95% of my MP3 collection (I use the TB AudioTron at home - Love it!) is from my own CD collection, ripped w/EAC/LAME at --alt-standard. However, I have some downloaded music (I'm too lazy to hook everything up to rip my old vinyl collection) and I have a dilemma; do I download @ 192CBR and leave them as-is or do I find the best quiality out there (usually 320CBR) and transcode?

I just spent a bunch of time trying to decide which sounds better; 192 CBR (no special settings, and in js) or a straight 320 CBR (again vanilla w/js) that was transcoded to --alt-standard. I used LAME to encode all my samples from the same .wavs. I used a couple of songs I know well, and all of the clips that I have heard about that give MP3 a hard time (daughter, fatboy, castanets, etc.) Yes-I realize that my rips are probably a lot better quality than what I may find on the net...

My conclusion is that the transcoded files still sound (very slightly) better than pure 192 CBR. Am I crazy, or has LAME improved so much that most of the problems I hear about have been fixed? Have these sample clips been beaten (and the encoder debugged) to death to the point where they are the exact WRONG ones to use now?

Just wondering what others may have found.

One thing to note: A lot of the 320 CBR files out there on the P2P networks are already transcoded. Some uninformed people think transcoding a 128k CBR file to a 320k CBR file will improve the quality!

What are the bitrates of the files transcoded to --alt-preset standard (after transcoding)? And what encoder & settings was used with the original 192k CBR files? Those questions are the critical ones.

Normally, the 192k CBR ought to sound better than anything transcoded from 320k to --alt-preset standard. However, you have to know the original source of the 192k CBR files, what encoder was used with what settings, and were they made from the original .WAVs... and unless specified in the newsgroup postings or whatever, all MP3's downloaded off the Net are highly suspect in terms of quality.

Cheers...

As a sidenote, where else can I look besides the comment tag to try and detewrmine how the file was ripped? I know that LAME writes it's verison to the VBR header if it is VBR; how can I view that info?

Encspot will show it, but it won't show if the file is a "first encode" or if it was transcoded from another format.

http://www.guerillasoft.com/EncSpot2/index.html

NickSD notes that there are 320CBR .mp3 files out there that were transcoded from 128CBR. I just encountered one myself the other day. You can detect these sorry pieces of trash by using lame to transcode them to --alt-preset standard format. If there is a wide distribution of rates used it is a real 320CBR, if 99.9% of the blocks are at a single rate, in this case 128, then this 320CBR .mp3 started life as a 128CBR file.

Thus there is a reason to transcode, if only to test the authenticity of a file you obtained from a source you are unsure you can trust to provide a real high quality file.