hi all,
I started ripping my CD's to mp3z with EAC and lame the other day and was just mucking around with the different presets with lame 3.90.3 and later versions and noticed that some VBR mp3s, even ones encoded with --alt-preset standard skip in my mp3 cd player (sony d-cj01). Not all VBR mp3s skip though and my player does support VBR. Anyone had this problem?,, everyone seems to be saying its better to encode with --alt-preset-standard than 192 cbr but im sticking with 192 cbr as id rather have compatibility with portable devices vs the slight extra quality (which you dont really notice anyway).

did you try LAME 3.96.1 ?

I noticed this with my sony ne1. What happens is the cd payers cannot work out
when it needs to read from the cd. So the buffer sometimes runs out wile the cd spins
up. This causes the skipping. I found that with ABR files it does not do this. They say
that ABR can give better results that CBR for a given bit rate.

Hope this helps

ok i just encoded the same song, Joe satriani's up in the sky, with lame 3.90.3
and 3.96.1 both with --alt-preset-standard and burned them to a CDR and 3.96.1 does not skip at all. 3.90.3 does though at around 1.56 -1.58 (the good part where the distortion kicks in ) and other parts of the song. It happens when its not accessing the CD, as my cd player is see through so you can see when the disk spins up (usually every 45 seconds or so). 3.90.3 tends to skip even more with metal/extreme metal so yeah stick to 3.96.1 if youre going to be listening to
vbr heavy tunes on an mp3 discman . It does make sense neutral about what you said when accessing the CD, but that doesnt appear to be the problem/happening here although i could be wrong.

It is a disappointment, to say the least. What I don't understand is that the CD lens has to read at around 150kbytes/s in order to play Audio CDs. How can MP3, a compressed format, be so problematic? And what are the differents between Lame 3.96.1 and 3.90.3? And between ABR and VBR? Is it that VBR's bitrate changes more widely that causes it to skip more frequently?

With normal audio cd's it normaly always spins so there should not be much chance
for it to skip (If the player is not being bashed about too much) But with mp3's the
cd stops spining to save the battery. Then it takes about 2 - 4 seconds to spin back
up (when the player is older ) and it skips by 1 or 2 seconds very annoying. I
have not tested with actrac files and the sonicstage ? software crashes before it gets
to the burning stage

Has anyone tried --preset medium. There should get it less chance to skip as the file
is smaller. In the instructions it says that VBR files are supported !!! But 128kbits files
are recommended for the best bettery life.

Another big point is that the speed that the cd is burned at has an effect on the
skipping. Even though the files are ok when read in the PC's cd drives. Since this I
have moved to an Ipod 4th G and it has no problem playing them.

Is it a Sony D-CJ01? I have a possible solution for you. Encode your MP3s in normal stereo, not joint-stereo. (add the extra switch -m s after --aps/--ps). This player, for some reason, has problems playing high-bitrate joint-stereo VBR MP3s. If it's lower bitrate, no problem. CBR joint stereo, no problem. VBR stereo, no problem. At least that's what I was experiencing with mine. As Sony's first ever MP3CD PCDP, this player is pretty good, and has good media support (better than newer Sony MP3/AtracCD PCDPs).

Note, the D-CJ01 does not support AtracCD.

Yes its a Sony D-CJ01, great player too, i bought it back before the ipods were released i think, or before HD players came into the mainstream. Yeah that sounds right about it having trouble with High bitrate VBR MP3s, although 3.96.1
-alt preset standard seems fine for some strange reason hasnt skipped at all, and seems to have a better file size than 3.90.3. I like to listen to mp3s on my PC from time to time, so nice quality is a plus but i think file size is more attractive to me, because of my mp3 discman (no im not getting an HD player till they come down in price ) but yeah in the future i might get a zen touch 20gig. Since im already up to 5.5gig (less then a quater of my CDs) i think ill stick with 192 CBR since its i know its reliable (filesize,quality) although -alt-preset-standard in 3.96.1 might be a better?

Could I, therefore, conclude that such an old model like yours (sorry for the sincerity
) is not completely MPEG-1 Layer 3 compliant, and that I could expect kind of better compatibility from newer models in the market? You know, I'm kind of scared of buying a player that will play some files and will not others.

Yeah, I'm also curious!
Is there anyone more educated who can try to explain it to us?

Sorry my mistake, it was actually released around mid 2002 so its not 'that old'.
Id assume when sony released mp3 player they tested it so it would meet
certain specifications, 16-320cbr/vbr playback, and meet their 24hr playback/production cost. (quite good when it came out). They obviously tested the player with the most common codecs/vbr modes used then,, and so it would meet the specifications of the player they wanted to design. They either didnt test it with certain codecs/VBR modes (eg lame 3.90.3 -alt-preset-standard) or they did and decided not to implement the capability of playing in those modes because
they couldnt meet the specs of the player. This is obviously a design fault of sony's
codec, but if youve really nailed a good player that is capable of playing back 16-320cbr/vbr (most codecs) 24hr playback, (sounds great) would you really bother redesigning/designing it so it will play mp3s that are encoded in a way that the majority of consumers dont rip/download their music in? Id have to stick with sony
on this one,,,, WHO CARES

Question: do 320kbps MP3s skip?

are you kidding? of course, --preset standard is way better than CBR 192...I'd recommend you using --preset standard with LAME 3.96.1 ...bitrate averages around ~200kbps - some songs need a bit more, other less...depending on what song + genre...I have songs that need less than 170kbps, others need 220kbps...

Have you tried adding --strictly-enforce-ISO? That solved it for me while I had that CD player (BTW, release was before mid 2002...I got mine, retail, in early Jan 02).