Best Bit Rate for Better sound

I’m new to the iTunes/iPod thing. A friend told me that he re-sets the bit rate from the default of 128 kpbs to the top of 320 kbps for better quality. [He plays everything off of his computer which is wired to speakers throughout his house and does not travel or drive much so hardly uses his iPod.] I played around a tad with the various rates on the same album and found that a fairly short one used 34.9 MB at 128 kbps, 52.1 MB at 192 kbps, 60.8 MB at 224 kbps and 86.6 MB at 340 kbps. Another friend told me that he noticed a big difference when he played a song off his iPod through his several thousand dollar system if it was imported at 128 kbps. While hard disc space is cheap and I would simply opt for the higher quality setting, the iPods are not so big when one almost triples the file size.
I tried to figure out what the max bit rates in the CDs are so that could guide the max import rate, but I could not and that question may make no sense at all anyway.
What is the max that a human can notice the difference at and what have folks found to be the best balance between sound quality and storage space?
Thanks for your help.
PC Windows XP

Monty, this is really going to be up to your ears to decide. All I can tell you is my experience during the 2+ years of owning an iPod. I initially thought AAC @ 128 was satisfactory. I then started experimenting with various bitrates, but kept the AAC format. I decided that 192 was a discernible improvement over the 128. Not to go into a lot of detail, but I, quite by accident, had one album download at 256 & thought, "Wow, this is unbelievably better sound, even over inexpensive computer speakers." At that point, I started importing everything in AAC @ 256 VBR which I feel is pretty darn close to CD quality sound. I have a 60GB iPod that I'm willing to sacrifice some capacity in order to ensure the best audio quality I can. This is also why I do not buy frequently from the iTunes store as I do not feel the 128 downloads are the best quality. I buy & my own CD's, now, to insure good quality. I will by the occasional song from the store when I do not care to buy the whole CD. Hope this helps!

Similar Messages

The best Bit rate for a 1 hour film

Hi all
Just a quick question does anyone know the best bit rate to use to compress a 1 hour film. I want the best quality possible
Any advice would be gratfully recieved
Thanks

If you're using Compressor and it's a one hour encode then use the CBR setting with a bit rate of 6 or 6.5. Also encode your audio to the industry standard .ac3 file format. The combination of audio and video bitrate is always a compromise between quality and having consumer DVD players stalling or choking because the combined birate is too high.
However, the media content you're encoding will always determine how you should encode: video with lots of fast action needs the VBR setting, whereas the CBR setting can be used when there is little action. But generally, the CBR setting in Compressor will do an okay job with project durations of one hour or less, regardless of the action in your video.
Hope this helps.
- Don

Best bit rate for blu rays with Toast 11

I'm burning a ProRes422 (uncompressed @ 18GB) movie to blu-ray using Toast 11 Titanium. The maximum bit rate is 9.0 Mbps. Is this sufficient? It seems very low...
Compressor has never worked properly with burning a blu-ray (I know there are more custom settings). I would use this but have had no luck, the blu-ray never burns properly only had luck with Toast.

Thanks for the info, somehow I've had to pay extra for the blu-ray plug in to burn a blu-ray at 26Mbps.
Now I need to figure out why the audio now is 'cracking' on the deeper parts of the soundtrack. The audio is set to PCM 96kHz 24 bit just like the original Pro Res file. In the original it does not 'peak' or 'distort' on the deeper parts of the soundtrack when playing in Quicktime, not sure what is happening to the audio after being burned to blu-ray. I might have to post in Soundtrack to get some feedback, any suggestions?

Best bit rate for

i was wondering because i have most of my stuff encoded at 92.kbps will encodeing it at 320 sound betteror not make a differnce? i dont mind if file size is bigger if it sounds better..

It all depends on your ears. How good you are at picking out artifacts will determine what bitrate you can stomach. Some people would rather dri've ice picks into their ears than listen to a track encoded at anything less than 92kbps; others can't tell the difference between 64kbps WMA and the original CD. If 92 sounds good enough to you, by all means stick with it. It's your music and your DAP. Otherwise experiment with encoding tracks at higher bitrates and compare them with a 92kbps song- maybe a 224, a 256, and a 320. It helps me to base my comparison off different rips of the same track, and zero in on sections where the music is really "busy," since this is where you'd be most likely to pick out flaws. If you can't tell any difference, count yourself lucky, and save yourself a whole lot of hard dri've space. If you can, pat yourself on the back and call yourself an audiophile, I guess.

***Best Bit Rate To Use For The Zen V Plus 8GB

I've got the zen v plus (8gb) and I was just wondering what is the best bit rate to use, I've currently got ,32 tracks at "64kbps wma" on my zen micro(6gb) and I'm getting a bit tempted to enhance the quality of the tracks (to maybe 96kbps wma), but I don't want the space on my 8gb v plus to be consumed quickly.
Thanx if anyone could give me any ideas

96 kbps? If you want good sound and are using high quality headphones I would suggest using 256 kb
ps.
I use 256 kbps mp3 on my mp3 player. I tried 320 kbps and could not hear a difference between it and 256 kbps on my mp3 player. I could hear the difference between 92 kbps and 256 kb
ps.
I don't use WMA since WMA uses more battery power and gives you less run time per charge. It isn't a contest to see how many songs can be crammed into the player, but it is instead about enjoying the music. What good is having hundreds of hours of music crammed into a player if the battery life is 5 hours or less?

Best average bit rate & max bit rate for DVDs playing on laptops...

I encode and burn many DVDs for use in regular DVD players....usually in the half hour range and have been encoding with Compressor 3 using these specs:
6.6 average bit rate
7.8 max bit rate
Those same DVDs, which play flawlessly in the DVD players, can occasionally hiccup when played from a laptop. Should I change the max bit rate from 7.8 to 7.7. or lower? Is that the biggest part of the equasion that may affect a laptop's ability to play without choking?
Many thanks,
John

Thanks for all your help, David S, but the point is
that I have tried many different bit rates, from 4.0
to 7.0, and I don't have time to waste all day trying
different bit rates for an 8-minute project.
My main question is: Why would it work fine on all
of my other short projects, including the 8-minute
one, and then when I cut out 20 seconds of that same
project, it starts screwing up!?!
I am going to try trashing my preferences. It is
starting to seem like a corrupt pref file to me.
It turned out to be a corrupt pref file, as I thought. Thanks for your many, many questions, David S.

What is the best scrubbing rate for youtube?

what is the best scrubbing rate for youtube?

Ummm... can you elaborate? why do you think a 1-pass would be better? Before i go through another 5 - 6 hours of compression, I would like to understand a little bit better... 2 0r 3 word answers aren't going to help me at all. Sorry.
Lisa <
You have about three thousand pages of manuals, why do you think we can shrink that information down? Compression is really difficult to understand and to control. There are dozens of Web sites you can explore or you could look at amazon.com and buy yourself some training systems. If you are going to be doing a lot of compression and encoding, you will learn it the same way everyone else does, slowly. It's often easier and faster and therefore cheaper to pay a service to do your encoding. Spend a few hours reading the Compressor forum.
Consider that you don't need to waste mjuch time rendering entire projects. Just assemble a short collection of problem scenes and use different settings till you get something you like. To confuse things even further, encoding results are totally subjective and a terrible compromise. You give up image quality to save time encoding or to gain program length. Youinvest tons of set up and encoding time to gain control the image quality. And you must process the audio separately to get the best use of your delivery media's capacity.
bogiesan

Suggestions for bit rate for books on cd

Hi
I'm trying to clear some room on my ipod. Thus far I've been importing everything at 192. I'm hoping to reimport some of the books on cd that I've put on and would like some suggestions as to how low of a bit rate I can use without affecting sound quality too much (I tried 96 and really couldn't tell the difference).
Thanks
Evelyn

Hi, Evelyn.
For spoken word recordings, 32 kbps is generally considered an acceptable setting.
And, for what it's worth, that's the Bit Rate for Audiobooks purchased from the iTunes Store.
EDIT: You may also want to have a look at these suggestions: Link

Sample/bit rate for Garage Band '08

Hello, I don't have a Mac yet, but am going to get the mini soon and do some acoustic/keyboard stuff in Garage Band to get back into recording. What is the sample and bit rate for the new version? I had read that older versions were 16?
Thanks.
Joe

joewherefast wrote:
Hello, I don't have a Mac yet, but am going to get the mini soon and do some acoustic/keyboard stuff in Garage Band to get back into recording. What is the sample and bit rate for the new version? I had read that older versions were 16?
Thanks.
Joe
The sample rate is fixed at 44.1kHz. The bit depth (audio resolution) is selectable at either 16 bits or 24 bits.

Optimal bit rate for videos?

I've used 512 kbps bit rate for my videos, their size was really good (low) but the quality was just too poor...
What do you think the optimal bit rate would be for videos? (A cartoon show, actually)
Thanks.

I use about 1000

Bit Rate for Mixed angle DVD

What bit rate will give an decent quality image if there are 4 video streams (v1-edited video,v2-4 source angles), 1 ac-3 audio stream, 1 mpeg1 audio stream. Three of the video streams are alternate angles that popup for brief ( 1 to 5 minutes ) periods of time in a 1 hour wedding ceremony. I guest the safe bit rate for all streams is around 8.5, the manuals say the max is 10.3 mbps. Can I mix bitrates for video in a mixed-angle track or do they all need to be the same?, is four video tracks just too much info ?
Thanks for all the help !

One last question; if there are four user selectable streams are you adding up the bitrate for all streams or is the total just the stream that's being played plus any audio that gives you your total ?
thanks

Optimal Audio Sample/ Bit Rate for DVD?

In using recorded material to add to DVDs for family and friends, that is, non-commercial, what is recommended formatting for the audio file? Soundbooth seems to default to 48000 Sample Rate/32 Bit but if I use that am I achieving anything over a simple 44100 Sample Rate/16 bit, since the human ear cannot detect above 20000Hz? I want the DVDs to sound as good as possible in STEREO.I don't want to cross-post, so sorry if this is wrong forum.
Thanks...

I'm not positive about this, but I think they used 48KHz simply because most professional audio/video gear uses that same sample rate. This makes it easier to tramsfer audio from DV, DAT, etc. without the need for resampling.
As for why 48 in the first place? This has to do with the Nyquist limit... and that's way too deep for this thread!
Higher bit depth is another thing all together: This represents the number of possible volume levels (dynamic range) of each sample. 16 bit has 65535 levels which is a dynamic range of 96 dB. This is fine for final delivery -- assuming that the audio was well-mastered at an appropriate volume level.
During recording and editing, however, where it is likely that adjustments to dynamics (compression, expansion, noise gating, fading) and effects will be applied, it is best to use a higher bit depth so that less information is lost (quantized) on successive transformations of the audio. It also will keep broadband noise from creeping in when the audio is amplified.
For example, if you have audio recorded in 16 bit and then you amplify it to be 20 dB louder, your dynamic range has decreased to 76 dB and the noise floor has been raised -- meaning there is a constant whitenoise "hiss" in the background.
32 bit audio is different. The dynamic range is sufficient enough so that moderately large amplification will not neccessarily result in audible background noise.
The 32 bit audio is then downsampled during mastering to 16 bit for final delivery (often with aid dithering, noise shaping, etc. to avoid distortion and give the "illusion" of greater dynamic range)
I do agree that 48 KHz is a little bit silly for DVD when the audio is AC3 compressed anyway. I am fairly certain that none of these ultrasonic frequencies will survive AC3 encoding -- even at high rates.

What is the maximum bit rate for a short NTSC standard def DVD?

I have about 30 minutes of content from FCP that I want to put on a DVD.
At first I tried iDVD and had problems with burning (although I did somehow make one DVD). So I built the project on DVD SP and made a DVD. However, the iDVD version looked much better. I checked out the file sizes and saw that there was 2 gigs on iDVD and only 1.6 DVD SP. Then I discovered the encoding options on DVD SP and I was curious what is the recommended average and maximum bit rate should be for the highest quality, yet still works in most DVD players?
Thanks.

DVD Bandwidth
The rate is not based on running time.
Some thoughts on rates
7.2 - 8.0 seems to be the general consensus for discs from computers. I play more conservative for the reasson listed in that link

Compressor: setting max bit rate for VBR audio

Hi,
I am using Compressor 3 to transcode DV to H.264. I want to encode the audio to AAC VBR wtih a max bitrate of 256. Under the Settings tab, under audio, for VBR there is a slider from good to best. what does this mean in terms of max bit rates? How can you use this slider in a meaninful way?
There is a setting for Average Bit Rate, where you can select a value. do we konw what the max bit rate would be?
thanks
dan

Good question about the slider…and I really don't know the answer. Why don't you try a test: crank it to one extreme and then the other with a representative source file and see what impact it actually makes on the properties of the respective output files.
Good luck.
Russ

Bit rate for all computer?

Hi all,
I'm burning a DVD in DVDSP 4, I burned and tried it in my MacBook Pro and on normal DVD player and It works perfect, the problem comes when I play it on some not so new PCs, in one of them the buttons (text and silver frame) in the menu seem to repeat in different positions, and in the other computer it plays fine but the audio doesn't work and sounds kind of static... does it have something to do with the encoding bit rate in DVDSP? maybe in Compressor??
HDV material / compressed with DVD best 90
SD DVD/PAL
Bit rate in DVDSP 5.0 Mbps
Max Bit rate 6.2
Appreciate your help!
Javier

Which Windows program was used to play the DVDs? Hopefully not Windows Media Player.
-DH

Best Bit Rate for Better sound

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for