From: black.hole.4.spam{at}gmail.com (Don Hills)

In article , "Gary Britt"
 wrote:
>Thanks, I'll take a look at CDex.

Listen very carefully, I will say this only once...

Don't use CBR (Constant Bit Rate) encoding. At low rates you get the nasty
Procrustean effects, at high rates you waste space to no advantage much of
the time.

Instead, use VBR (Variable Bit Rate). Instead of cutting the quality to fit
the bitrate, VBR adjusts the bitrate between the 32Kb and 320Kb limits to
maintain a given quality level.

Pick an encoder that does VBR (I use LAME), and audition the various
quality settings. For my purposes, I picked LAME's "quality level
2" setting. The resulting files are about 5 to 10 percent larger than
128Kb CBR, but it is instructive to play them with an MP3 player (or
external utility) that displays the instantaneous bitrate in real time.
Apart from the number of times per second it hits 320Kb, the most
interesting part for me is what causes it to peak. The bit rate peaks most
often on what I consider quite soft transients, not on massive hits or
overall loudness. To understand how this can happen, consider a solo piano,
where there is no surrounding information to mask the beginning of each
note so it must be encoded at the maximum bitrate. Much of a piano's sound
character is embodied in the transient created as the hammer strikes the
string, and it will be lost at too low a bitrate.

--
Don Hills    (dmhills at attglobaldotnet)     Wellington, New Zealand
"New interface closely resembles Presentation Manager,
 preparing you for the wonders of OS/2!"
    -- Advertisement on the box for Microsoft Windows 2.11 for 286

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