Anyone know which preset is the best to use for quality?

Thanks.

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JoNty

Please read the FAQ... your question has been answered over 2 years ago.

Short answer: Use --alt-preset standard with 3.90.3

--R3mix is a deprecated setting that aimed for a subjective transparency at the lowest possible bitrate, --preset standard should be used instead. --preset insane aims for the best quality possible using the mp3 format at 320 kbps. Theses setting are not really something to compare ... there are so many differences.

Nice one.

I wonder if r3mix is still maintained.

Shame http://www.r3mix.net went.

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JoNty

It is not. The only reason it has not been removed is conservatism.

Shame. Ohh well. Just deleted all of my CD rips and re-doing them with insane.

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JoNty

Bear in mind that by doing so you will end up with files nearly twice as big. If you want transparent quality with the lowest bitrate possible use the standard preset, not the insane. Standard goes more along the lines to what r3mix intended.

Actually, the reason is backwards compatibility.

Gabriel already mentioned a command line and DLL interface overhaul is planned for Lame 4.0. r3mix will probably be dropped at such point.

Dropping r3mix now would only lead to errors in programs interfacing with Lame - E.G: CDex, Winamp, etc.

@Dologan

Yeah I know.

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JoNty

Winamp?

Just as long as you realize that pretty much everyone here considers --alt-preset insane an incredible waste of resources for the exact same quality as --alt-preset standard. Why do you think the developers called it insane?

I dare you to prove, in a double-blind test, that --insane sounds any different than --standard.

presets (bitrates) depend *entirely* (IMHO) on the quality of the source material.

For example, I found that the hugely processed contralto 'voice' at the beginning of 'Radian' on Air's '10,000Hz Legend' simply wouldn't compress at less than 192KbS, and really needed higher. Same applies to complex, well engineered classical, and so on.

Chilli Pepper's 'Californication', on the other hand, would be a waste of disc space at over 128 KbS. It's something you'd just have to get the hang of, if you're concerned about minimizing file sizes.

Also VBR encodes take much longer. On my PIII 866, extreme at less than 2x, insane well over 4x, so I use it for that reason alone.

RF

The ripping feature in Winamp 5 uses Lame for MP3 encoding, and r3mix is available among the settings.

Thanks Roberto, I didn't knew that. I haven't installed Winamp for several years now. If I need a player under XP, then I use foobar.

It's already been done, with the trumpets sample. This is an exceptional case, though.

JoNty, I think what Jebus is trying to say is that there are very few cases where Insane is significantly better than Standard. You could save 25-50% more hard drive space by using Standard over Insane, depending on what kind of music you encode, and give up practically nothing in terms of quality.

If hard drive space is of no concern to you, or if encoding speed is of paramount importance, then Insane is your best option. However, if you plan to listen to your music on a portable MP3 player, the larger Insane MP3's may become a liability. If you do not plan on using a portable MP3 player, you may even be better off with Musepack, rather than MP3. Musepack encodes faster and will give you smaller files, and Musepack is generally held to be the most transparent lossy audio format.

@Jebus: let's try to be a little less confrontational.

Thanks for everyones help.

I share my rips you see, so I have to use MP3 so that most people can listen to them (some people still haven't heard of Ogg Vorbis and such).

One more thing, does anyone know why insane doesnt use -q 0, but -q 3? Is it considered to be useless at such a high bitrate? Would I make the quality worse (might happen) if I used -q 0 with insane?

Thanks.

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JoNty

all your questions really have been answered in many other threads. -q0 may or may not actually ruin the tuning done to the presets, while dramatically increasing encode times. Don't use it.

While it is of course true, that some music compresses better than other, you should let the encoder decide what bitrate to use.

Musical complexity does not translate into compressibility. The musical experience in your brain is different from the accoustic experience in your ear. MP3 and Co. only exploit the characteristics of the latter.

Chances are, then, that you can encode with LAME @ 128 kbps and these people won't hear a difference.