LAME settings for MONO mp3 soundtracks

[elgan123]

Recently I tried to rip The Shining and Full Metal Jacket and found that both of these DVDs have only 192kbps MONO AC3 tracks!!

I was able to encode approx 68 kbps VBR MONO MP3s which sound comparable to the original. Sorry I don't have the command line entry but my settings were approximately:
low 48, high 256, VBR, q=7 no filters

Just curious to see what you guys think are optimal settings for MONO soundtracks.

Also, is there an advantage to encoding an mp3 audio track at a bitrate higher than the bitrate of the AC3? ie. I often use an upper limit of 256 or even 320 kbps mp3 with 192kbps AC3.

Thanks.

[phreak404]

I often just encode all AC3 with the general lame --r3mix (or sometimes a change on that with -v2 -b 32) and LAME chooses an appropriate bitrate itself. (i.e. 103 kbps avg for Mono tracks in JointStereo)

[pacohaas]

Even for a mono track encoded to a joint stereo mp3, you could stand to save 30 or 40 MB by encoding to a mono mp3 instead. If you're aiming at a single CD rip, then this is probably a good idea.

I gathered this information by encoding Dr. No (the first James Bond film) with -mj and again with -mm, the second resulting in a 35MB smaller file even though LAME showed that less than 0.001% of the file was encoded with stereo information.

[Simplet]

I'm facing a little problem with an old movie that is, like yours, also coming with a mono Dolby soundtrack.

Could you give me the switches you used with Azid to get a mono Wav file before encoding your mono Mp3's ?

Thanks alot.

[Slogra]

How about buying/renting the 5.1 versions of these movies. I've got the shining in 5.1. Which sounds really great btw.

[elgan123]

@Simplet

You can use something like:

-z1 -b1 -c normal -d1/0 --maximize

with Azid 1.8 to get a normalized, mono wave.

@ Slogra

That's great to hear but I'm a little annoyed. You remember the Kubrick box-set that came out a while ago? Well, every movie in there has mono sound.

[Slogra]

I think the whole box has been re-released in 2001, which is digitally restored and remastered. :(