I have an old Creative Nomad Zen Xtra that I've had lying around, and I want to put my music on it. Trouble is, it's only 40GB and I have hundreds of albums that I want to put on it. I want to try to squeeze as much as possible onto it. It only plays WMA and MP3 and I've had a hell of a time trying to get EAC to work with WMA and it won't go, so looks like MP3 is good for me.

I'm used to OGG, and LAME's low bitrate doesn't touch that. I would consider Q0 or Q1 acceptable for portable listening (I've ABX'd Q2 and Q3; I consider Q4 transparent) but LAME down at <80kbps is horrible. I've been trying to figure out some low bitrate LAME settings but it's not working out for me. The quality is fine but I wish the bitrate was lower.

I decided to base it around -V 9 --vbr-new. I've only messed with resample and lowpass.

But for example, the song "Every Planet We Reach is Dead" by Gorillaz turned out to be the same bitrate with -V 9 --vbr-new --resample 32000 --lowpass 16000 as it did with -V 9 --vbr-new --resample 44100 --lowpass 17000. And here's the ABX test from the first one:



Although it was easy to tell which was which, I consider that acceptable quality. So right now I'm getting about 95-110kbps regardless of 32khz/44.1khz sampling rate or 16khz/17khz lowpass. I've also tried -V 7 --vbr-new which is a 15khz lowpass and 32khz resample, I just tried Primus - Frizzle Fry and it sounds the same as the others, but the bitrate went from 95 (in those first two v9's) to 99.

Are there any other tweaks I can do, like using -q 0 for example? Or is it best to just stick with -V 7 and not mess with anything?

Firstly, rather than futzing with the lowpass and forcing higher sample rates by --resample, you're probably best off by just sticking to the -V presets. I trust the Lame developers know far better than you and I as to which tunings achieve the best quality at a given bitrate. This is the whole idea behind the development of the preset system - keep quality-based VBR simple for Joe Users like us. People can do whatever they want, but it still amazes me how certain people go tweeking their command line thinking they know better than the people who built the encoder.

Sounds like you've already seen this, but if you haven't - http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...cal_information

If I were in a situation such as yours I'd probably go with -V 6 --vbr-new (~115 kbps), it's the lowest preset that doesn't downsample (and I'd be willing to live with a couple fewer albums on my DAP for a more acceptable quality level).

edit: grammar

Yeah, I know that. It's just a bummer that V9 is so obviously horrendous sounding when Q0 OGG at nearly the same bitrate is very listenable and can even sound transparent on casual listens.

And yes, I've seen that link--that's where I got some of my baseline info from

It looks like V7 is best, as that's the best balance; if I was trying for transparency it'd be V5 or 6.

Why do you have a problem with Lame reducing the sampling rate? Do you understand that increasing sampling rate at a given bitrate decreases quality?

I was simply testing it out to see if it would have any effect on bitrate/quality, which it seemed not to have (perceivably) in my 32000/44100 comparisons. Just using straight -V 9 sounds horrible though, I'm not sure if it's the extremely low lowpass, the 24khz resample, the low bitrate, or a combination of all of those.

But yes, I do understand that increasing sampling rate at a given bitrate decreases quality, there's no way that 44100khz is going on my Nomad.

[quote name='hushypushy' date='Oct 19 2006, 10:46' post='442413']
it's only 40GB
[code]
Only 40 gb? . My mp3 has only 1 gb and I have 20 albums on it. -V 5. I would hardly listen all 20 albums during month.

Well it's not like I'm going to listen to every single album every single day. It's just that I want to be able to have that selection any time I want. I went on a trip once and I had put my favorite albums, in HQ, on that Nomad...but I quickly grew bored because I wanted some more "obscure" things and I didn't have them with me. Sometimes it's kind of a burden to like so many types of music...

-V 9 --vbr-new --resample 32 --lowpass 16 will hardly get you 16khz. There will be very little above 15.3khz.

-V 9 --vbr-new --resample 44 --lowpass 17 won't get you 17khz due to -Y and ATH (only lame3.94 and later). I would use --lowpass 16 instead to avoid occasional 'chirping' that may occur on some tracks.

The contents of this thread may be of interest to you.

Happy tweaking

ooh, interesthing. Thanks, I'm going to read that thread now...

I'd strongly advise anyone to not touch the resampling parameter. Select the lowpass if you want, but do not touch resampling.

Example: --lowpass 16 --resample 32 is a very bad idea, while --lowpass 16 would be fine.

Well, I'm sure you guys picked those values for a reason. I'm probably going to be using -V 7, that's a lowpass of <15 so I suppose I'll be leaving lowpass and resample alone.

What about other switches? I went through this page and didn't see anything I should add...and I'm figuring that if it should be added, it's already in the preset.

I have a related question since I also use -V9 --vbr-new, for movies soundtrack on my PPC.

Since I do not know how good is lame resampling algorightm, I always process the track through foobar2000 first, to resample it to half of what it is (ie: 48KHz to 24kHz, or 44.1KHz to 22.01KHz), and also apply vlevel. Foobar2000 then feeds it to LAME. Incidentally when I check the track afterwards, lame does not seem to have resampled it to another value.

I am doing the right thing, or should I let lame reseample it for me, if needed?

From what Gabriel just said, it seems that you shouldn't be resampling at all. Let the preset do its work?

You can do the resampling externally if you want, it should not change results that much.
What you should not change is the resampling value that Lame is choosing itself based on lowpass.

Interesting. I wasn't aware that LAME alters the sample rate according to the used lowpass even if the other switches are not changed. I thought the sample rates were hard coded in the VBR quality and ABR/CBR bitrate switches.

This makes sense. You just need to check the lowpass for determining if a sample rate conversion should be used. You don't need to create a sample rate conversion rule for each possible switch combination separately.

As test I tried the following.

The source file: a 16-bit, 48 kHz video soundtrack in wave format

LAME 3.97 -V0 --lowpass 17 => 48 kHz
LAME 3.97 -V0 --lowpass 16 => 48 kHz
LAME 3.97 -V0 --lowpass 15 => 32 kHz
LAME 3.97 -V0 --lowpass 14 => 32 kHz
LAME 3.97 -V0 --lowpass 13 => 32 kHz
LAME 3.97 -V0 --lowpass 12 => 32 kHz
LAME 3.97 -V0 --lowpass 11 => 24 kHz

Looks like LAME skips resampling from 48 to 44.1 kHz even if it would be possible (i.e. the lowpass is below half of the sample rate). This is probably the right choice. The small bitrate reduction would not be worth of the possible quality reduction caused by the resampling.