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What MP3 encoder you using?

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Good call, Deek. 387RHDM enables careful noise shaping using the -Y switch. I can't wait until 388 goes beta 🙂
 
Going off everyone's recommendation I picked up CDEX. It's ok, but it doesn't like my CDRom yet. I won't throw in all the adaptec ASPI whatevers because they do a great job of fudging my burner for everything else. Sooo, at least I have musicmatch to rip to a wav.

But I did the VBR 4 ranging from 128kbs->224kbps and I'm pretty impressed. What's REALLY amazing is that of course before it was about 1 meg a minute.. Now with the vbr it's about 6 megs for a 5 minute song. Much smaller than straight out 192/256 and probably sounds as good/better.
 
A guy on the local hardware site compared two mp3s, coded with Fraunhofer and LAME codec respectively. After comparing the spectral composition of the two mp3s with Cool Edit 2000 he apparently found out the codec cuts (filters out) all frequencies over 16 kHz, while Fraunhofer codec doesn't (up to 20 kHz). Young people shouldn't have problems hearing the frequencies up to 18 kHz (or even 20 kHz), so this means the mp3s coded with LAME are crippled in higher freq range. Any comments on this?
 
yeah,
that was the article I was talking about earlier. that was a long time ago and apparently LAME is the best right now. I guess it's pretty true, the movies I make using LAME sound better than the Fraunhauffer ones. But then again, who knows. I need to see an article that compares the two and was done recently.
 


<< mp3s coded with LAME are crippled in higher freq range >>

Yeah, if it is 1998..... That was true many versions ago, but is not the case any more.

See the comprehensive information presented at this site. A lot of good info here.

And search these forums - the &quot;best&quot; encoder has been debated ad nauseum, there are probably hundreds of posts on this very topic.
 
Hey Workin, I see you're using the CDEX front end. I am using EAC front and Lame back. Is there a significant advantage in the CDEX for the front end? I'm very new at this and would appreciate some guidance.
 
I'm using EAC 0.9b7 + Lame 3.87.

I tested various encoders, like MusicMatch, Real, Xing, Nero, etc. Lame is amazing when you want quality. Many people are using MusicMatch Jukebox because it's a nice player. But, for testing, I encoded a song with MMJB6 using CBR 256kbps. Than I converted the mp3 file from MMJB to 192CBR using RazorLame, than I analyzed both files with CoolEdit 2000. The spectrums showed that the quality was the same.
In Napster you can get 320kbps musics that has the same quality of a MP3 160kbps encoded with Lame. It's ridiculous. People waste much space thinking that they've the best possible quality, but they were wrong.

Lame is very quickly when you don't use J-Stero option or VBR. You can obtain very good quality (until 20khz) and good speed using 256kbps Stereo and speed option. I encode a 4min song in 23s (41s with quality option) using my Athlon 650MHz@682MHz. The quality wasn't much different, much better than other enconders. But I recomend the quality option with J-Stereo. VBR is a good option, too.

Don't use AudioCatalyst, RealJukebox or other Xing Encoder.
MusicMatch Jukebox isn't the worst but it's has only acceptable quality.

If you want the real CD quality use Lame and read the articles of this site: http://www.r3mix.net/
Use EAC or CDex.
Who loves AudioCatalyst can use Audiograbber + Lame DLL. But Audiograbber isn't free neither as good as EAC.
 


<< Lame is very quickly when you don't use J-Stero option or VBR >>

That may be true but J-stereo and VBR almost always give higher quality and smaller file size.

mariner - I use CDEX instead of EAC because I like the user interface better than EAC, and CDEX seems to work better on my system and also seems to better integrate hooks to LAME. I tried EAC a few times when I got errors ripping a CD using CDEX, but it didn't do any better than CDEX. The errors still occured, but the ripping was painfully slow. So slow ripping + still have errors = no go for EAC for me. But I still keep it around, because it's good to have options.
 
Any way to get MMJB to use Lame? Damn would that make my day since I do still have to use it to rip in windows 2000.
 
Shudder, any way you can use EAC or CDEX? Seems everyone uses MJ to play music so also to rip/compress. I use EAC linked to Lame right now (trying CDEX later). I use Winamp to play. Winamp is very good.
 
Haven't tried EAC yet, but CDEX doesn't want to work. I will NOT put in the ASPI dll's because having CloneCD work correctly is much more important to me. Adaptec's damn drivers do a good job of messing up my system.

Anyway, I can rip with others, I can encode with cdex.. better than nothing I suppose, even if it's just one extra step.
 
Shudder, you could try the native Win32 interface instead of the ASPI. I'm running win2k and can use either setting.
 
mariner--but, what about the correspondence we received that indicated vbr could be problematic as far as compatibility with some players?
--Randy
 
Geez, RPJ; pick, Pick, PICK 🙂

Yeah, I remember something about that 🙂 But since vbr plays fine on my puter .....

I figure that if we 'backup' our CD's by just copying them - wav to wav, (and I think we should do this as a safety factor) then we'll always have an 'original' to rip from. Then we could just compress at what ever bitrate we wanted; variable or constant.

But I guess there are those that want to convert everything to mp3. They have to decide if they want constant bitrate that is compatiable with a lot of stuff now; or if they want vbr which evidently is better and 'may be' compatible with more players in the future (assuming the mp3 format wins the compression battle). Does that sound reasonable??

Sorry for kinda going OT here. I still prefer EAC/Lame 😛
 
the best codec is LAME (3.88alpha), and the best ripping software is AudioGrabber 1.70 release 2 (that is not proven, but i like it best), it supports VBR, normalizing, batch and all other good stuff. RazorLame is handy too.
 
Ok.. this is weird.

I recently reformatted because I got a new video card, now all of a sudden CDEX works just fine 🙂

hey, I'll take it.
 
hehe..Napster...seems to do it automatically...I name the song and hey presto there it is......hmm... 😉
 
Yes gtd 2000, but the quality is very iffy. I have myself used the nap and about 20% of the tunes I got at 128 bitrate had audible problems. And, there aren't enough selections at 160-192. I would go for a subscription service if the product had some type of quality control and a guarantee that the donor would be online until my current download finished. 80% isn't a good quality number. Well, maybe for some manufacturers, but not for me.

Well, ahfung, have we butchered your thread yet 🙂 Did you get the recommendations you needed?

It ain't an encoder but SatCP has posted the new tutorial for EAC ver prebeta 9
here. It's a good read even if you use another ripper. Lotsa good info and explanations!

mariner
 
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