Hi all. I was wondering how comparable Gabriel's former suggestion for alt preset medium (I think) which was:

--alt-preset standard --lowpass 17.5 -b 80 -Y --athaa-sensitivity -11 --nsmsfix 3 -V3

is comparable to a similar abr setting. For example, let's say I encode a song with the above setting and it has a nominal bitrate of 150. Would it generally sound better than the abr which also has a nominal bitrate of 150?

This question is of particular interest to me since my sweet spot for mp3 encoding hovers between 128 cbr, which is minimally acceptable, and 160 abr, which sounds significantly better without having too large a file size for my taste.

B)

I actually use --alt-preset 144 .
It's size and quality are even proportioned for me to fit a large numbers of mp3s on one cd for my riovolt while enjoying the sound on my cheap headphones (sony model # MDR-A34). The loss of quality is minimal on my stereo system as I'm not sitting in a listening room, it's my living room and there is other activity going on so getting a 100% accurate representation of quality is not required. The other day though, I was sitting in my living room and I was listening to a commercial where I could clearly hear the watery sounds of a poorly compressed cymbal on a commercial (forgot which one) which was making me ache since I've joined this board.

My us$20.

-Jeff

I hope it is better than equivalent abr, otherwise there would be no point in this setting.

But you can not consider this as widely tested, only quickly tested. It is up to you to do your own testing and help by reporting results.