Is Joint Stereo encoding bad?

[Schadenfroh]

I have not really tested my music collection, i am redoing it and i am half way thru and i just realized that my ripper was set to "Joint Stereo" rather than normal Stereo.... Did i just waste all my time?

 

[0roo0roo]

its fine. compressed is compressed. bitrate matters more

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
its fine. compressed is compressed. bitrate matters more

using 320 bitrate

 

[xtknight]

Hmm...unfortunately you may want to redo it in regular stereo mode. Well I would anyway, but that's just me. The joint stereo takes similarities between both channels in combines them into a "pseudo" compressed channel.

 

[Continuity28]

I'd redo it as Stereo for quality.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Thanks... also one more question. I notice that in LAME i have an option for quality in relation to Q5, Q2, Q0, Q9, etc. It says that the lower the Q, the higher the quality, should i worry about any issues with MP3 players if i alter it from default? Set at 5, would i really notice any difference since it is already at 320bit if i set it to Q2 or Q0?

 

[Continuity28]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Thanks... also one more question. I notice that in LAME i have an option for quality in relation to Q5, Q2, Q0, Q9, etc. It says that the lower the Q, the higher the quality, should i worry about any issues with MP3 players if i alter it from default? Set at 5, would i really notice any difference since it is already at 320bit if i set it to Q2 or Q0?

It doesn't matter as far as the player is concerned I don't think, but filesizes will vary greatly depending on what mode you choose. The main aspect of mp3 is that it cuts out certain parts of the audio spectrum that humans are less likely (but still able) to hear. If you change the quality mode, you are telling LAME to keep that part of the spectrum in (or whatever the mode in particular adjusts), it will sound better, but likely be 3 times the size.

I'd stick with the default at any rate. As long as its at 320kbps it won't make that much of a difference.

 

[Continuity28]

Wait ignore all that, I was thinking of a different feature.

Are oyu talking about "Noise Shaping" and then modes Q0 - Q9?

If you are, I think you need to be the judge of how they sound, some will be more distorted and some will be chirpy, etc. Leave it at default for one pass, then try another in one direction or the other to see which you like better... or just leave it.

 

[Schadenfroh]

thanks, Continuity28

 

[Goi]

I was under the impression that JS is actually better than regular stereo. There are quite a few discussions of this in hydrogenaudio I think, at least a while ago, and the concensus had been that JS sounds better while not taking up as much data.