Has anyone ever had a hard job trying to dispell certain mp3 myths? Like:

1) Joint Stereo messes up the sound.
2) Joint Stereo ruins high frequencies.
3) You can always tell the difference.

etc etc.

I feel like I'm bashing my head against a brick wall trying to talk to these people...

Oh, I think we're all pretty familiar with your problem. Your best bet is to have a read through the FAQs here, they cover some of the issue's you mention. Also, read up on ABX testing (also covered in a FAQ) and point the naysayers towards that FAQ and ask for ABX results.

Don't worry. I can assure you you're not the only one who has come across the problem of others' ignorance and general not caring about the subjects. Both this and VBR are touchy subjects people are stubborn about.

You know how I combat this one as well as people saying VBR isn't of high quality? It's simple. I ask them "If it destroyed quality then why are both VBR and forms of joint stereo used in lossless codecs?"

About the best you can do really.

I've seen people say that they don't need to ABX as they can hear the problem!

Easiest way: perform public listening tests & prove your claims. Simple.

Still, there's people that will never be convinced.

I have seen people unable to ABX, still think that their files have "something" that they cannot put their finger on.

MP3 are crap

Simplest way: switch to Vorbis

The general situation I have found is "Why encode at higher bitrates when 128kbps is just the same as the original".

I don't even care about trying to dispel these myths. People are happy believing them and encoding their music with them, so let them be.

The only reason I believe there would be for trying to dispel those myths is if you guys were into heavy file sharing...

IMHO, it is now impossible to dispel the JS-myth on a large scale.

The only solution is disabling the switch completely in LAME.

- Lyx

So, do you think that all non-selfencoded MP3s are illegal? May i remind you about netlabels, artists who give their music or some tracks away for free and taped live-shows?

- Lyx

I'll second that

Or to have user interfaces similar to this one:
http://lame.sourceforge.net/lame_ui_example.html

Hmm, isn't this essentially the same? The stereo-option is just hidden in the frontend, making it appear as if lame doesn't have this option - the net result is removing the stereo-switch - but with the difference that the app needs to "support" it. I have reasonable doubt that the majority of the authors of the existing apps will understand that removing an already existing option is an improvement.

- Lyx

particularly, the myths that I more hate are these:

1) 128 CBR kbps mp3 is CD quality

2) Joint stereo is bad, because destroys all the stereo information.

3) Simple stereo is the best choice, because preserve all the stereo information.

4) mp3 never is or will be transparent.

5) VBR thing is bad, CBR is a lot better.

6) 192 CBR kbps mp3 in simple stereo mode is the best solution for archival quality.

7) Fhg is the best mp3 encoder.

All these myths come from the ignorance. I try to convince to my friends that they are wrong, but; it's impossible

I just don't bother educating people anymore. I just ignore them. It's too frustrating, and you can't educate everyone. Educating one clueless moron, is like a drop in the sea of morons.

What does bother me however, is that the danish music paysites are using retarded LAME settings to encode their music, and that's really annoying. If they sold --aps MP3 or even just properly encoded 192 CBR MP3, I'd consider using them.

I even tried sending them a mail, and explaining the situation to them, giving helpful links etc., but all I got in return was some standard bullshit reply.

Personally if my friends don't listen to what I want I just to tell them to go F off. People are generally dumb, ignorant, and foolish are not going to listen to you anyway no matter what reasonable explanation you have for them they generally don't care. That's why we have our uber-pretentious community here of course ;-D. The only thing you can really do is "educate" the uninformed public and hope they listen.

I'd just get rid of the stereo switch and re-name joint-stereo to 'stereo' - or map the stereo switch to joint-stereo

Sure, why would we care? Well, since all the other 'modern' codecs already use Joint-Stereo as default and call it 'Stereo' some newbie will actually believe that mondern codecs are far better than mp3...simply because they don't how to encode in mp3...

You cant convince people that something is terrible if they cant notice. So I dont try to dispell myths. If they really want to know information(or truth about audio coding), they probably will search for themselves.

Or maybe we should map Joint Stereo as Good Modern Stereo and "normal" stereo as Bad Old Stereo. This way, maybe placebo will help us for once.

It is not your obligation to educate anyone until they notice skips from using sync or burst mode, clips and chirps from other corruption, garbly artifacts, etc., and want to get it done right.

Note: this is coming from a previous ToS #8 violator , who originally believed it all...until hundreds (maybe thousands, really) of hours of listeing began to train his brain into having good ears.

My opinion is that MP3 encoding washes out the high range. I prefer to encode my signals with ogg vorbis of quality 7 or higher, just to be safe.

As well, I generally avoid playing MP3 files that are less than 256 kbps CBR or 192kbps VBR at high volumes or in a performance situation. I once read that exposure to low quality lossy encodings can cause cumulative hearing loss and tinnitus. While I can not say if that is true, I prefer to err or the side of caution.

Troll?

Don't exist scientific evidence that supports this.. (or at least credible).

This is another new myth that we can add to the list.

This one is actually kinda true.

CBR (320K/-api) is the VERY best LAME has to offer. It is overkill though, and it is not like I can hear a difference (my transparency thresold is about 160k in LAME)

Although you will not catch me dead telling that to my friends or anyone else.

Long exposure to any kind of loud sound will degrade your hearing. But this has nothing to do with lossy encoding. But this guy is obviously a troll.

Actually, I reread the thread title and the post again just now, and it looks like it was a joke that did a Mach 5 over my head. I feel embarassed now for such a lack of sense of humour.

Sorry Bennyp!

/ignore

Thats what I do these days no point arguing or stressing over it IMHO. Also I ain't fussy anymore when it comes to quality as long as it inaudibile when I listen to it I don't really care, music for me is to keep the silence away not to critic it. Sometimes I wonder why I purchased my Sennheiser headphones .

About that post about lossy encoding damaging your ears I think that a load of crock there are plenty of other stimuli that comes from other sound sources that aren't lossy so you still get the full spectrum of sound. I would imagine you would have to listen to lossy encoding over a very long time to get some sort of symptoms, but then again if you do everything in moderation nothing bad really comes from it.


Regards

Decoding mp3 to wav gives the music better quality, because wav is better than mp3.

I've met this quite a few times, this is a level of knowledge that's quite common among "normal" people, lot's of them highly educated and long time computer users, only very very few have even heard of "joint stereo" so they can worry about it. Actually most people find 64 kbps CBR mp3 to be of acceptable quality.

Well, just encode your own music with something useful....
(mppenc --quality 6.00 here)

Hello everyone,

I would not give a favorable or unfavorable opinion on the question of the format mp3.
Remind yourselves when it came out of the boxs, one was not unhappy of its arrival.It marked a lot of mind, and is made itself know all.
Nowadays it stays" inescapable", contrary to the Divx that disappears little by little.

Nevertheless other formats saw the day with more and more appreciated other resonant colors. what is the present case: AAC, Plop, Ogg, Mpc, Ape and well of others.

Every format finds its place in the daily, the experts, the beginners and the hopeless.
So are understanding towards others.
It is only my opinion, but I share yours.

Bye.

just remembered the saying

"100 lemmings cant be wrong!"

See, the problem you're having is that you are a rational person. As such, you expect people to respond to rational reasoning. These people have superior brains that are capable of many kinds of thinking that you can't even comprehend. Their minds are actually capable of constructing arguments that affirm their preconceptions completely circumventing any inconvienient facts. They can produce a thought arc that goes around and "short-circuts" any argument you could produce. You are unable to percieve this arc because it lies outside the realm of the rational. Indeed, it may well reside in some sort of alternate universe that these lucky individuals have tapped into.

So, feel not frustration or pity, and instead fell shame and envy; your brain just isn't as good.

Rather like this: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jfe1205/LAME/...XPd2-3.97a7.zip? A proposed version of lamedropXPd for the next releases of LAME.

he probably means something on the lines CBR192 is better than VBR preset standard

LOL!

Could you please read very carefully my post?

I am not talking in specify of the case of -api; I am talking that in GENERAL many people believe that VBR is bad, and as consequence of this bad MYTH they encoded in CBR all the time, because they really believe that the VBR routines destroys the music.

Many threads here in HA that confirm the superiority of the VBR routines in LAME in comparison with CBR. Of course; -api setting is a exception.

Don't know, I do not see anything. I launch it, the process is here, but I do not see any visual interface...

Right mouse click over the box for the menu.

I remember when I was first introduced to VBR and I heavily used EncSpot, I discriminated against it because it bothered me that the bitrate would jump around; it felt very buggy looking back at it is quite comical

mp3 is not transparent. How can it be when certain people can detect differences between 320 mp3 and the original?

I can in some cds detect differences between 320 and original, and i used to believe 128 was cd quality.
So it is all subjective..

What box, good sire?

I ran it here at my PC. There is no indication of it anywhere other than at the task manager. No drag-n-drop window, no icon at the system tray or the taskbar... nothing.

Win2k / AMD Sempron 2500 / 768M RAM

MP3 CAN BE transparent. Claiming a lossy format is or is not transparent makes no sense. It depends on the sample you're testing, your hearing, your equipment, the encoding parameters...

Is there any reason we would ever really need simple stereo since Lame JS doesn't destroy stereo?

If no one can think of a good reason, maybe it should be taken out of Lame, or at least taken out of the --longhelp and removed from the docs. What do you think?

Hrm... multilanguage content?

Perhaps it's only for XP, hence its moniker.

It worked fine on my XP box at the office, but no GUI appears on my Win2k box here at home.

heh, kinda funny.... i actually last week i had to do an "informative speech" for my speech class, and i did it on "music encoding," trying to fix some of this ignorance. it was fun... i dont know if anyone followed it, but at least i tried...

Sorry, I don't understand.

Sometimes another language of a program is put in the other channel.

Discussion about Joint Stereo quality split here.
- the moderation

Really!!!! How utterly bizarre. It works fine here, otherwise I wouldn't have linked to it.

I'll check the compile options, etc., but I didn't change any of those from the previous version!!

Which box?