MP3 VBR and CBR Question

Master Yoda · 20th March 2004, 02:58

A quick question, why are people ripping mp3s to vbr now rather thatn cbr ?? as i always rip cds, or vinyl to cbr 192 down to the fact everywhere says 192 is cd quality ??

KpeX · 20th March 2004, 03:14

VBR is higher quality than CBR at any bitrate, since it intelligently assigns lower and higher bitrates as needed by the differences in the sound signal. Theoreitcally speaking, MP3 is not CD quality at any bitrate.

LnxPeng · 23rd March 2004, 04:40

If you switch to abr 192 (which is a happy compromise between vbr and cbr) you might be amazed at the quality hike. If you have the ability to watch LAME output, some of the frames will be as low as 32 kbps if it is a simple frame. Then some of the frames will reach 320 kbps, giving it a higher quality overall. The only benefit to CBR is decoder complexity, and now that is almost never an issue.

Slogra · 23rd March 2004, 12:22

You might wanna compare it to and CBR video and VBR video.
CBR video will only look good in low action scenes, but it will look absolutely horrible at high action scenes, there will be large block all over the place.
Now with VBR video it can shave off some bits from the low action scenes and use those at high action scenes. So both will look good.

192kbps CBR mp3 is just not efficient and it sounds not as good as VBR mp3.

So use Lame --alt-preset standard (very, very high quality)
or Lame --alt-preset medium (good quality, probably better than 192kbps CBR and smaller too. This one only works in newer version of Lame).

You also might wanna check KpeX's link in his signature.

28th March 2004, 19:53

VBR is always better than CBR. Period.

Regards.

20th March 2004, 02:58	#1 \| Link
Master Yoda Registered User Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Somewhere On This Planet Posts: 734	MP3 VBR and CBR Question A quick question, why are people ripping mp3s to vbr now rather thatn cbr ?? as i always rip cds, or vinyl to cbr 192 down to the fact everywhere says 192 is cd quality ??

20th March 2004, 03:14	#2 \| Link
KpeX Registered User Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Great Lakes, USA Posts: 1,433	VBR is higher quality than CBR at any bitrate, since it intelligently assigns lower and higher bitrates as needed by the differences in the sound signal. Theoreitcally speaking, MP3 is not CD quality at any bitrate. __________________ KpeX Audio FAQs: General \| BeSweet \| SVCD/MP2 \| MP3 \| Vorbis \| AC3 \| DTS \| AAC Linux Audio/Video FAQ

23rd March 2004, 12:22	#4 \| Link
Slogra Registered User Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Region 2 Posts: 428	You might wanna compare it to and CBR video and VBR video. CBR video will only look good in low action scenes, but it will look absolutely horrible at high action scenes, there will be large block all over the place. Now with VBR video it can shave off some bits from the low action scenes and use those at high action scenes. So both will look good. 192kbps CBR mp3 is just not efficient and it sounds not as good as VBR mp3. So use Lame --alt-preset standard (very, very high quality) or Lame --alt-preset medium (good quality, probably better than 192kbps CBR and smaller too. This one only works in newer version of Lame). You also might wanna check KpeX's link in his signature. Last edited by Slogra; 23rd March 2004 at 12:24.

28th March 2004, 19:53	#5 \| Link
ukb007 Guest Posts: n/a	The bottomline: VBR is always better than CBR. Period. Regards.

23rd March 2004, 04:40	#3 \| Link
LnxPeng audio programmer @ random Join Date: Feb 2003 Posts: 29	If you switch to abr 192 (which is a happy compromise between vbr and cbr) you might be amazed at the quality hike. If you have the ability to watch LAME output, some of the frames will be as low as 32 kbps if it is a simple frame. Then some of the frames will reach 320 kbps, giving it a higher quality overall. The only benefit to CBR is decoder complexity, and now that is almost never an issue.