Ok, I've been an audiophie at the basics, but not at the advanced for some time now. So since many directed me here saying experts were here, and looking at the posts it looks ro be right, I had a few questions

1) The KHz cutoff point;

If I make a 256k CBR Lame MP3 set to cut off at 20000 KHz, and a 128k CBR Lame MP3 set to cut off at 20000 KHz, what would be the difference? Wouldn't they both cut off at the same point, or not?

2) If I encode past 20000 KHz, using a normal encoder such as dbpowerAMP(which by some cool edit pro frequency analysis graphs, at certain bitrates, it did encode above 20000 KHz), is it

a) A waste of space, and not making a difference in quality?
b ) Making a positive difference in quality?
c) Making the quality worse?

I'd think c is wrong, since the WAV doesn't cut off at 20000 KHz, which would mean the WAV is screwed up too since it doesn't cut off there.

3) I know Lame is the best, but what right now is the best encoder, and way to encode MP3s(bitrate)? I want it to have CD Quality, and I can notice a difference.

4) Why is 128k the accepted "standard" bitrate, it to me stinks.

5) With Ogg Vorbis, what Ogg Vorbis bitrate equals the MP3 bitrate?

Thanks

1. A cutoff is a cutoff, but that doesn't mean that the mp3 encoder will actually need to encode up to 20khz, anyway. Just because you have a maximum frequency (simplified, in reality, it's a sliding range in modern encoders and not a strict cutoff) of 20khz instead of 22 khz doesn't mean that the song will sound any better on any bitrate of mp3 file.

2. A. Total waste of space. Anybody who tries to tell you different is not being very realistic. I can say with 99.9999% certainty that you have neither the equipment nor the ears to hear the difference between an original wave and a 20khz lowpassed music sample.

3. LAME is the best mp3 encoder for most of the commonly used bitrates and types of audio. Sure, some other encoder might do X kbps (stereo|mono) (sweeps|whistles|distortion) better, but for practically everything, LAME is the best. The best settings are what you have found to be acceptable. Or, --alt-preset insane, if you don't want to put any effort into finding the solution that works best for you, and waste massive amounts of space at the same time.

4. Accepted on what? File trading services? If you mean widely used, it's because most users don't care about quality.

5. You cannot say that a bitrate in one format is equal to a bitrate in another format like that. In fact, most modern encoders don't use bitrate as any determination of quality, but rather quality settings, which may or may not have a nominal bitrate generally associated with them and probably use variable bitrates, anyway. You must listen for yourself to decide which settings between formats seem to be comparable in quality, for you.

Thanks for the help

I can't tell what's better. I am half deaf almost(need to see doctor for decongestants, they usually work), and using a laptop. I want OTHER people{eMule users} to not be able to hear the difference.

And on the other thing, what do you mean by the encoder won't need to go up to 20000 KHz? What effect does the bitrate have if I set the cutoff point to 20000 KHz? Are the encoders confusing command line stuff? Do you choose a bitrate for the VBR or do you choose a min and max one?

Sorry for all the stupid questions, but the road to expertise starts at complete idiocy, and if no one ever asked, you'd never learn either

"And on the other thing, what do you mean by the encoder won't need to go up to 20000 KHz?"

There isn't usually much information near 20khz that needs to be encoded at a reasonable setting. Most of the "important" (to our ears) information is much lower frequency.

"What effect does the bitrate have if I set the cutoff point to 20000 KHz?"
Probably none, unless the setting that you're using already has a cutoff below 20khz (for example, 16khz), and even then, it wouldn't make much difference unless you had really high quality settings.

"Are the encoders confusing command line stuff?"
?

"Do you choose a bitrate for the VBR or do you choose a min and max one?"
Totally depends on your encoder and encoding preferences. Most quality minded people choose an alt-preset now, but a long time ago, people used to choose ABR bitrates quite often. Sometimes people tack on a max bitrate because of a portable player that can't handle 320kbps frames, sometimes people used to tack on a min bitrate because of digital silence issues, but those issues are mostly outdated and you should not worry about them anymore.

If I were you, I'd encode with LAME 3.90.2 and --alt-preset standard and not worry one bit about any of these issues.

Well by saying it won't go up to 20,000 it means that such a high frequency in music is rare, so most of the time it won't need to go up to this frequency at all.
For VBR there is no min and max bitrate choise, that's for ABR.
And, the road to expertise also starts at searching the forum, use the search feature and wonders will unfold .

Thanks all! My main expertise when it comes to computers is security and P2P, when it comes to audio I'm a dunce.

What do you encode at? I use EasyLAME right now. I used to use dbpowerAMP though.

Also, I thought VBR made the bitrate vary, not make the frequency vary. With dbpowerAMP, 128k MP3 cut off at 14000 KHz using CBR.

With Ogg Vorbis, what quality level gets me something that sounds good? Most people say 5, some say 7, 0y... this is so confusing... It's at times like this I wish I had a high upload bandwidth and didn't need to worry about this.