What's the best way to determine lowest bitrate for encoding with lame-3.90.3 ABR for a clip? I mean without losing any sampling rate, but can that be helped by using the resample option!? And i also want to "keep the quality", as long as most people won't hear the difference!!

I'm pretty novice on mp3 encoding I usually use the recommended ABR setting " --abr XXX -h --nspsytune --athtype 2 --lowpass 16 --ns-bass -8 --scale 0.93". And if i want to use lower bitrate, I just change the XXX.

Now, I'm trying to find a program that will tell me the highest frequency of a clip so i can determine which bitrate to use!! Should this be my approach?

thx

[see here for more ~ post#9]

You seem to be messing up a lot of things. You should probably start by looking at the List of recommended LAME settings thread. And then do a lot of read up.

recommended by who? Not by someone with at least a little knowledge - that's for sure!

Read the List of recommended LAME settings, it was recommended by ff123 and Hans Heijden.

from ff123 and/or Hans Jürgen Heijden but for 128 kbps encodings only.

Source: List of recommended LAME settings.

totalz> I doubt that you can apply the same switchs to another targeted bitrate. The commandline was tested for ~128 kbps encodings, and using the same tweaks to another bitrate range may lead to unoptimal tuning.
If you want to keep the original sampling rate, use --resample switch. For audio CD:
--abr 80 --resample 44100


EDIT: Frank_Bicking was faster.

Heh, actually, quoting from the "List of Recommended LAME Settings" thread:



So, that's where he got it from. I'm in agreement about the superiority of the --alt-presets (and --presets, of course), however.

As the others say, you probably shouldn't use the commandline setting that you mentioned. Also, you'd likely be better off using a newer encoder for lower-bitrate use. In my understanding, Lame 3.96.1 and 3.97alpha11 have been significantly improved for lower bitrates - you should use either of these encoders, with the -V switches (-V5 will produce VBR files with a 128 target bitrate, -V6 will be lower). If you're using 3.97alpha, you should use --vbr-new as well (so your commandline in 3.97 would be -V5 --vbr-new).

That all taken care of, I'm unclear (and probably am unclear because you are unclear) about (a) what you want to do, and (b) why you want to do it. What do you mean by "a clip" and why are you worried about it?
Lower bitrate does make clipping more likely in my experience, but not a lot. Determining the "highest frequency of a clip" won't really help you figure out what bitrate to use. And clipping isn't the main thing that hurts sound quality anyway.

Let me assume that your major concern is for sound quality, so that "most people won't hear the difference" in comparison to the original .wav file (the exact copy of the audio data on the cd). The answer depends on how good your equipment is, where you're going to be listening, and how good your hearing (and the hearing of "most people") is. If your ears are very perceptive and you have good equpment and you want to "archive" your songs, I (and most others in this forum) would recommend that you use Lame -V2. If you're looking to just be able to listen to the music and not have problems with the encoding jump out at you and be annoying, then you might be okay with -V5 or -V6. If you're somwhere in between these, then I'd recommend that you use -V4.
(Note: -V2 means the same as --alt-preset standard, and -V4 means the same as --preset medium.)

edit: formatting, and made a couple statements clearer

I'd advise anyone to NOT use this old complicated suggested command line with recent versions.

thx guys for the replies...

*** really sorry about the "clip" confusion!! What i meant was a clip of sound/music.

* Lame 3.90.3 is "The currently recommended LAME version", that's why i'm using it
(http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=28123)

* the reason i want to use low bitrate is that i can put more songs in my mobile SE-K700i or my old portable mp3 player. Also i can use them as the bg sound for webpages, smaller size faster download!!

* keep the sound quality!! What i meant was ppl won't hear the difference between a mp3 that is encoded in 128kb(ABR/CBR) and a mp3 that is encoded in lowest-fair-enough-bitrate!!

For some songs which i have encoded in abr128, i have also used abr64 with the recommended command line for abr128. (I do aware that it is for 128kb!!) And i don't seem to find any issue on the "qulaity loss"!!

The reason i asked about sampling frequency is that for some speech i have encoded, i find the lowest bitrate i can use is abr-40kb(16kHz). If i use abr-32kb(11.025kHz), then the sound of the speech is actually changed as a different person is speaking!! THAT's why i think the sampling frequency could be one of the way to determine the lowest encoding bitrate!!??? Am i right? Or totally off the track??

Actually, 3.90.3 is heavily recommended only for its main setting — the --alt-preset standard switch. It is rather outdated now.
If you want good results at low and mid-low bitrates, go with the latest alpha of 3.97 — it is proved to yield excellent quality in this particular area.
You can search the forum for tests if you want.

A "bug" of your player that is not able to handle mpeg 2.5

I'm using Winamp 5.08e...

Can someone tell me what's the best latest lame encoder for ABR?? And what options should i use?

The latest 3.97 alpha (11) features some ABR/CBR tweaks, I believe (cmiiw), and gives quite good results IMHO. You can use --preset <bitrate>. I use --preset 82 for portable listening, which gives me ~80kbps on average.

thx kindofblue...

would u recommend me a front-end gui for lame encoder?

what's command option if i want to use mono to encode some speeches?

List of good frontends (I recommend RazorLame)
The switch for mono is "-m m"

I personally use Batchenc as GUI.



There doesn't seem to be an HA-recommended setting for this, but you could try (with LAME 3.97a11) something like --abr 40 -m m --resample 32000.

More info from a similar post here

cheers,
kindofblue

I have started using LAME 3.97 alpha 11 2005-07-11...
with :
--alt-preset 128
--alt-preset 64 (sampled at 22.5kHz)
--alt-preset 64 --resample 44.1

I'm wondering with --resample 44.1 for abr64, will i ensure better quality?

No, likely to be lower quality

hmmm... can u point me to the direction of WHY? THX

Because that would decrease frequency resolution of scalefactor bands, thus reducing compression efficiency.

Winamp never had a good track-record of standards-support and overal "clean" programming. The reasons why winamp is the most popular player is not because of its technical quality, but because of other reasons. You could try to "fix" it by using a different decoder-plugin - or switch to a different player.

thx Gabriel & Lyx

so, which player do u guys use?

Foobar