where can I read a 3.90.3 versus 3.93.1 comparison ?
i am only interested in encoding with CBR -b 320 -m j -q 0

what is the difference between the 3.93.1 at rarewares and the 3.93.1 at doom9.org ?
i compared them with WinDiff and it say that the rarewares is more recent.

hmm, sizewise they will be nearly the same. around 320kbps; I guess.

and qualitywise. I don't know, maybe some artifacts will be corrected, some introduced, but at this high bitrate audible artifacts are rather rare.

I don't think someone will be interested in testing this out.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=159116

May I ask why you must use that commandline? Using --preset insane will give you better quality.

how "--preset insane" give better quality than "-b 320 -m j -q 0" ?

"--preset insane" use : -q 2, lowpass filter : 20094-20627
"-b 320 -m j -q 0" use : -q 0, lowpass filter : 21517-22050

"-q 0" should give better quality than "-q 2" ?

--alt preset insane gives the best quality available with lame. This was the goal when it was designed and tested.

A higher lowpass sounds worse and not better, because bits are wasted on inaudible frequencies, otherwise a higher lowpass would be already integrated in --alt-preset insane.

-q 0 is experimental (= could introduce bad errors) and slow. If using -q 0 sounded better it would be already integrated in --alt-preset insane.

in the changelog of 3.93.1, it say :



what is the -Z switch ? what is scalefac ?

Simply use the 3.90.3 compile with --alt-preset insane and do not worry about quality tweaking - there is none

But you guys aren't convincing him, and he has no reason to if he isn't. If I knew the technical details I'd have explained everything right away.

Edit: But well, lol.

I feel compelled to mention the "search" feature here...

ok, i will use the 3.90.3 compile with --alt-preset insane

but there is 2 "3.90.3" at rarewares, which should i download ?

Get modified only if you ever need to use --preset medium.
Or if you want to use --preset <preset> instead of --alt-preset <preset>.

what is the -Y switch ?
what is the -Z switch ?
should i use them ?

-Y is a lot like using --lowpass 16
-Z is for scalefac...

Use the recommended version from here, don't worry about -Z. Use plain --alt-preset insane, no -Y.

I'm no audio expert, but this sounds like an odd bit of reasoning. More bits might be wasted with a higher lowpass, but why would that make it sound worse?

.dd.

what frequencies are audible and what frequencies are not ?

what is scalefac ?

Because at places where all bits available are needed encode information in audible frequency range to achieve transparency (e.g. transients) using some for encoding inaudible high frequencies will make audible problems appear. Encoding high frequencies is expensive bits-wise.

sergelac, if you really want to dig into this I suggest to start by reading the FAQ and then using the search function. A lot of your question has been answered before. I am no expert but I'll try to answer some of your questions briefly:

You should always use the presets rather than your own set of switches. Lame has an almost infinite amount of switches of which a lot is experimental, like -q0 for instance. The presets were designed to give the best possible quality at a given bitrate or similar. Some things may seem strange, like -q2 vs -q0 for instance, but these presets have been tested so thoroughly that you can feel safe trusting them anyway. My guess is that -q0 or -q1 was not used in the presets because they did not give any noticable quality imrpovement, but only reduced speed. (?)

-Z switches between noiseshaping models.
-Y makes lame encode frequencies above 16 kHz more restrictively, i.e. providing more bits for the lower more importent frequencies, or bringing down the bitrate in the case of VBR.

What frequencies are audible depends on how good ears you have. The lowpass used in insane should be more than sufficiently high for anyone.

I can't say much about scalefac, try searching.

BTW, you can use either the standard or the modified compile. The modified compile gives you access to the medium preset and ABR presets below 80 kbps in addition.

Thanks. This makes sense now.