Hi,

I found a couple lame 3.91 files in my collection..... Where does that fit in in terms of quality or recommendations.... ?

If I'm not wrong, 3.91 is "official" version of 3.90.2, someone correct me if this is not true. If so, they should produce same files.

I think that 3.90.3 should be recommended in place of 3.90.2 - contains a minor change, but still...

if you look at JohnVs post carefully, it's stone old.

please don't resurrect such old postings.

Yeah, sure.... but regardless of age, the quality of different versions will never change..... Lame 3.92 will always be better than 3.87, Lame 3.93 will never be recommended, and neither will alphas..... Now the question was - Where does 3.91 stand in it all..... ?

I would imagine 3.91 is or roughly the same as 3.90.2, maybe someone can elaborate. I have been using LAME v3.92 ever since it was released and will be until there is a major breakthrough in the improvement of MP3 encoding or if the future builds are tested as throughly as the 3.90.2 / 3.92 versions ( Remembers when Dibrom was releasing binaries almost every other day ).

Laters

AgentMil

Cool, Thanks.....

As long as there are no major flaws with 3.91, then i will keep them in my collection.... Otherwise i'm the same as you, i use 3.92 and/or 3.90.2 to encode.....

I'm using LAME v3.93.1 and it seems to be doing a great job except I've had a few strange endings on several mp3's and gaps when I specified no gaps in the settings. I think this is just me setting something up wrong but I'm new to this. I also tried the All2Lame frontend as I hear this does seamless, gap free recording but somhow it won't run on my XP Pro powered PC. Anyway, all this technical stuff is quite confusing for me but I think I'm getting the hang of it.

The settings I'm using for mp3 are

-b 192 -m j -h -V 0 -B 320 --lowpass 19.7

and I'm using Bluerazorlame v1.2.0 for the frontend.

I'm pleased with the results but I'm not 100% on whether these settings are 'sensible', can someone tell me if these settings are OK? Basically I'm wanting to make files that offer a good trade off between high quality and reasonable file size.

You might want to take a look at the FAQ or the other sticky threads in this forum.
But to answer your question: Your settings are somewhat sub-optimal and --nogap is considered experimental so you have to expect some screw ups.

dev0

Basically, the best tradeoff there is between quality and filesize is --alt-preset standard.

You should really read the FAQ and sticky treads to get the whole story, but it is generally considered that you should not tinker with the settings because you would most likely end with wors results. For example, it has been widely considered that V0 offers no significant improvement over the Preset-selected V2. Your lowpass is also "questionable".

Still, you seem to be a newbie (I mean that in a good way ) and Lord knows we all made some quesionable choices when starting to use this compressed audio stuff. So the best advice I have for you is to research a little bit more.

Indeed, I will research a lot more.

Since I wrote that post I switched from LAME v3.93.1 & Bluerazorlame frontend to v3.90.3 &Razorlame v1.1.5.1342 and I've been playing with the presets, I also took the easy way around and installed Easylame v1.4 but basically the results using alt-preset exteme have been good. Ideally I want something inbetween extreme and standard, there's something about standard that makes me feel slightly undernourished and something about extreme that makes me bloated. What setting is 'extremely satisfied and in need of a giant fart but still there's room for pudding'?

There are no settings between standard and extreme, but you shouldn't need one either. Show us a sample that you can ABX at standard and not extreme. If you can I will be VERY surprized.

Surely there is a command line that fits somewhere between standard and extreme? Whether or not there is an audible difference I have yet to find out but how would the command line read, just out of interest?

I am fairly happy with extreme, btw, but maybe I have become braiwashed that higher than standard is better.. not sure, all I can think of is random numbers and letters.. v3.903 V2 --alt-preset death -q-0 v1.1.5.1342 v1.2.0 lowpass 20.5 b196 v3.90.3 etc etc. Apart from turning into a human calculator I really love this stuff, but I am continuously looking for the perfect preset.

I know exactly what you are going through. You think that "standard" is another word for average and you want above average, "just in case". I thought the same thing once (when I was experimenting with other codecs). But I did what music_man_mpc suggested. Tested the setting and tried to ABX. So far I have not been able to. The Standard preset was designed to deliver in almost any sample you are likely to find. It was fine tuned to offer the closest thing to transparency that MP3 has to offer, EXTREME, IMHO does not improve quality in any manner that would justify such a radical increase in bitrate. I really do not think that bloating everyfile so I am "covered" should a problematic sample come along is justified. But that is just my opinion, based in MY reality. I listen to most of my music in my computer, through average speakers; on my iRiver CD player, with average headphones and in my car, with average speakers. And equipment is not really an issue, even. If you find an artifact, it will be present in every thing you listen to that file with. Extreme, in my case, is unnecesary. You should try to figure out what you need in a codec, and you should also try to know your hearing, through ABX, so you can determine which codec and bitrate suits you best.
Just one piece of advice, DO NOT MESS WITH THE PRESETS. All of the major codecs supported in HA have been tested to death by people with better hearing than anybody I know. You might have "Golden Ears", indeed, but the only way to find out for sure is through ABX testing. In the meantime, the presets are pretty much all you will ever need.

We posted at almost the same time

Still, I feel I must try to make a point to you.
Dibrom improved LAME by CHANGING THE CODE. The quality that Dibroms compile offers CANNOT be achieved by tinkering with switches. Nor it can be improved by the same method. Look, I know that it is kinda hard to understand, and I do not intend to be rough, but Dibrom and some other members of this board did more tests than you could imagine, in order to squeeze the best quality out of LAME MP3.
So far, there has been only one case in which quality was improved because of a switch, and it was when -Z was added. But still, the quality improve was not that significative (in fact, you could use 3.90.2, the -Z-less compile and likely never notice the difference).

You are, of course, free to test what I am telling to you (and maybe you should ), I just think that you will be kinda dissapointed at the end.

Oh, and if you find a setting that sounds better to you, please ABX it before telling us about it. If it really improves quality and it can be ABXed, I guarantee you will be a HA celebrity overnight

OK, that's very helpful stuff, thanks AtaqueEG, I might just have to investigate ABX. By the way, this is all very appreciated as a newbie to EAC & LAME, I've been using it for only around 4 days now and already I learned a lot. There's an awful lot to take in though, I think I've gone through about 10 different configurations, frontends, lame versions, not counting all the listening tests I've done for several days, and I still don't know what the overall best setup is. I guess I'll run with v3.90.3 for now as it seems the most recommended and Razorlame v1.1.5, plus --alt-preset standard.. and just MAYBE extreme for highly prized recordings. This has to end somewhere and I have to avoid getting caught up in a versionitis trap, I wanna just encode great mp3s and enjoy the music.


Just for the record, I take it that you are using this same version setup with --alt-preset standard?



Ahh man, here I go again..



[moderation]empty space removed[/moderation]

For your "highly prized recordings", if you want to feel a little better about the encoding than --alt-preset standard, just go with --alt-preset insane. --extreme really just adds bloat without improving the quality over --standard in any noticeable way. --insane is 320kbps so it's not really all that much more than --extreme and well worth the extra bits if you want to feel safe about the encoding being completely transparent.

Indeed.
And for my highly prized recordings, I use: --alt-preset standard!
Really, I have a lot of albums I know backwards and forwards, I have listened to them literally hundreds of times and they don't have a single note I don't know by heart.
I use -aps. Never heard a difference. Even on my headphones (Sennheiser 212 Pro, nothing fancy, but suits me just fine).
Try on a song that you have listened a lot, that you feel that you know better than the artist himself. Encode Standard, Extreme and Insane. ABX. Decide.

Just stick around in this forum, read FAQs, use Search, ask nicely and you'll learn a lot.

*EDIT*

Forum bug strikes again

OK, I don't know what happened there but I'll try this again:

*EDIT!*

Oh forget it, I'll wait til the board's fixed.

I think the whole point of --alt-preset standard and --alt-preset extreme was so that they would be virtually (999 times out of a thousand) indistinguishable from 320kbit/s. I doubt that 320kbit/s is ever transparent to someone like guruboolez or geko, and if it ever is I bet that, again 999 times out of a thousand --alt-preset standard would be too.

If you want transparency for your most highly prized encodings, use lossless:

FLAC and frontend:

http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org/files/f.../flac-1.1.0.zip
http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org/files/flacdrop.zip

APE:

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/download.html

edits: gramatical errors

OK, I've been away from HA.org for awhile now.

Where did 3.95 come from?

Don't overestimate LAMe's VBR mode.
Its CBR is still better, as it can't make so many mistakes due to psychoacoustic model.
Some samples are clearly better with --alt-preset insane. (320kbps CBR)
Anyway, most of them still aren't transparent with it.

@RyanVM: It's the latest official (not recommended yet) LAME version.
(Some major fixes went in as of 3.94 - 3.95 contains some more of them, check history)
It features automatic presets (-b 128 gives you --preset cbr 128, -V 2 --alt-preset standard etc.), new slightly better (much slower) -q 0 mode, move of -h to -q 3...

This version still needs much testing to ever possibly become recommended.

Glad to see that the presets are getting used whether the user wants it or not

OK, i may be talking bollox here, but i seem to recall a version of lame 3.9.2 with "nonlinear quant scale"... i may be confused with TMPGenc, because i was linked to both through doom9's download page

i know that my lame 3.9.2 is giving me much better very-low bitrate encodes than my other installed lame compiles.... does anyone know about this? (i've searched, but not as hard as maybe i could)

I think you're thinking of DSPguru's custom lame_enc.dll with a non-linear psychoachoustic model, from here: http://dspguru.notrace.dk/lame_encNL.zip

WORD! thanks.

hehe.. i was confused with an update of TMPGenc where the quantscale was changed (in a similar manner it would appear).

hmm.. if that's a DLL though, that means there must be some significant changes in lame 3.95.1 in the low bitrate areas (96 CBR). interesting.

this is sort of just curiosity for me - seeing how low i can go before LAME breaks.

[edit]

any idea what version of lame this dll is? doesn't seem to say on dspguru's site

3.92, so it's one of the decent ones! Although with the amended psychoachoustic model that comment may be entirely inappropriate!!

i hear you... but i always loved to tinker with things, so for me the more versions to play with the better.

that said, i do all my archival encodings in --aps... with the occasional -Y as i can't ABX it on actual music, rather than problem samples

you guys would hate to see the command lines i play with just for fun. more to learn just what they do rather than try to improve a preset of course. though i've been surprised that commandline tinkering can produce better results for VERY low bitrates. i'll post a sample if anybody really cares...

I care.

I'd like to see something that could beat "--alt-preset 96" at it's own game. For me artifacts are very easy to hear at this level.

Somehow I don't think 96kbit/s is what MugFunky meant when he said " . . . VERY low bitrates."

edit: To me 96kbit/s is a mid-range bitrate.

Deeswift, I know you last posted to this thread in August, and the last time anyone posted to it was in February, but in case you're still interested...

You asked if there was a LAME setting in between --alt-preset standard and --alt-preset extreme - one that creates files with better quality than the former, and with smaller file sizes than the latter. Well, I'm using LAME 3.95.1, and after a bit of experimentation, I've found that apparently --alt-preset standard is equivalent to -m j -V 2, and --alt-preset extreme is equivalent to -m j -V 0.

Therefore, there is a setting that meets your needs: -m j -V 1. I've tried it, and the q level, lowpass filter settings, and minimum bitrate are indeed right between those of --alt-preset standard and --alt-preset extreme. The resulting file size is right in the middle as well.

Personally, I'm one of those slightly compulsive types who can't be satisfied even with --alt-preset extreme, so when I'm encoding wave files to MP3, I use --alt-preset extreme -qval=0, in spite of the fact that there have been multiple posts here recommending that users not add command line switches to the LAME presets - and also in spite of the fact that I've searched high and low and have found no explanation anywhere of what the heck "qval" is, or exactly what parameters it controls! Hey, if there's any chance that it makes MP3s sound better, then give me the best "qval" there is, baby!

THere is also more than a passing chance that it makes things sound worse, too.

Explain, please!

You might possibly be right, but as a test, I encoded the same file using --alt-preset extreme and --alt-preset extreme -qval=0. The one with the -qval=0 switch took more than four times as long to encode, and came out about two tenths of a percent smaller.

Granted, this doesn't prove anything, but it suggests that perhaps the preset with the added qval switch bears the same sort of relationship to the "plain" preset that the "plain" preset has to its "fast" equivalent - that is, it takes longer and gives a more "careful" result.

IIRC -V 0 was remapped to --preset extreme and -V 2 was remapped to --preset standard, in version 3.95.1. The -m j is redundant, they are entirely the same. Whether -V 1 offers any quality improvment to --preset standard, or not, I don't know. Perhaps a LAME dev could enlighten us.

I don't use -m j with the --alt-presets (or "--presets"; yes, I've noticed through trial and error that, as you point out, --preset extreme is the same as --alt-preset extreme). I was just trying to make the point that -m j -V 0 seems to produce the same results as --alt-preset extreme or --preset extreme.

In fact, I just did a test, encoding the same file using both -m j -V 0 and --alt-preset extreme. The resulting file sizes were exactly the same, which would strongly suggest that both files are exactly the same.


A LAME developer would, indeed, certainly be able to offer more authoritative insights on this matter than can I. However, if --alt-preset standard's -V 2 sounds better than --alt-preset medium's -V 4, and --alt-preset extreme's -V 0 sounds better than --alt-preset standard's -V 2, then doesn't it stand to reason that -V 1 would also sound better than -V 0, albeit perhaps to an insignificant degree?

Could someone tell me if there's anywhere where all versions of Lame are available for download? This thread started to document 3.90.3 and post 3.90.3 versions a year ago. But up front it doesn't describe versions 3.4, 3.5, 3.95.1 and 3.6 that I've read discussions on, or provide a link to where they can be downloaded. They're only discussed to some degree in later posts to this thread.

The most discussed versions seem to be here: http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html

Is that an 'official' HA download site? Is there somewhere else where ALL of the various Lame compiles are listed, described, and available for download?

Is this still a useful thread, seeing as how the latest version is LAME 3.96.1? I don't think I've seen too many alpha binaries distributed since, either.

I updated the post to make it useful again.
Thanks for pointing me to this.

I have found that for me it does offer improvement over both 3.90.3 and 3.96 aps and ps, respectively (see this thread).

In ABX testing in the above mentioned thread, I realized that aps and ps are not only not transparent on certain samples, but glaringly obvious in some. I've found that -V1 improved the artifacts enough to the point that they were slight and not nearly as annoying. I have decided it is the best compromise for me between quality and size, and I now currently use 3.96.1 -V 1, which replaced my previous 3.90.3 aps setting.

I think its great that we have this new option between ps and pe.