Stereo or Joint Stereo? 44100 or 48000?
 

I've been using LAME and I'm wondering if I should do everything in Stereo, Joint Stereo, or if it depends on the soundtrack.

Obviously, 320 Kbps is what I want for best quality.

Also, should I do everything at 44100 Khz or 48000, or will LAME even let me decide? I'm wondering how that factors into quality, if at all.

Responses will be greatly appreciated.

Joint Stereo is what you call it when the same sound comes out of both speakers. It's like monaural multiplied by two. It sucks, go with stereo. With regards to sample rate, CD audio is recorded at a sample rate of 44.1Khz, so going above that will not bring better results unless you have a source which is better than CD audio.

320Kbps is nothing short of a waste of your disk space. If you're going to go that high, you might as well just start using a lossless format anyway.

As much as I realize 320 Kbps really isn't noticable, I haven't heard anybody tell me the point where it IS noticable. Some people claim "I can hear artifacts all the way up to 256 Kpbs!" I could have sworn somebody on these boards set that, actually. So I just go with 320 because then nobody can argue that this is a perfect rip.

I don't like lossless formats, they're a pain in the ass.

And thanks for the info on the stereo thing, especially since I was actually going to go with joint just because it sounded cooler.

KHz I'll just leave alone.

Wow, that's just plain wrong! Think of Joint Stereo as a way to encode the stereo signal losslessly. It fully preserves the stereo channel information! Full Stereo encodes both channels seperately, thus reducing the effective bitrate of the encoded material. So using the same bitrate, a JS encoded file will sound superior to a FS encoded one.

LAME's method of encoding Joint Stereo is superior to Full Stereo with virtually any material. That's why knowledgable people usually suggest using Joint Stereo over Stereo (at least when encoding with LAME) any time.

The way JS does it is to fully encode one channel while the other is just a difference. Since most music will appear to be the same on most recordings for both channels the difference should be negligible hence less data. JS should use more CPU time to decod,e however that's a non issue nowadays.

The LAME authors have already stated that there is no quality hit when using Joint Stereo. In fact, regular Stereo may sound worse then JS because you are encoding both channels seperatly.

Just use LAME 3.97b2 with the commandline "-V 0 --vbrnew". It's the top quality VBR. You won't hear any difference between that and 320kbps cbr.

And you don't need to worry about the sampling rate, just use whatever the original files were.

I beg your pardon. I was going on what I had read, and I can't apologise enough. Since reading your responses, I've found further information that confirms what you are all saying. It does seem to be a popular myth that Joint Stereo is exactly what I said, but it's not apparently true. I've even conducted my own test.

In answer to your other question, I find that with MP3, 192kbs is about as good as it gets. Above that, I'd rather use lossless.

Good to see that's settled. :)

About the sampling rate (kHz). It's best to keep the same sampling rate when encoding. Meaning, if your source is 32kHz, then encode to 32kHz. If it's 48kHz, then encode to 48kHz.

Or you can take compatibility into consideration. In that case you would want to indiscriminately encode everything at 44.1kHz. That way old/crappy MP3 players can play the MP3's.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/documentation.html
Look under 'INTER-CHANNEL DECORRELATION' -> Joint-Stereo is in general a lossy process. It can be lossless, but only when Middle/Side-Stereo encoding is meaned by Joint-Stereo. In case of the the 'intensify stereo' algorithm phase information is lost during the encoding process. If thats audible is another question, but in general joint-stereo is not lossless.

cya
liquid

LAME is lossy by nature as it is a mp3 encoder. The point is that joint stereo is more effective compression and saves bandwith, yielding higher quality audio. Similarly to how ABR 128kbps will sound better then CBR 128kbps, because you are using more effective compression. It's used in the -V system for a reason.

From the lame docs:

I wasn't talking about LAME, wasn't I? I was talking about the term joint-stereo in general. That LAME/(every other mp3 codec) is always lossy should be clear to everyone that listens to music on his computer.

I didn't doubt this. But you should add that efficiency is decreased if the channels don't correlate much (normally they do).

I know the LAME codec and that it is using the Middle/Side-type of joint-stereo. But this process doesn't introduce artifacts (and therefore is completly reversible). What degrades quality is the quantization of the resulting bitstreams (different amount of bits are allocated).

Wow, lots and lots of replies, thanks all.

It's all right for the mistake, Soluzar, I hadn't started yet. Good thing I came back here before I did. Also, my Ephemeral Fantasia rips are all mystically ending up on Joint Stereo by default so I guess that's a good thing.

And since most everything is 44100 KHz anyway, I guess I don't have to worry about that too much. Although come to think of it, Unreal Tournament is, for some strange reason, in 48000 KHz, now that I look at Winamp. But oh well. Thanks for the help in achieving ultimate quality.

Hmm, well, to be honest, I'd expect a lot of VGM to be at 48kHz these days. And older VGM could be anything. The only thing I'd ever really count on being 44.1kHz is CD-audio.

Looks like you're doing good for yourself.

Hey you are ripping Ephemeral Fantasia too????? I ripped it a while ago. Glad to see someone else likes the music as much as I do because virtually noone knows about the game. If you can make a rip in joint stereo I would be interested in checking it out to hear the difference since mine is just in regular stereo.

I use vbr-new with a forced stereo. First, joint-stereo uses a single channel. Have it at you will, but the other channel only "echo's" the single original one. vbr solves all of the problems with file size compression because it naturally tries to find the suitable bitrate for each second of the song.

Thus, stereo remains higher quality in this case. Also, the truth is, if you use any mixing or effects on your sound card (usually higher quality ones), stereo will end up sounding better because it keeps the original CD's data the same (except compression).

Wrong.

Also wrong.

Well, no. Did you even read the thread? Joint stereo does not use a single channel and seperate stereo is a waste of bandwidth (at least with Lame).

This forum has a Private Message system. Use it.

192k is certainly not as good as it gets. I had a rip of a score in 192k and played it almost every day for a long time. I got used to it and thought it sounded great. I then got the CD and did a re-rip using API. WOW. What a difference! A much better, clearly, fuller sound with more high-end and less artefacts.

192k still cuts off a lot of high end. If it was "as good as it gets", higher bitrate encoding wouldnt have been invented! :)

This could be for many reasons. Rips that you don't do yourself (or that don't have files documenting the settings of the rip) aren't worth basing conclusions off of because:

1) it could be using an old, crappy quality encoder. Blade or Xing, anyone? Good thing mostly no one uses these things anymore.
2) some people got the brilliant idea to re-encode 128Kbps MP3s in a higher bitrate (rather than encoding from the original CD audio), erroneously thinking that it would increase the quality.

Also, I would warn that the psychological effects of seeing -- or just knowing -- that one file has a higher bitrate can influence your opinion about which sounds better. Many people claim to be able to hear a difference between MP3s of different high bitrates, but when they are played audio without knowing the bitrates of each they suddenly are unable to perceive any audible difference between the two.

Moguta,

Great avatar by the way!

I hear what you say, but the basic fact is 192 still cuts off a lot of frequencies, whatever encoder you use.

As for the psychological effects, sure, I guess it happens. But when I did that 320k rip of that score, I knew it sounded better without hearing the old 192k rip. Instantly, I was impressed by its quality. It wasnt until I had played a few tracks that I went back to compare a couple and the differences were apparent.

When you encode to 192kbps with LAME, it uses a lowpass filter of 19.5kHz. Most CD's are mastered with a lowpass at 20.0kHz. I wouldn't call a measly 500Hz a lot. Besides, you can choose to raise the lowpass if you want to - you will probably only be slightly diminishing the quality of the MP3.

Did you make the "old 192k rip" yourself?

But you are assuming all 192k rips have data up to 20Khz. They dont. A lot of dance music I ripped in 192k that was complex with a lot of varying frequencies was cut off at 16khz. It varies, depending on the complexity of the material.

Yes, I did. Again, there wasnt much high-end above 16khz or so.

You're right. The more complex the material, the more distortion and less frequency content you will get at the same bitrate.

Bitrate needs vary depending on the complexity of the material. Which is why VBR should be used rather than CBR.

I just use 320k for everything.