Just out of curiosity and ignorance...
If I rip a CD track with lame 3.90 & 320 kbps CBR, will it be inferior in terms of audio quality to the same track with the same bitrate (320 CBR), but ripped with lame 3.98 (or say any higher lame version than 3.90) ?
Or has the lame 3.98 track just a smaller size? Or better quality? Or both?
As said, just out of curiosity and ignorance...
Thanks in advance,
P.
Full Version: lame 3.90 vs. lame 3.98 in terms of quality
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to the same track with the same bitrate (320 CBR)
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Or has the lame 3.98 track just a smaller size?
The same bitrate = the same size.
The bitrate "counts" the number of bits per second. So, since it's cbr and the length (seconds) are the same then the size (bits) of both will be the same aswel.
About the quality it depends on the music you are encoding, but in most of the cases newer lame version will have less artifacts than older ones.
About the quality it depends on the music you are encoding, but in most of the cases newer lame version will have less artifacts than older ones.
At 320 kbps there is a 99+% chance that both will be audibly indistinguishable from the original.
Adding to the rest of the (correct) replies, i'll add:
I guess you mean 3.90.2/3.90.3. If you do mean the original 3.90, then, it is a world below in many aspects.
For 3.90.2/.3, if you use --alt-preset insane (not -b 320, which is not tuned), the difference versus 3.98 -b 320 will exists in several types of artifacts that have been improved during these years ( could search sandpaper noise in these forums). Other than that, there shouldn't be much differences.
I guess you mean 3.90.2/3.90.3. If you do mean the original 3.90, then, it is a world below in many aspects.
For 3.90.2/.3, if you use --alt-preset insane (not -b 320, which is not tuned), the difference versus 3.98 -b 320 will exists in several types of artifacts that have been improved during these years ( could search sandpaper noise in these forums). Other than that, there shouldn't be much differences.
OK thanks all for the replies. It was indeed meant about audio quality, not that much about file size. I found some old mp3s on one of my old HDs, which were ripped with lame 3.90 (i cant remember if i used the --alt-preset insane preset back then) from original cds, and I cant help but think/feel they are slightly inferior regarding sound quality than my current lame 3.98 rips. But I am no expert by any means, so thats why I asked it here.
Quite a simple task actually. Rip again to a lossless format (wav/flac) and make a few test-encodes. ABX each encode against the original to see if you can hear a difference. Although there might exist many problematic samples that an encoder has hard to encode, the probability that you can determine them in normal casual play are very low. It usually needs dedicated listening and training in what you should listen for.
That said, IMHO you should always rip your music to lossless, as you won't suffer from above problems, or will easily be able to convert to a newer better tuned codec
That said, IMHO you should always rip your music to lossless, as you won't suffer from above problems, or will easily be able to convert to a newer better tuned codec
QUOTE (odyssey @ Sep 10 2009, 20:30) 
Quite a simple task actually. Rip again to a lossless format (wav/flac) and make a few test-encodes. ABX each encode against the original to see if you can hear a difference. Although there might exist many problematic samples that an encoder has hard to encode, the probability that you can determine them in normal casual play are very low. It usually needs dedicated listening and training in what you should listen for.
That said, IMHO you should always rip your music to lossless, as you won't suffer from above problems, or will easily be able to convert to a newer better tuned codec
That said, IMHO you should always rip your music to lossless, as you won't suffer from above problems, or will easily be able to convert to a newer better tuned codec
Odyssey, agree on the losless thing, thats what i am doing right now and thats why i bought external HDs for a total of 3 TB. I just came across those 3.90 tracks accidentally -- they are pretty old and will soon be replaced by FLACs.
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