I recently ripped a cd "Dream Theater - Awake" and encoded using --alt-preset standard. WHen I play the files (any of them) in winamp the bit rate display starts between 190 and 206 and just keeps counting up until the end of the song. What gives?

Umm,,, How's it sound?

sounds fine

just kinda odd to watch "196,197,198 ad infinitum kbps" being displayed. I know this has happend to a few of my other mp3's, just can't think of them off the top of my head.

Have you try running VBRFix on the files? This program rewrites the seek information and generally fixes up VBR files.

VBRFix available from http://www.willwap.co.uk/

Cheers
AgentMil

Cool, will try it. But why would Lame 3.92 screw that up? Isn't it usually pretty reliable as far as vbr headers go?

That I dunno cause I don't use LAME v3.92 (I use MusePack and Vorbis ) Have you used ID3v2 tags in the files? I read on this board that sometimes stuffs the VBR headers in the files.

Hopefully this helps.

Cheers
AgentMil

EAC + LAME +Id3v2 = (occasional) bitrate errors and need to use VBRfix (at least was for me).

This is a known bug in an older version of EAC; after compressing with LAME, EAC would corrupt the VBR header when adding the id3v2 tag. This was only a problem when adding id3v2 tags, and is fixed in the current version of EAC.

You can fix the corrupted headers using a variety of tools; VBRFix was mentioned above, and I personally use VBR Header Maker, available freely here (it hasn't been updated in 1 1/2 years, but works fine for me): http://webclub.kcom.ne.jp/ma/takabin/eng/vbrheader.html

hmmm, I use the latest version of EAC.....

ok, so I tried VBRFix and that didn't work. I am using EAC v.9b4 and lame 3.92. ARGH!!!!why can't I get the bitrate display correct???

ok, think I got it working. I think that EAC or lame is corrupting the VBR headers. using v.9b4, what can I do to prevent this? Right now I'm using Lame as the passing scheme. Should I try user defined?

User defined is what I use (mostly to keep it from passing all the extra options on the command line, since I just want it to pass --alt-preset standard), and I don't have this problem, so I'd give it a shot.

what command line do I use, "--alt-preset standard %s%d""?