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VBR vs. CBR

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Woody06

Senior member
I'm really picky about my music and run large speakers so quality is important to me, i was just wondering which was better between VRB at 80% and CBR at 192 kbps. I'm trying to find a standard for recording my music but can't decide.
 
Why only 192kbps?

Cuase ive been told that anything more is just overkill and that there's really no difference, should i go with 320? Or is that just a useless waste of space? Why only 192kbps?
 
Originally posted by: Woody06
Why only 192kbps?

Cuase ive been told that anything more is just overkill and that there's really no difference, should i go with 320? Or is that just a useless waste of space? Why only 192kbps?
Click to expand...

I use VBR with alt preset extreme. It is a higher quality preset that takes a bit of space, but worth it to me.
 
I used to always have problems burning VBR's back to cd... is this still an issue?
 
Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
VBR is a style of encoding, there should be no problem burning it....
Click to expand...

yea for some reason, whenever i used to burn VBR's to cd it would always f-up the track
 
Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
VBR is a style of encoding, there should be no problem burning it....
Click to expand...

yea for some reason, whenever i used to burn VBR's to cd it would always f-up the track
 
Originally posted by: aphex
Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
VBR is a style of encoding, there should be no problem burning it....
Click to expand...

yea for some reason, whenever i used to burn VBR's to cd it would always f-up the track
Click to expand...

buy better CD-Rs, some brands are just terrible. IE maxell.
 
hmmmm, never thought of that... who do ya reccomend? I've tended to stick with imation blacks and memorex colors.
 
Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
Verbatim work great for me, never had problems with them. Fujifilm make some good ones too. I am not too picky
Click to expand...

Man i use to love my verbatim blues 😀
 
What software did you use to burn the MP3 tracks back to CD audio? Most likely, its (embedded) MP3 decoder wasn't any good. For example, if Winamp can play the VBR MP3 stream fine, then it can write it out to a .WAV file just fine. Just about any CD burning utility on the planet can adequately burn .WAV files to CD audio (in other words, as long as its decoded properly, there shouldn't be any problems). I never go from MP3 to CD audio, but I imagine this manual (file by file) method is no longer practiced.

As far as CDRs go, I can't speak for which brands are best for picky stereo CD players. But Taiyo Yuden CDRs are widely considered the best CDRs readily available. These are commonly rebranded for sale in retail channels; just about every other weekend you'll see a good deal on FujiFilm TY CDRs. Most of us regulars in the Hot Deals forum will gladly pay the nominal price for FujiFilm CDR media after rebate, rather than pick up spindles of cheap brand X. Personally, I'll selectively buy spindles of the free after rebate CDRs from time to time because I don't always need high-quality media.

Using high quality media is definitely recommended for archival purposes (i.e. anything you want to reliably last for years). Final comment: note that in almost all cases, any media will burn without errors on contemporary CD-RW drives. However, there is test equipment that can assess the actual quality of the media itself; Taiyo Yuden blanks are amongst the best when it comes to the underlying error rate of the media. Since there's error correction built-in, cheap media still works for most uses, but it may not stand the test of time and wear.

As for the original question, CBR 320 is probably a waste of bits. LAME's highest quality VBR should give very good quality for the bits. Otherwise, if you were insanely quality-sensitive, then you wouldn't be choosing a lossy encoding format.
 
Originally posted by: aphex
What program do you guys use? EAC?
Click to expand...
EAC to rip, LAME (through RazorLAME) to encode at --aps.

I don't think I've ever had a problem burning VBR mp3s to CD. And I've used some cheap-o CDs to do so, as well.
 
the CDR should not make a difference when burning vbr mp3s to audio disc

there has to be some error when the burning softare decoding on the fly of mp3s > WAV and then writing it, especially so at high speed burns .. 40x ...
many users claim errors burning audio cds that fast and some still burn at a max of 4x.

If you have problems, decode mp3 to wav and burn. If still have problems, burn slower.
 
CBR overall will be much better than VBR, VBR is just smaller.

I used to do CBR at 320kbps, because I just can't get used to VBR at all. On very revealing equipment, it seems to me as if there's a veil on some parts, and not on others, especially at the beginning of a song.
 
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