the forums are for those who want to get to know a bit more about the complexities of audio, and get real with their music.

I have ripped 81 albums from my own cd collection using alt-preset CBR 160 and it weighs 8 mp3 cd's nice for travels, and I'm sure that I won't have compatibility problems with several players i've used. Thought -APS is better so far
CBR satisfies a lot of people!! The best to do is to replace FHG codecs on many encoders that are using it! Lame should be everywhere now! especially -AP's
And never forget that MP3 is not a WAV! it is compressed!! I like to listen my cd's and buying those I like so much! Think for the artist. Well P2P is not so bad, but peoples who are using it doesn't understand that an artist would like to be paid for his talent. Just download, if you love it buy it.

People that want the same quality at lower bitrates. And open source zealots (nerds)



The default mode in oggenc is VBR.



You started saying about dropping CBR completely. Now you talk about default modes and helping newbies. Talk about coherence...



Jesus Christ, what is personally best for you isn't personally best for someone else! Not even api is enough for the likes of Guruboolez. How do you expect an encoder to adapt automatically so that "everybody will get the their personally best result"???

What CDex is offering is what MOST PEOPLE WANT. Like it or lump it. And stop using p2p while at it.



Because it uses Lame's default. Get lame to output --alt-preset CBR as default, and you probably will be able to convince Faber.



Duh. And what about MP3 inside wav?

For f*ck's sake, WAV is a bloody CONTAINER! Uncompressed audio is called PCM.

Rjamorim you really should take a camomile, you're using aggressive tones while no-one has accused you of anything.

Plz calm down.

You got it! So this is why I think these people would be interested in abr!



how about reading my first reply to this thread? I changed my opinion because now I understand why a cbr mode is needed (crappy mp3 players).



I was referring to the screenshot that was posted...making it easier for people to understand the options = higher chance that people will find what's best for them...if they don't even know about the vbr modes how do you expect them to use it...


I still don't get why it doesn't use --alt preset cbr since there is no disadvantage but better quality. Your friend seems to be a little bullheaded...also, as I said I don't use P2P and you even apologized for that accuse...so why are you picking on that again? Wasn't it you who got Adobe Audition from P2P after all ? Unfortunately the posts have been vanished from the announce thread...

Yes. I use p2p, but at least I don't go around crying out loud that I quality isn't good enough for my standards and therefore we should ditch all CBR. You are getting your pirate musics for free, and you still complain they are not good enough? Heh.

And if you want those posts back, ask JohnV. It wasn't me that moved them to the limbo forum.

Surely isn't P2P killing music...

Just out of curiosity... Is this because of generally crappy encoding quality or out of solidarity with the poor huddled masses of oppressed record company executives....?



Actually, I think it originates from the UK, where people in the olden days (all kinds, not just zealots or politicians) could (& would) climb up on a soapbox in the park on Sundays and shout about something/anything that was close to their heart, like: "MPC is the only way to go!"



Actually, being a newbie just intrested in finding out what choice I want to make in encoding my record collection, I have poked around a bit on the net last couple of weeks and on several occations seen postings of a claim to (somewhat like) this effect: "Lame is better on vbr and higher bitrates, but Fraunhofer is still the best encoder for 128 cbr."
I guess this is not to be relied upon, then? Well, doesent really matter, I'm not going to encode anything in 128 cbr anyway.

Non. It's because p2p is (mostly) used for illegal purposes, and p2p talk here can pretty much close this forum and make Dibrom lose lots of money in court.

OK. Point taken. I stand corrected.
And I do ofcourse understand that this forum is about audiocodecs and not music or politics, or music+politics.... and so it should be.

Thank you for the expanded explanation of the "history of the soapbox". I only knew it as a "platform for preaching". Never knew the details of it's origination.

Now, just as long as everyone's soapbox is the same height!


My main thrust was not the differences in sound quality between the codecs, but rather just the need for options. (Not opposing your statements, just reiterating my point because I thinks it's important.)

No sizeable group of people will ever agree as a whole on one approach for anything, hence the need for different choices being supported. I like Vorbis, so that's what I should use. music_man_mpc likes MPC, so that's what he should use. Everyone who prefers FLAC should definitely use FLAC. Everyone who prefers FhG 128 cbr full stereo should definitely use that setting, no matter who may balk. As a matter of fact, it was quite recently someone balked that I primarily used a Vorbis -q level below 5.00. How would I feel if that setting were taken away from me because someone felt anything below -q 5 was a poor setting in their opinion?

To each his own, that's my main point. And that can only be had by providing everyone a choice of different options. The more different codecs and settings there are in the world, the more people will be happy with their encoded music. It's simple statistics. I think we have plenty, yes, but I'd never agree with the concept of taking one away (unless there were a technical need, such a new version of a codec not being able to support a certain setting anymore).

As for the reference to P2P killing music...I couldn't see how it could be. Everyone has choices (as previously discussed), and you don't even have to use P2P to enjoy almost any music you'd like to. I have nothing against P2P in general, though I happen to have never used it. Hence, it has nothing to do with my music.

I go from CD -> EAC -> WAV PCM -> Wavegain -> Vorbis -> Winamp 5.0 -> Echo Indigo -> Grado or Klipsch. P2P (and any encoder quality setting used across it) is not in any part of my loop, and I feel no effect of it "killing my music".

For some of us, music is politics, as are audio codecs.

Or at least, they are more important than politics.

You guys don't need to argue about CDex, because unlike some "other" software, it is free open source. Meaning? Yes, you can make it the way you want, and release to the masses. Who cares if some stubborn person thinks what others want must be what we give? Heh, if it were for them, they could be still using Xing 128

So get the sources, put in some decent defaults, put it a catchy name like "CDex done right" (or something ) and release the sources. You don't need to involve the original developers at all, let them keep their attitude all what they want, and we can let the people decide

Of course i myself would recommend all people to use such a modified CDex. This really happened a while ago, somebody modified CDex 1.40b8 (i think) with decent defaults as the result of a very similar thread. Another request was the setting of Paranoia Full ripping method by default. I guess you can also do something about tags, maybe add some replaygain in there... hmmm endless posibilities

Well, actually, this could also apply to Lame itself! It is open source too!

BTW: "Talking" about p2p is nothing wrong at all, maybe if you started mentioning specific networks, or servers and giving links etc. But as creepy as current USA laws are, "i think" that you can still "express" your views about such technology over there without any unnecesary implication of doing ilegal activities. After all, indie bands do exist, and artists giving concent for the distribution of content over many systems including "p2p". It would be sad if they did it in low quality "just because everyone else does". If i lived there, i would actually be more scared of discussing "circumventing" ideas on certain CD threads...

I, personally, would definitely recommend not branching CDex.

The best example of software branching gone awry is probably eMule. Now, you have more than ten different "mods", each one with their own set of features. Most new features don't overlap, so it's hard to choose what is best for you.

The main CDex branch is constantly being bugfixed and new features are being added. Unless we come up with a good team of developers, the "CDex done right" would end up getting behind.

Another option would be patching every new version that comes out. Quite burdensome work, IMO.

And the best reason is that it would probably never get the same popularity of standard CDex. As it seems, it would more or less end up restricted to people that care about --alt-presets - the exact kind of people that can perfectly start the configuration window and choose them among the options.



Not really. That special build that was available at RW was made by John33 to support --alt-presets in the Lame configuration dialog, since they weren't available by then. They are now available, therefore the RareWares build is gone. It was outdated and had bugs that were corrected in later versions. So there.



Sure, very easy.
I suggest you start programming now then. You won't get much support from here, since most HA users are hooked on EAC.

Regards;

Roberto.

BTW: I have some news for the uninformed people out there: most CD rippers output 128kbps CBR as default. Including EAC.

I completely agree with Roberto.

I have specialized in software configuration management for a decade now, and getting into the archive branches (in CVS, PVCS, whatever) that come with parallel development increase development complexity exponentially. Rolling bug fixes and "accepted" enhancements into subsequent releases involves code merging, only part of which can be done automatically, but which almost always requires manual intervention with each merge of each source file. Multiply the number of source code files with the number of development paths to get an idea of scale.

Ten development paths would represent a full-time job for a configuration manager for any decently sized project if you wanted to get all fixes and desired functionality properly merged into each path. That's not even considering change descriptions, change management (bug tracking), build management and different versions of documentation (generally archived alongside the code, and having similar merge points).

Take it from someone who's done almost every aspect of this for ten years, you'd have to have a damn good justification (and demand) for having enough versions of an app to "satisfy the masses". Make one or two versions that satisfy 80% of the population, and consider your project successful.

Or for higher aspirations, hire a full-time config manager. I'm available, you know...

You really don't get it, do you? I already stated twice that I don't use P2P and I explained as well why I started this thread. Besides that I now DO understand that cbr is still required by some people (also said that twice). So what's your problem? Use quotes, dude...it's like if I would say that you are gay without stating anything that made me to come to this conclusion...

That's not completely true. EAC lets the user choose between high and low quality - if he chooses high quality, --alt-preset standard is used (low quality uses --alt-preset 128 - ABR, at least).