I am ripping a cd, with the command "--alt-preset exalts", but the bitrate is not being between 220 and 320, it is being between 160 and 192..

I already tried with the lame 3.90.3, 3.96 and anything

I need help, please

tks..

what is "exalts"? i think there is standard, extreme, and insane ...

sorry

I wrote wrong, I copied and I glued the wrong command

really the command is EXTREME, and that is happening..

--alt-preset extreme

tks..

What type of music are you ripping?

If it is piano solo or some other "easy to encode" music, your bitrate range is ok.

At --alt preset extreme 160 to 192 kbps on average is quite low, that's true. But it really all depends on the complexity of the sound excerpt you're encoding. So: what kind of music is it? And what's its duration, in other words: how many MB are we talking about here, and is that representative?

The music may also be largely mono, and it is most probably largely mono.

There are several threads covering this issue, btw.

Or music can be rather *quite* and then it is a problem with vbr (no solution, period)

Why is it a problem with VBR? It's a problem with LPCM (or any lossy communication channel) if anything. If you reduce the amplitude of the signal without reducing the noise floor, you lose data. For example, if your music only uses the least significant 10 bits of the 16 bit quantization, then your effective SNR drops from ~96dB to ~60dB. Less data means more effective compression before audible quality loss.

You make it sound like there is a specific problem with LAME VBR being lower quality with quieter signals. According to a couple of simple experiments, the absolute loudness of compression artifacts is not related to the signal 'loudness' (within a sensible range).

Well in any case, before this thread fails to be properly answered due to excessive explanation , the thing is (to the original poster) that --preset extreme is working fine, and what you are seeing is the efficiency of VBR encoding. You would have wasted a lot of space if you had used a CBR setting roughly equivalent to --preset extreme.