I'm buying my dad an ipod and i'm in the process of ecoding all his music to itunes 128k aac [using EAC itunesencode thx otto], I personally can't hear any difference by going to a higher bitrate but i emphasise that I HAVENT done any ABXing of any kind but I don't find 128k aac offensive to my ears.

So my question is this, I'm looking to get a flash based player probably a 1Gb model of some sort, what would be the best version of lame & setting to use to keep my filesizes as reasonable as possible [i'd like it to be close to 128k, i'm willing to go upto 160k if needs be] but as well as keep it up there with the 128k aac im using for my dads files. I'm used to using 3.90.3 using APS, but i can't live with those filesizes for listening on a flash player and I'm only just experimenting with 3.96.1 using these new [well they're new to me LOL] V switches.
Also in EAC - Compression Options - External Compression - Bitrate do I leave that at 128k or can I use 112k or 96k. I never touched it when i was using APS by the way.

Dok

p.s If any points have been covered to that I am asking, which knowing the very fine peeps in here mean yes i apologise

I find that LAME 3.96.1 at -V5 --athaa-sensitivity 1 sounds very good and it was very close to iTunes ACC in the last 128kb/s test. See results here.

I'll give that setting a try thx music man. Also should i leave the bitrate setting alone in compression options ?????

Dok

If you are referring to the bitrate slidedown bar in EAC, it is only used to calculate the estimated bitrate on the far right column, it doesn't do anything while using an external compressor.

If you press F11 in EAC and click exernal compression tab, then look at additional command line option just underneath that is bit rate and it's set at 128k. Is that the one you're talking about ?

Dok
p.s. sorry to be a pain m8

Yup, it will have no effect on the final output.

You can use lame 3.96.1:

-V5 --vbr-new (128k vbr)

-V4 --vbr-new (150k vbr)

If you can afford a little bit more space, go V4 and you will get more security than any 128k encoding. V5 is also quite good for its size.

Hmm. I've just searched slightly on this, but I'm curious - where does --preset medium fit in, in comparison with -V3 & -V4 new vbr settings in 3.96.1? How far along are the development of the -V# vbr-new settings, as compared with --preset medium?

(I use 3.96.1 preset medium for most of my encoding, and am pleased with it, but the bitrate balloons on some rock stuff.)

"Preset medium" is analogous to -V4 in 3.96.1. -V3 is the setting between --preset medium (-V4) and --preset standard (now -V2).

Thanks. I just tested to make sure, and -V4 does create files with the same checksum as --preset medium.

What I wonder is, what is the effect of --vbrnew? On the "udail" sample I was encoding to test if the checksums were the same, -V4 --vbrnew resulted in a file more than twice the size (and bitrate) as just -V4 by itself.