Hi everyone!
Okay, had quite a few messages about VBR and various settings ot use
after some recent discussions on this list so I've knocked up a few
notes thanks to the help of my friend who is an audio engineer by trade
so he should know what he's talking about here, I've quoted from him on
this list before when we had the discussion on VBR bit rates.
We're going to deal specifically here with the "lame-enc.dll" encoder
which is handled by many pieces of software including Total Recorder and
easy CD Extractor however many pieces of software - including the titles
mentioned - do not for whatever reason offer the full functionality of
the library which is a pity so for best results it is recommended that
you use something like Exact Audio Copy with lame.exe which will accept
full and customisable LAME command lines but that discussion is for a
different thread <smile>.
So to the basics, go into the configuration screen for your format and
select VBR, where possible select the "Old VBR" method rather than the
new, old is slower but gives better quality results whereas new is
faster but quality isn't quite as good, great for getting jobs out the
door quickly though. Next set minimum and maximum bit rates, set
minimum as low and maximum as high as can be obtained, Total Recorder
and Easy CD Extractor only let you set minimum bit rates to 32K, library
will go as low as 8k, hence my mention of the command line earlier to
get those extra tweaks.
Next select joint stereo, Easy CD Extractor allows you to select this
but Total Recorder does not so you'll have to rely on the stereo setting.
Turn all filtering and auto sampling off and select a sampling rate of
44.1KHZ, will work well for most jobs including CD'S.
Next set absolute quality to the highest setting you can get, only 4
settings offered in Easy CD Extractor and 5 in Total Recorder and these
do not make any reference to the actual quality setting of the encoder
which has 10 quality settings so use the highest available but note that
you'll get better results from a command line.
Next set VBR settings and remember the lower the number here the better
the quality, 5 should do for music but you could try 3 if you're really
fussy, if you do anything lower than may as well use "lossless"
compression and throw MP3 out the window. 6 or 7 should do very well
for general audio such as spoken material, documentaries, talking books
and the like.
So that should be about it I think, remember in all these pieces of
software you can save different settings to different files to enable
you to switch between them depending on the jobs you're doing.
Cheers
--
Dane Trethowan
From Melton Victoria Australia
mailto:"grtd...@internode.on.net
Phone United Kingdom
02032874641
Phone Australia
:0390058589
Phone United States
:8159261869
Fax (+61 3) 9743 7954
Mobile/SMS +61 438 571201
MSN grtd...@dane-trethowan.net
skype:grtdane12
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/grtdane
blog: http://www.grtdane.wordpress.com
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