Hello everyone at hydrogenaudio

it seems ive finally found the mp3 gurus, well i hope i have

i hope you dont mind me coming in here and maybe asking some questions that may have been dealt with here already.

the reason ive started my own thread is technology moves so fast, i was hoping i might find out some new tips and tricks or any new ideas

im starting up a brand new music distribution company, dealing only in the distribution of music via the net, so for the moment that means MP3's have a quick look at the site vibration records

now,,,,,,,,,, what i wanted to ask you guys is,,,,,,, whats the absolute best method for MP3 encoding, baring in mind these files will be for download purposes, i dont think files larger than 10 meg will be suitable for people paying to download music.

ive read and tried so much, but dont understand how some MP3's i have seen have a bitrate 400kbps or higher, when the tracks are 6-8 minutes long and not any larger than 10 meg

having seen quite a few mp3's like this i assumed it was merely a program i needed, but now i realise theres a lot more to it than that.

i would really apreciate it if i could get some help from you guys on learning the best way to encode wav to mp3's for my new site

many many thanks guys

There's no point in repeating what have been asked and answered countless of times on this board, so I recommend you search around and read the FAQ.

Yes, please do read the FAQ--but, the short answer is...

Use LAME 3.90.3 (the HA recommended version) with the switch:

--alt-preset standard

However, if you are feeling more adventurous and want faster encodes, use LAME 3.96.1 (the latest non-alpha) with the switch:

-V 2

Many people here prefer 3.96.1 to the recommended version.

Get LAME here.
Get a good front-end (RazorLame) here.

Good luck with your new venture!

You seem to be mistaken. Assuming a 6-minute song at 10megs,

360 seconds

10485760 bytes == 83886080 bits

83886080 / 360 < 233016.89bps

233kbps is way lower than 400kbps.

Well you're obviously confused there because mp3's never go above 320kpbs. Some other compressed music formats can go over 320kbps (ogg vorbis for example) but mp3 never can.

As for the dicrepency between the song length, bit ratre and size all I can imagine is that you were looking at the peak bit rate (400kbps) while the encoding (what ever it was but not mp3) was actually VBR having a lower average bit rate. If a song is say 7 minutes long and 10MB size then it's average bit rate can be no more than 10*1024/(7*60) which is about 195kbps.

BTW. As recommended above Lame 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard would be the safest option. You may even consider making two (or more if space is available) encodes of the same song at different bit rates to cater for different peoples download speed and the compromises they are prepared to make.

You do have a point, but freeformat MP3s can go over 320kbps. However, I must admit you don't see them often, though.

This is only possible with freeformat MP3s. With normal MP3 files, the frame size (and hence the peak bitrate) cannot exceed 320kbps.

If you just use what you see in Windows Explorer it will often tell you a file is a 400 or higher bitrate when in fact it is not.

That's weird. I just searched my dwindling MP3 collection and sure enough, one of them was 840kbps! (Of course, it was really only 169, but Windows thinks it's 840) I have 59 MP3s that Windows thinks are >320, and 2 which are >640!

Anybody know what makes Windows do this? It looks like the durations are right... I'd think Windows could just divide the size by the duration, but that seems to be too complicated for it.

I'd assume it's because Windows assumes the frame sizes to be constant, while the actual files are VBR.

It is because before WMP10 the Microsoft DirectShow decoder was unable to properly compute bitrate and duration.

But they do that because 3.96.1 is about 2x as fast as 3.90.3, not because of quality. There is no hard evidence that one sounds better than the other.

File sizes are also smaller with 3.96.1 which is important for Internet distribution.