I have an Aphex Twin single (for those who don't know, synthesized/electronic music) that I"m trying to encode to LAME. I'm using ALL2LAME with the swtiches "-V 1 --vbr-new", and often times my resulting files are around 160 kbps!!! What the hell is wrong with this? This seems way low for -V 1. I get the same results with and without --vbr-new, and I've searched everywhere and can't find anything on this...

Thanks to anyone who can help

You could post a uncompressed wav sample then have other people encode it at the -V 1 --vbr-new setting. My guess is that the music is not very complex. For example, with Nine Inch Nails' new album, With Teeth, there are some songs that are encoded at around 160bkps VBR with -V 2 --vbr-new.

As I said earlier, post a uncompressed wav (or FLAC) sample then we can encode it at -V 1 --vbr-new. My guess is that since it is synthesized it doesn't need a high bitrate.

It is VBR - which means it targets a certain quality, not a certain bitrate. I can encode certain midi-tracks to mp3 at V2 and get bitrate-averages of about 140kbps...... or i can encode certain metal stuff at V2 and get bitrate averages of about 230kbit.

What source is that? Is that an original CD? It does sound like it could be a lossy source.

Yeah, it's the original pressed CD. You guys could be right; there are zero live instruments as it's all keyboards and synths (thinking about it, it doensn't have all the "variations" of live instruments like feedback, sustain, harmonics, etc). Just as long as it's not in error...

So it IS normal to sometimes get ~160 sometimes with -V 1? It's just odd... because some tracks on the CD compress around 160, and others only have frames of 192 or greater (with a hanful of 160's and absolutely no 128's...)

Completely normal. With some of my techno tracks (just a lot of beats, no instruments or anything) encoded at -V 2, I get around 128kbps VBR. For kicks, I went back and ripped some tracks at -V 1 and got 142kbps VBR. So yes, it is completely normal to get 160kbps depending on the complexity of the music. As long as it still sounds "cd quality" to you then Lame is doing its job. Just try to forget these tracks are at 160kbps VBR when listening to these tracks as you might get the placebo affect (ie you know they are at 160kbps while all you other music is in the 200 range so you imediately think the 160kbps tracks don't have good quality).

There are also older recordings for which LAME can churn out low average bitrates. I remember getting files in the 140 kbps range using -V 2 --vbr-new for some songs from Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Cosmo's Factory."

I got 137kbps with LAME 3.90.3 -V1 --vbr-old for monoish music

I've gotten very low bitrates from Lame vbr presets (using 3.96) for some Radiohead electronica-ish music (from the Kid A/Amnesiac era). I just figure that some artificially produced music is very easy to encode, as has been detailed a bit more above.

I encoded the BOC "campfire headphase" at -v2 --vbr-new.

Track 1 is 99, track 15 is 77 kbps av. And some at 140-150. About the very low bitrates, I was surprised as well because theres constant noise and no silence.