What Min And Max VBR To Use For Music

[Master Yoda]

I use dbpoweramps auxiliary input to record mixs from minidisc to mp3 or vinyl to mp3.Now i normal use 192kbps for the bitrate and have been very pleased with the audio quality i have been getting.Dbpoweramp use's lame to encode to mp3, now as vbr is meant to give better audio quality than 192kbps i am thinking of encoding to vbr.But i dont know what min and max to use to give me a similar file size as what 192kbps gives.What min and max to you guys recommend??

Thanks

[Slogra]

Just use --alt-preset standard

It's the only mp3 setting you'll ever need (unless you need a lower bitrate). It uses 128 to 320kbps and is tweaked for best quality by the people who made lame (read: the people who know most about it) and it is tested by the people with the best ears.

The thing with VBR is of course that it uses a variable bitrate, so you can't predict what the exact bitrate of an mp3 will be. It usually is around 190kbps.
But when sound is simple to encode it might drop to 128kbps and when it's hard to encode it might go up to 250kbps.

[Master Yoda]

Thanks, but i cant use --alt-preset standard as in dbpoweramp there just a slider.So i slide one to the min and one to the max i want. Oh and should i be encoding music as stereo or joint stereo?

[Master Yoda]

Just looking at a help file for dbpoweramp and im having a look at the encoding settings.Under compression settings > advanced theres a setting called alt preset standard which uses vbr and joint stereo.Now im guessing that using this setting is the same as --alt-preset standard.