Hi there,

I am going to archive my CD collection. At first I decided for LAME 3.96.1 with the following options: -v -V 0 -b 128 -m s -p -q 0

My primary concern is the stereo option. Some MP3s sound just terrible with joint stereo when I use headphones (of course, I did not encode them ) Furthermore, most VBR MP3s do not show the correct running time in WINAMP - only the ones that use CRCs.

Now, I stumbled across those ÜberStandard guys and their idea is very appealing to me. Especially their naming scripts come in very handy! However, I am a little reluctant to using --alt-preset standard/extreme to fullfil their rules - it uses joint stereo and no CRCs (strangely enough WINAMP show the length without difficulty ).

Since I don't have much insight into LAME and its presets, I would be pleased get some advice here. The files created with my personal command line option are less than 100KB bigger that the "preset" ones. BUT I have real stereo and CRCs (also a higher bitrate) then.

What am I supposed to do - or am I just going for overkill with my settings?

The uber mob are insane, but their setting are much better than yours. Your command line makes dubious 128kbit mp3's. Oddly it seems that you are concerned about quality, so in that case a 128kbit mp3 isn't exactly quality stuff. You are likely to become annoyed with them and rip your collection again.

For high quality you will have to use higher bitrate. Using --preset standard / extreme will give you high quality files that average 190 / 240kbit.. Its not likely that you will learn to distinguish these from the original file, so you have more peace of mind.

The joint stereo increases quality with LAME MP3, you can read about it in the faq. Just don't believe most things you read outside of these forums regarding lossy codecs.

Dont feed the troll - he's just asking to be banned anyways.
Notice that he appears to know perfectly well what he is doing.

This post can be deleted to clean up the thread.

Why are you so harsh and what makes you think it's a troll? I don't think he "knows perfectly well what he's doing", to me he seems genuinely confused about some issues (Joint Stereo, CRCs).
@Kitanai: use joint stereo (improves quality), forget about CRCs (useless) and use the plain presets, e.g. --preset standard or --preset extreme. For further info, search the FAQ and the forums.

Thanks for your response. Hm, -b 128 was supposed to prevent lame to go below 128kbps... must have picked the wrong switch...Ah, I did not know that, I will stick to the presets and trust your judgement I'm sorry if me post appeared inappropriate, I did not mean to spam your thread

Going below 128kbps is not always a bad thing. LAME, when using the presets, makes decisions about bitrates that optimise size/quality. Overriding the presets or using custom made command lines is not a good thing.

Look around on the forum and you'll discover things that break most paradigms that are widespread on the net.


edit: fixed quote

You're right that Winamp 5.x does not appear to show the correct time length of a VBR MP3. What gives?!

Is this is a limitation of Winamp, VBR, or a combination of the two? CBR always displays the correct MP3 time length. But according to most here, CBR does not sound as good as VBR. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I've noticed this too with my VBR files. I'm not an expert, but it might be a problem with the file's VBR header. MP3 Tag Studio has a tool that fixes that. It's worked for me each time I've used it.

http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/