The Best Mp3/vbr Encoder For Mac
Apr 23, 2011 What is a good (and free) best quality LAME encoder for MP3s? LAME is open-source software, so any program that uses it will be equivalent from an audio perspective. So, what you need is a ripping tool that handles LAME and runs on Mac and is free. I transfered some tunes to iTunes yesterday & noticed today they all have different bit rates (it's a Best Of' album)., with 'VBR' next to them.
Importing songs into iTunes is easy – you just INSERT the CD, SELECT it in iTunes, and press the ‘Import’ button! But the default setting on iTunes is not the best setting to use when importing songs. It’s far better to use the ‘Apple Lossless’ setting which will keep your music at CD quality. If you must compress the music (e.g.
The limitation on iTunes VBR settings would presumably be for reliability reasons, and not because '320K is the highest'. I only avoid VBR because of past history of bad VBR support on iPods (in both MP3/AAC) and also on some other players.
You want to fit it on your iPod or a laptop) then use the bit rate of 320kbps rather than the default 128kbps of iTunes. This article describes how to import songs into iTunes with the better quality bit rate. Introduction If you go to the ‘iTunes:Preferences’ menu and click on ‘Advanced’ then ‘Importing’ you will see some options like ‘Import Using’ and ‘Setting’. This raises a few questions. Why does Apple allow me to use different formats like AAC and MP3? Which one is better?
How good is the default setting of 128kbps (high quality) (See picture below – click to enlarge). Unfortunately I assumed the defaults were the best, so I used the built in defaults in iTunes to import my entire CD collection. But if you listen carefully to your iPod through your stereo, and compare it to a CD, you will hear a significant difference in audio quality at 128kbps. It’s not that listening at 128kbps sounds really bad, but if you compare it to the original, you will notice that it’s different. It’s not as clear and some details are missing. Best Bit-rate for compressed audio – 320kbps. If you want better quality music you should use a higher bitrate than 128kbps.
When Apple first launched iTunes the songs on the store were encoded at 128kbps, but from 2010 even Apple now use 256kbps on the iTunes store which is an immense improvement. The difference between Apple’s upgrade of 128kbps and 256kbps is very noticeable and it is worth upgrading all your existing iTunes purchases, but 256kbps is not as good as 320kbps though, so if you have a CD I recommend importing at 320kbps if you choose to import as AAC. Better still: When this article was first written in 2008 I suggested 320kbps AAC as the best setting. There have been significant increases in hard drive size in that time and hard drives are now large enough to easily cope with the size of Apple Lossless files. I now suggest you use Apple Lossless Encoder for all importing of songs from CD. It gives the best possible quality.
I now recommend the Apple Lossless Encoder as the best way to import your CDs for general use. (I’ve written about it.) It compresses an audio file without any deterioration in audio quality at all. So why does iTunes allow lower settings? Well, a lower setting will give a smaller file, so in the days of small iPods and small hard drives it was necessary to have very small music files. But if you want good quality sound it’s better to go with a higher setting. The best of both worlds If you do have one particular iPod or iPhone that is a bit small and you don’t want to fill it up with Apple lossless files, there is a setting that you can set independently for each iPod that will reduce the file size just for that iPod. You can change the settings for a particular iPod to put lower quality files on it to save space, but still have the Apple lossless files on your computer.
Just tick the ‘Convert higher bit rate songs’ box. You can find it under the settings tab that appears when you plug the iPod in – it is the bottom box in the picture below. This can be turned on or off independently for each device that you have. What are the differences in file size? A 3 minute song at 128kbps will use approx 3MB.
(poor quality) A 3 minute song at 320 kbps will use approx 7MB. (excellent quality) A 3 minute song at Apple Lossless will use approx 15MB. (perfect quality) Error Correction There is an option that says ‘Use error correction when reading audio CDs’. You should always have this option ticked. It will improve the quality of the resulting audio. The way information is written to an Audio CD is different to a CD-ROM, and so it is possible to read audio from a CD imperfectly. This setting helps avoid mistakes when reading the audio from a CD.
How to import a song at high quality into iTunes using just iTunes. Open iTunes, on the iTunes menu select Preferences. Then on the general tab select Import Settings. On the settings window select ‘AAC Encoder’ and ‘Custom’ as follows: 3. Select 320kbps. Sample rate can be auto or 44.1 VBR doesn’t matter really.
The file may be smaller if you use VBR. Click OK and import a CD as usual. Note: These shots were taken in 2008, I now suggest you use Apple Lossless Encoder instead of AAC.
Just select Apple Lossless instead of AAC If you are low on space pick out some of your least favourite CD’s and encode them at a lower quality! Relates articles: I just found by Marc Heijligers on compression and although now very old, it would backup that LOSSLESS IS BEST, or at least 320kbps if you must use compression. Thank you, Wayne.
Okay, I think I’m understanding this more. All my music so far is at 256 (iTunes Plus), but I stopped midway through ripping all my Cds to research this further. I think I may start over and do them all at 320. The reason I’m not keen on the Lossless is because I want them to convert to 320 for the iPod (not to 128). I currently don’t have a serious home system, but when I do get one is it possible to have 2 files for the same song (Lossless for at home & 320 for the ipod in the car)?
Am I understanding this correctly?
Even if you use iTunes' MP3 encoder, you can take advantage of VBR encoding to improve sound quality. From iTunes' Importing preference pane, select MP3 Encode from the Import Using pull-down menu; then choose Custom from the Setting pull-down menu and select Use Variable Bit Rate Encoding (VBR). Yeah, I don't much care for iTunes implementation of vbr mp3 encoding.
To me, it seems to produce files that are too large as it sets a floor, but not a ceiling for the bit rate. I usually use cleaner, which has the best vbr implementation (file size and quality wise) that I've heard.
In cleaner, I set the ceiling/max bit rate and let cleaner decide how to work everything out below that. What I get are files that are usually about the size of 128kbs cbr mp3 files (or less) but they sound excellent. I just want to have this kind of functionality built into iTunes with a next-gen audio format (or now-gen) so that I don't have to jump through so many hoops to get good audio without chewing through so much disk space. First paragraph says AAC is VBR.
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I have read that AAC CBR fills in zeros on the VBR. I'm not sure if that makes any sense. In any event, it seems clear that iTunes encodes AAC at a VBR rate. It VBR, same as MP3. That doesn't stop you from making every frame exactly the same size.
The Best Mp3/vbr Encoder For Mac Download
As of QT 6.5 (IIRC), theres silence detection so it won't do particularly retarded things like encode MBs worth of silence on hidden tracks. Anyway, if you want VBR, I suppose you could use QT (hopefully via script), or at least use FAAC which has supported VBR for years. Though I don't know if the quality is as good as Nero or iTunes.
