Hi !

I got :
- a 8.20Mo MP3 file encoded in 256kbps
- a 7.65Mo MP3 file encoded in VBR

Which one has the best audio quality please ? It's the same song, same length !

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/show.php/act/...t/ST/f/15/t/203

But I don't know which settings were used for the VBR file.

Is it possible that the smaller file (7.65Mo) has better audio quality than the greater file (8.20Mo) ?

Up to which percentage of the file size, VBR is same or better than a 256kbps encoding ?

And thanks for the URL Dibrom !

See if the VBR one spikes to 320k a lot in EncSpot. That's what VBR is good for, using stuff like 224k on the normal parts, 160k on the soft, and spiking to 320k when needed. 256k in theory wouldn't be as good since where 320k would be needed it wouldn't be there. --alt preset extreme should compare though. Were you using --alt preset standard?

I made the calculation : the VBR file I have is 15% smaller than the other one. But I haven't encoded it myself Differenciam, otherwise I would already know the good answer.

I think I will keep the small one and get ride of the other one. Thank you for your help.

--alt-preset standard would compare as well. --alt-preset extreme doesn't really offer much of an advantage over --alt-preset standard.

Listen to both files, from start to end. One single glitch can make the decision for you.

I just took a complicated piece of music I had, a good piece of music from a game soundtrack, and extreme made quite a difference. The amount of 320k went from 3 to 40


--alt preset standard

http://images2.dmusic.com/users/t/h/a/thasp/7535.png

--alt preset extreme

http://images2.dmusic.com/users/t/h/a/thasp/7536.png


edit: IMG -> URL ... pics too big. Think about the 56k users.

shouldn't it be --alt-preset standard -Z now?

But did you actually hear a difference?

Nope(ABXing) But the point was extreme makes more 320k than standard in some cases, and if the VBR was a lot 320k, than it had an advantage over the 256k one.

Anyway, why not have the starter of this thread use EncSpot to see how much 320k was in the song? If it's practically nothing then go with the 256k(for better quality), if there's 3 or more go with the VBR one...