hi

I'm using Lame.exe (dated 29-9-2005) with EAC (0.95b3) & comand line for "extreme" preset:

-V 0 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a"


It's been a long time since I set this up.

Are there any developments I should be aware of or is this setting still good ?

Still sounds great to me !


cheers


swayzak

Looks fine to me.

When LAME 3.98 is released, you won't need to use --vbr-new because it will be the default VBR mode.

As I have said so often when going ~250 kbps ABR 250 is the better alternative IMO qualitywise.
Same extremely high quality as usually achieved by -V0 but better performance in the rare cases where the psy model has a weakness.
(Background: Lame VBR's quality control is based totally on the psy model whereas the ABR variable bitrate method isn't).
You can read more about it in other threads.

The LAME wiki page maintains the current recommendations.

What Synthetic Soul said. ^^

As for the supposed superiority of ABR at high bitrates, let me try to put it kindly: this is the opinion of one particular - vocal - HA member, which many other (highly regarded) HA members disagree with.

But anyway, you shouldn't have to worry about these kinds of issues. Just check the recommendations, as Synthetic Soul mentioned.

thanks everyone - guess my current setting is still good !

You should probably ABX between V0 and V2, or even a lower setting. Chances are, you can't hear the difference anyway and are just wasting space. It's preset *extreme* for a reason...

True, true. I often wonder whether people who don't care for file sizes anyway keep using MP3 at the extreme or even insane presets instead of going for lossless. Compatibility to software audio players can't be the main reason due to the two mainly used lossless codecs, FLAC and WavPack, being supported by most software; if not natively, then via easily to install plug-ins. Hardware support wouldn't make the best argument as well, since large files are quite impractical being stored on flash-based players, and they also keep sucking batteries noticeably faster than low-bitrate encodings.

That would mean quality is the main reason. Question is if this really made sense - in practice music can't sound better than transparent, no matter whether it's a -V5 or -V2 thing. The theoretical quality gain of even higher bitrate settings comes at the costs described above.

Edit: You should never rewrite certain parts of a post without checking them for missing words afterwards.

Obviously there are people who care about those situations where -V5 or similar is very bad no matter the fact that these situations are rather rare.
But I think whoever tried eig, trumpet, moon, harp40_1 (just to name a few) using -V5 can understand them better.
Going very high in bitrate usually improves quality a lot in these cases, and 250 kbps is a lot lower than going lossless.

There are several scenarios where high-bitrate-MP3s make sense:
- high-quality DAP (especially in quiet environment)
- MP3-collection to play on your DVD-Player
- not enough space for your entire (lossless) music collection (you could go Vorbis or AAC but still need MP3s for your DAP or DVD)
- you need MP3-compatibility and have lots of noisy-jazzy-electro music (i.e. you can abx -V2, which is not a rare event with this music)