I have encoded a fair amount of my CDs to a bit rate of 256 when I discovered the Lame encoding method. Would there be a huge difference isn sound between 256 and say, alt extreme? Is it worth it to rencoded? or is the primary advantage in the file size savings?

it really depends on your hearing capabilities ... you should do a test to try to determine it ... but 256 should be very good

So did you use LAME to encode the CBR 256 mp3s, or another encoder?

Regarding the difference between LAME CBR 256 and --ape... on paper, there is a significant difference. --ape uses VBR, and VBR is always superior to CBR (with the exception of CBR 320 of course) because for very difficult portions of the file, it can crank the bitrate up to cope adequately. However, the biggest advantage of using --ape would be the code level tweaks. These are built-in switches which you can't access any other way, which minimise the occurence and prominence of a whole variety of artifacts.

So that's the "on-paper" difference. In real terms, kwanbis has the answer... you might not hear any difference, you'll just have to do some blind tests yourself in order to decide. If you used an encoder other than LAME for your CBR 256 files then I would recommend doing that... but if you used a recent recommended compile of LAME (see the sticky thread) then I would suggest it would be less important. It depends how many CDs you'll hgave to re-encode really, if it's 15/20, then why not just do it? It'll put your mind at ease and won't take very long.

What mp3 encoder did you use? What settings were used to encode your files?

Anyway, you shouldn't bother unless you're able to tell apart the encoded files and the originals in a blind test.

I did the 256 at CBR using Itunes and will be using Lame to do the VBR. Just wondering what the consensus was on the sound differences. I've always heard that 320 CBR was the best and was wondering how good the 256 would be as compared to the Alt extreme.

I should add that I'm using The lame encoder version 3.92

alt-preset standard is designed to use constant transparent quality. it will provide as many bits as every part of the song deserves. some parts of the song will need 320 kbit, and lame will distribute these bits accordingly. these parts will sound better than cbr 256, the rest will be the same transparent quality.

the kbit advantage of 256kbps will be not noticeable, because most of the time 256kbps are not needed.

To amano, your explanation was very informative but I was one question. If Alt standard samples what is needed, why would alt extreme be better?

APE raises the baseline (median) bitrate over that of APS. In a nutshell, throws more bits into the encoding process. It may do better on harder encodes (to achieve apparent transparency)...then again...you may not notice any difference between the two. After all, the whole point is to achieve the smallest file size for a given quality level. I'm being somewhat of a hypocrit for I encode ogg's @ -q 8 when -q 6 is nearly the sonic equivalent...and probably a lot smaller.

xen-uno