I'm wondering if there is any rational to download music at 320 CBR over V0. the file size on albums is significantly different (20-40 mb~ an album), yet on the quality graph that's circulating the internet, there is almost no difference in quality. I've also heard that v0 can be better than 320CBR if the 320 option wasn't ripped using LAME.

I also try and stay away from v2 rips (anything averaging under 200VBR)+(scene rips that don't say the average bitrate), and i download 320 CBR instead if there's no v0 option. is v2 and v0 almost the same? i find it hard to believe with the big difference in file size.

do you think downloading v0, then 320 CBR, then V2, is the wise route to go for listening to music with a good setup or good headphones?


P.S.
i find that at low bitrates (under 192), the bass can sound bad and same with the high hat and snare, or even percussion in general. that's why i've gone through my library and redownloaded anything CBR that's under 192 CBR. I've even stopped downoading 192 cbr, although im not sure how that quality compares really

No one can tell you what quality one setting is over the other. However, we can tell you what the general census is. -V 0 is generally regarded to have the same quality as 320kbps except in rare cases or with killer samples (every lossy encoder has rare cases and killer samples though). It is said that -V 0 is better because it can achieve high quality with the files being much lower in size than 320kbps.

That being said, -V 2 is regarded as being the standard in that most people (with most samples) can't distinguish that between the lossless source. If you want my personal opinion then it is this: I would only download at -V 2 given that it is definitely transparent to my ears and the file sizes are even smaller than -V 0.

I suggest that you conduct a blind ABX test with Lame mp3 at various bitrates. Compare different Lame settings (start with -V 5 and go all the way up to -V 0) to a lossless file ripped from a CD. You probably won't be able to properly distinguish between -V 3/2 and the lossless file.

Your last statement about the base, hi-hat (a high hat is a hat high in the air ), and snare need to be backed up with ABX tests. Otherwise you are probably just suffering from the placebo affect. The placebo affect occurs whenever you know a bitrate of a song and you think that you are hearing things that you aren't actually hearing. For example, you view 192kbps as being a low bitrate (it actually isn't a low bitrate, that is a high bitrate). So you listen to 192kbps music and you know that the bitrate is low (again, from your point of view). So then you start to hear all these flaws that aren't actually there just because you know the bitrate is "low."

Remember that bitrate does not necessarily reflect sound quality. It is true that a 320kbps CBR Lame mp3 should technically have the highest sound quality that Lame has to offer in the normal mp3 bitrate range (ie not free format). However, there is always a point for nearly everyone out there in which bitrate stops making a big difference. Many people cannot distinguish -V 2 (~190kbps VBR) from the source lossless file so anything above that would be a waste. So in this case, -V 2 would actually be superior to 320kbps CBR as -V 2 not only achieves the same quality but has a much, much smaller file size.

I hope all that helps. You need to conduct a blind ABX test before you can make any serious comments about audio quality though. Otherwise your comments won't be taken seriously and you are violating the TOS here at Hydrogenaudio. Remember that the point of Hydrogenaudio is to correctly guide people. If everyone came on here saying that "the bass can sound bad" without actually having proof then we would all be lead to believe that Apple lossless is not lossless (it is in fact lossless, I have just seen quite a few posts where people say that they can hear a difference without ABX testing), lossy encoders (Lame mp3, Nero AAC, iTunes AAC, etc.) suck, and people should use old fashioned tube amps and vinyl for everything.

kornchild, thanks for your fast explanation. you answered pretty much everything i was unsure of. I'll definately check out the guides here and do a blind test on one of my cds in the near future. I don't think I'll worry about downloading V0 over V2 anymore if most people cannot tell the difference anyways.

So what you're saying is that the average person starts to not be able to tell the difference between lossless and lossy at around 190kbps vbr, right?

The other thing you have to consider is, you can not trust anything you did not rip yourself, especially if you got it via anything p2p.

Just because something you downloaded is @ 320 (or anything encoding), does not mean anything. It could have been re-encoded from a 128 to 320 just to make it look like a better rip and be more 'in demand' by people who only look at bit rate.

-V 0 encodes are all the rage among quality elitists and/or P2P groups, most of the time they don't know what it means, so I imagine they don't even know how the LAME VBR preset system works. I've seen releases tagged with "v0" (not the correct use of the command line setting, BTW) just to make them seem "legit" or attract more attention, when in reality they're 320kbps or -V 2 encodes.

Even with high end equipment, -V 0 might be overkill on most music, yes even on metal, I've seen metalheads try to justify use of -V 0 because of the "high frequency content" in metal music, yet fail to provide ABX results.

In the end, getting stuff from P2P is a gamble, and blindly following advice from random people on the internets is never good. You're better off doing as kornchild says, do your own tests and find your appropriate settings.

The general consensus here is that most people begin to distinguish lossless from lossy at 128kbps VBR (-V5). YMMV!

So what's a "base" exactly?

Now between T.S.O.L (bass + high hat) and kornchild2002 (base + hi-hat) we have a hat high in the air and a centre for military or other operations

Let he who cast the first stone .... etc.

C.

Yep, we all make mistakes. That is why I didn't take it seriously. Well, your centre could be perceived to have the wrong spelling given that the U.S. spells it center. I always laugh at the spelling differences between the UK and the U.S.

Either way, it looks like T.S.O.L. is understanding the point.

Can i ask sth a little bit irrelevant?Ok i download a release from the net.How can i test it if it's 320 or V0 and not transcodes of a lower quality release?

If it's a legal download from an official source then it's almost definitely going to be what it claims to be.

Cheers, Slipstreem.

There are programs that guess at what encoder and setting were used, and some encoders put the actual information in a tag, but this only tells you the last encoding used, and tells you nothing about previous encodings.

It is pretty much impossible to determione if a file was reencoded, unless you have access to the original lossless version to compare to, in which case you don't need the lossy version.

Just like how official information from authorised Bose resellers is 100% reliable?

Bose? Who are they?

Cheers, Slipstreem.

yeah i know what you mean. on some sites I'll download something labelled v0 and it'll turn out to be 160 CBR, or, more commonly it'll be a v2 scene rip. There's really nothing you can do that really, except report them, and try and find a genuine rip elsewhere.

I'm not too much of a n00b though, I used to use audio identifier, and now i use mr. question man to verify that rips arn't transcoded from another lossy format.




wow i didn't realize or even think about this. i guess on the private bt trackers i use i can pretty much assume the rip is legit, but with the chance that it isn't, as long as you can't tell the difference then i guess it's fine.

this kinda reminds me of the song Caress Me Down by Sublime. I was sure it was transcoded and fucked around with because there was a sound like a msn msg alert in the background near the end of the song that drove me crazy. i downloaded a couple other rips of the album and it turned out that the sound was a part of the song, even though it sounded out of place