Hello, I have lots of mp3s encoded as CBR 192Kbps - Stereo. I'd like to know, how do you classify this configuration? (Medium quality, medium-high quality, high quality, etc..)?
I know my ears are bad, but I think all of them looked transparent to me

Thanks in advance

What encoder? What music?

Well, some of them were encoded with Fraunhofer Professional and some with Lame 3.90.
Most of the music are punk/hardcore and new metal (Offspring, Green Day, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, and brazilian punk rock bands).

If it was encoded by Lame, I would call it high quality.
If it was encoded by Fhg, I would call it medium quality.

For Lame, --alt-preset standard -Y usually comes in at ~180kbps. But it does have the added advantage of running through the various filters and tweaks that comes with the --alt-preset standard -Y setting.

The difference will be noticeable by some, but not by all. For me, it would certainly be a case of needing to listen specifically FOR artifacts, rather than listening for enjoyment.

(Note: I'm fully aware that I'm in gross violation of TOS Rule #8, but this is merely a subjective viewpoint of an overgeneralized result.)

lame is better at high bitrates than fraunhoffer, metal/hardcore mostly needs higher bitrates than other (classic) music.

If I understood right, when he wrote "CBR 192kbps stereo" he actually meant "L/R stereo" (as opposed to M/S stereo". If it is the case, then there's less than 100kbps per channel on average, which can get harmful for metal music.

LoL this is when groups were releasing music using this as the "standard" for quality...

But on the topic, I classify that into the medium quality range, as there isn't enough overhead there to just to be sure like there is on JointStereo VBR files.

Regards

AgentMil

Sad thing is many, many, many people still do...its tragic.

Heh theres still music out ther being released in 192 FULL stereo

I generally consider LAME 192 JS as good quality and delete everything less and then reencode or try and find a better (preferably VBR) source.

I wonder too why there exist so much of these 'inefficient' CBR MP3s...
As i have posted in another thread, i'm always in doubt when i should say quickly
what is better made, older Lame VBR MP3 or newer 192kbps stereo MP3s.



Yes, I guess the use of joint-stereo on a 192kbps CBR MP3 will be fine criteria.
If a Lame MP3 was encoded with 'safe joint-stereo' you may be quite lucky
because it seems that there were used a tuned Lame preset for encoding.


384kbps

CBR-Stereo :

i classify anything below 128 Kbps very very very low quality
i classify 128 Kbps medium-low quality
i classify 160 Kbps medium quality
i classify 192 Kbps medium-high quality
i classify 256 Kbps high quality
i classify 320 Kbps very high quality

i always encode with the maximum : 320 Kbps
and i always delete files with less than 128 Kbps
less than 128 Kbps is very ugly and should never be used

192 CBR Stereo might sound transparent when encoding non-demanding music (in terms of "spectral complexity") ... but do not expect that a codec can easily reproduce overtones (e.g. guitar-biased rock music) at this bitrate/setting ... you might easily differentiate (or scientifically ABX) between the original and the encoded track ...

When it comes to Britney-Clone-Music, CBR 192 kbps Stereo is very near to a waste of bandwith ... ... 96 kbps old XING should be enough for that ...

I got a lot of 192 CBR albums, too. Nothing wrong with it at all, with my Logitech 2.1 system I couldn't tell the difference to the original
Even when I burn them to Audio CD and listen to them in my car very loud, I can't hear any artifacts. 128k files are a little dull if you compare directly to CD, to find annoying stuff at 192k (in Pop/rock music) you prolly need headphones and really short difficult samples.