Hello,

I have a number of "older" jazz CD's, that when ripped with EAC-Lame APS end up encoded at a constant 128 kbps. I wouldn't think that the recording quality should have this kind of effect.

Some of the CD's claim to be remastered, some don't.

Most of my CD's end up just fine, but it doesn't make sense to me why I end up with an effectively constant bit rate on some of these.

Thanks for any help

I believe 128 CBR is the LAME default (ie. if you don't set any switches).

Therefore, I think you've made an error in your command line so that the switches have been ignored and the default setting used by LAME (or maybe you've used an old version where APS wasn't implemented?).

Make sure you use the double hyphen at the start, ie. --alt-preset standard.

That's just it. I did nothing different between one that ended up @ 128 and one that came out with the expected variation.

I have all my log files saved from EAC if you need proof.

It's not actually CBR, it's just VBR with all the frames at 128.

When using an --alt-preset, LAME encoded the frames at bitrates between 128 and 320.
For some reason, it thought that 128 would suffice.

LOL. Not necessary - only trying to help.

I think Justinj88 has the right answer. LAME just didn't need more bits than 128. Seems logical for the source material.

Regards
DrD

sure they're not actually mono tracks? that'd do it.

<edit> it should be safe to use --alt-preset standard -b80 on mono material, as per other threads

Hmm, interesting thought.

Uh, is there an easy way to tell if a song is mono or stereo other than just having good hearing.

Thanks.

Yes. Find any audio editing program, select either the right or left channel, and choose "invert/flip" or "invert phase." Then use the channel converter to combine them into one channel.

If virtually all of the music disappears, it's a mono track.

BTW, 99% of the frames APS used for "The Anthology of American Folk Music" were 128kbps, and I cannot ABX it. I bet you're fine.

Did a quick check on one of them, sure enough - mono.

This is exactly the answer I was looking for. Thanks everyone for your help!

I have a question.
I also have some old songs in mono and they were encoded in 128Kbs when I used aps standard. But I was surprised-there were no jointet blocks. Why did that happen?