My whole life I've been listening to my music on 22.5 KHz 56/64 kbps because it bore little to no difference to the original for me, and cuz I felt like 128 kbps was unnecessarily wasteful. Everyone was telling me "Man, how can you listen to that garbage, like how do you even make out the words in that song with such shit quality?" I thought they were all being tightasses. But I did realize my choice of quality was in fact atypical, so I asked one of my friends what exactly is the difference between 64 kbps and 128 kbps audio to him. He said that it's pretty hard to explain, but "instead of listening to music with headphones that block out all the surrounding environment audio, try comparing it at a party with real speakers and you'll notice the difference."

Now, recently I was at the Doctor and had my ears done, and now I hear 10x better than before and FINALLY I noticed what I've been missing my whole life... 56 kbps is just so friggin' DULL as if the singers got their mouths stuffed full of cock. It appears before I could not perceive higher frequencies (e.g. 44.1 sounded the same as 22.5 to me) and so I could tolerate lower bitrates and... I dun think you guys need more details, cuz the difference between 64 and 128 would probably be OBVIOUS to you.

So, I've re-downloaded all my songs and now most of 'em are at 80, 96 and 128 kbps but NONE below 80 anymore. However, I wanna know the best, most economic way to encode or re-encode audio to MP3 and keep the quality.

Currently, I use this script:

lame.exe song.wav -o song.mp3 --abr 128 [80-160] -q 0

A couple questions:

1. Does the choice of frequency (e.g. 44100) significantly affect the bitrate, and vice versa? If so, is 48 KHz really necessary for most songs?

2. Are there any disadvantages to using Variable Bit Rate when encoding?

3. Does constantly re-encoding the audio fuck its quality up -- especially when switching from constant bit rate to VBR?

4. How do I know the bit rate I've chosen is ideal? By which I mean: when I encode at 160 kbps and the output MP3 results with an average of 137 kbps, was this the right choice? And when I encode at 144 I get 132. Which of these is the better choice?

Most of the time the average bitrate was lower than the target bitrate set, does it mean I have picked an ideal range? I tried to encode the same song to 64 kbps once and I got 70 kbps instead. My guess is that if the output bitrate was higher than the target, it means more bits were required than chosen and the encoder was straining to keep the quality while at the same time trying to satisfy the demand to be more or less 64 kbps.

5. Is 96 kbps good enough for general purpose audio instead of 128? I notice no difference between the two, with some exceptional fast-paced songs with hypervarying frequency.

Thanks in advance.

%100 fidelity.

Then again, I prefer wav audio to mp3.

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Depends on what speakers you have. If it's a $1000 hi-fi you're wired to then you want a pretty high bitrate, but if it's a shitty pair of normal PC speakers then 128 is fine. I can hear a distinct difference between 128 and 256 on my setup.

No speakers, just headphones.

1. Yes, double the sample rate and the filesize will double. Always use 44.1 or 48kHz unless you want to listen to pure poo.

2. Put simply, no.

3. Yes, re-encoding/transcoding any lossy format(s) will reduce the quality. There's no point re-encoding a file from CBR to VBR as it's not going to sound better, and likely going to sound worse.

4. If it sounds good, and the file isn't too large, then you've made a good choice. Try using VBR instead of ABR, it should give better results.

This sets a minimum bitrate of 128, maximum of 256. For smaller files reduce the maximum bitrate to something like 192

5. If you can't tell the difference then yes it's fine. Personally I think it's going to sound horrible.


Again, avoid re-encoding/transcoding if possible. If you really have to do it for whatever reason encode the files with a higher bitrate than the source

I think the best way of choosing a good bitrate is to encode the same track from a CD in several different bitrates and listen to them. Choose the one which is acceptable for your ears. 128kbps sounds like ass to me but some people with a different setup may think it's perfectly acceptable.

Yeah, I fucked up by downloading all my songs at 128, and then buying a decent pair of 5.1 speakers.
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ogg vorbis q6 preferably

otherwise lame ~192kbps

Holy shit! 128 kbps minimum? 96 sounds horrible? What the fuck, y'all are autistic mofos!

...especially you.

WAV > MP3? Are you fuckin' serious?

Well why would I bother with anything less? I can tell the difference in a lot of songs and hard drive space is not a concern like it used to be. I know people with massive collections entirely encoded in FLAC

Not all songs bear identical content that needs the same bit rate, some are more redundant than others and can be encoded in 32 with slight audible loss in quality. I got a couple examples but don't feel like draggin' 'em outta my locked drive.

For now, try:

000123912301239.Rar by Bigupload.Com

Seriously, is there a difference? When I encoded it on ABR 192 the final output was 136 cuz it's so goddamn redundant. This proves that going over 128 is pointless.

Please tell me you can hear the difference between those two songs in that rar archive! The one encoded in 64 really does sound bad, the bass is boomy and the higher frequencies are either lost or muddled together. There's no point doing a double blind test as the difference is clear.

What headphones/speakers are you listening to your music through?

No difference... if I concentrate really hard I notice the "echo" is somewhat gone and the intermediate cymbal percussion not as audible.

"Genius" headset with surround-sound simulation and an analog volume control.

No offence, but I think something is still up with your hearing. (or your headphones ). There's a clear difference between the two, everything is less defined and muffled like it's being played down a phone line.

I have a feeling the surround sound simulation may also be distorting your sound.

I can hear a difference between 128k and a 320k song quite well - I'm surprised you can't.

Oh shit, the 64 kbps one was at 24 KHz... I meant it to stay at 44.1. That's why it sounded different.

I can switch it off anytime, but I usually keep it on cuz it fixes the dullness. If anything, it enhances the audio, no distortion.

Well thats one of the few songs I listen on 64, most are at 128 and they obviously would sound different on 64, except this one. Nobody I know uses 320, 90% of music on Kazaa is encoded at 128 bitrate.

In addition, you don't hear nobody complainin' about the 64k mono default on YouTube videos.

Every song I have is 320.
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†Jesus†

People don't generally use YouTube for listening to music. Unless you have shitty speakers/are tone deaf. 64k is more than enough to hear the crunch when a skater's head hits the ground but for music it's junk.

i encode average bitrate of 200. anything under 160 usually sounds like complete shit and is deleted.

to those who can't tell, count yourselves lucky or get better speakers/headphones. i don't use kazaa/bearshare/whatever for that simple reason; most of the stuff is encoded at far too low a bitrate to be enjoyable to listen to.

I just searched a couple popular music vids right now on YouTube and each of 'em averaged a million views.

In addition to 64k, you do realize that MP3 is outdated as hell (1987) and not the most economic format today. It only makes one pass and only relies on psychoacoustics and bit-masking to achieve the compression. Try WMA, I dunno the specs but I believe it employs a multipass technique when encoding the fuckers to detect repeating parts of the song. The result: 64 kbps stereo with quality as high as a 128+ kbps MP3.

I still stick to MP3, I dunno why. I'm just an asshole like that.