is there a way to overide the bitrate pulldown in EAC's compression settings? i am trying to do a lowbitrate encode of a book on cd, and eac wont let me go down to the lower bitrates like 56-96.

i thought i would use a variation of the command line given in the list:

"or ff123's and Hans' suggestion (http://www.ff123.net/cbr128.html):

--abr 128 -h --nspsytune --athtype 2 --lowpass 16 --ns-bass -8 --scale 0.93"

i was thinking:
--abr 64-h --lowpass 16


thanks for your time,
juglesh B>{)}

If u enter a command-line switch, EAC uses only that and
overrides the other settings in the compression window.

I think you should choose "user defined encoder" to override the pulldown list.

EDIT: More info I found by looking in the FAQ (really recommended...)
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....t=25#entry67461

EDIT2: You should check out the recommended lame settings thread (Look in the FAQ), for the optimum settings. (--abr 64-h --lowpass 16 isn't optimum).

yes i did read the faq and searched around before i posted!<G>

yourtallness: no, that is not true in all cases. the pulldown list does have an effect.
from:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....t=25#entry67461


magic75: i did try 'user defined encoder', but it didnt work, lame flashed on for only a second, and the file was not encoded. also, the drop down box did not go away, but it did change.


there is no recomended setting for audio books in the faq or recomended list (other than using a low bitrate abr, which wont work with EAC's dropdown list)
other ideas?

thanks for your time, guys,
juglesh

You probably forgot to add the %s and %d parameters at the end. Look at this example of a valid LAME parameter string in EAC:


Select 'User defined encoder' and use file extension .mp3

It should work fine then, as it does here

Well, Hanky answered your first question so I'll focus on the second. You are correct that there are no recommended settings for speech (audio books). I am no expert but I am very sure that the recommended ABR setting for 64 kbps (in that thread) is better than what you are suggesting. Mainly because the high lowpass you are using. 16 kHz is way to high for that bitrate and voice, since voice doesn't have much high frequency content.

I would start out with --alt-preset 64 (if I want 64 kbps of course?), then add -a to force mono. This setting would lowpass at 11 kHz as a default, which seems like a good choice. I you are not happy with that you could try adding a lowpass switch yourself. Either higher or lower than 11. Higher will give more artefacts, and lower will of course give less...

If you want to dig in to it deeper, there are some interesting suggestions you might wanna try out in this thread:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=3270

If you try a search on 'speech' in the MP3 forums you will find more interesting threads on this issue.