

Concluding the Great MP3 Bitrate Experiment - stalled
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/concluding-the-great-mp3-bitrate-experiment.html

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cellularmitosis
"I think it's clear from the basic summary statistics graph that only one
audio sample here was discernably different than the rest – the 128kbps CBR".

Well, no, it isn't clear to me, at least not with the data in an un-sorted
table. But visually, yes, it is clear: <http://i.imgur.com/08s2S.png>

~~~
cellularmitosis
well, I always yell at others for creating graphs which aren't anchored at 0,
so here you go: <http://i.imgur.com/7YrHi.png>

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kstenerud
Why didn't he randomize which order the samples appeared in?

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ecaron
tl;dr - 128kbps CBR audio has such bad quality nobody should use it, but all
options of higher quality are indistinguishably different to the masses.

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pasbesoin
It's been a number of years since I compared, but I ended up doing rips at 320
VBR (or CBR -- I'm forgetting, at the moment) with the setting that allows
bandwidth to fluctuate to whichever of the stereo channels momentarily has a
greater, calculated need ("stereo" or "joint stereo").

Yes, the difference was noticeable, on a well-regarded iAudio player using
decent can headphones. At 320, I was finally, really happy with the resulting
rips. Though I'd still archive in a lossless format.

