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What are the best Encode Quality (Fast, Standard, or High) and Bit Rate settings when bouncing mp3's to disk. Using L.A.M.E. in DP 5.13. The final destination of these mp3's will be MySpace using the My Space player. Thanks

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For Client approval purposes, I always send them an MP3 bounced with quality set to "High", CBR, and at 256 rate. The file sizes are small enough, and it doesn't degrade too much. Not that it would make a difference, since they listen to whatever I send in their laptops, or a cheap audio desktop system at best

But you may want to do more research. I keep reading how MySpace does something to the music, or they have maximum allowable rates, or something like that. Obviously, I know nothing about Myspace... frankly, I couldn't care less about it.

But anything over 128 Kbps is reasonably acceptable... at least for such media. But I wouldn't do it any lower than 256, though.

That low res myspace/youtube stuff is mighty painfull. It's gotta be lower than 128.

If your are streaming from the WEB avoid CBR, as most streaming server and client have problems to keep the rate constant.
This is the setting recommentation I found on the website of the lame association a couple months ago for web use. It has serve me well but I don't know about MySpace recommendations.

Channels: Stereo (Do not choose "Auto" but force it to Stereo)
Stereo Mode: Normal (Not Join Stereo has this will sum both channels)
Output Sample Rate: 44.100 khz ( the lame association is recommending 44.1 over 48; I don't remember the rational of it but I guess you could use either)
Encoding Mode: Variable Bite Rate (Standard) (The VBR Fast setting is less accurate so use Standard)
Encode Quality: High
VBR Quality: 100 (best)
Filter Frenquency Below 10 hz; enabled

Hope this help

Thanks Guys! Don't know what MySpace does, but the sound quality of mp3s played on their player is far inferior to what I get on anything else. The settings offered by "groove" seem to yield to best results for this application... Thanks again

cpeiv wrote:Thanks Guys! Don't know what MySpace does, but the sound quality of mp3s played on their player is far inferior to what I get on anything else. The settings offered by "groove" seem to yield to best results for this application... Thanks again

96kps

Horrible

Doesn't Myspace convert anything sent to them to their own format, anyway? Which means that it probably doesn't matter what format you send to them, as long as what you send to them is no lower quality than what their format is.

nick danger wrote:Doesn't Myspace convert anything sent to them to their own format, anyway? Which means that it probably doesn't matter what format you send to them, as long as what you send to them is no lower quality than what their format is.

This a good point.

It's really hard to find out info from their site.

If anyone knows please post it as I've had bands ask me and I can not find out the info.

All of the songs on this myspace page

http://www.myspace.com/bigstackdaddy

were uploaded as 192 kbps mp3 files. Not sure what they convert to, but from the sound quality as I hear it, 96 kpbs is probably pretty close.

I've uploaded all my content to my MySpace page here (http://www.myspace.com/armageddonmusiconline) at 44.1 kHz/16-bit/192kbps (which seems to be as low as you can go on an .mp3 before you begin noticing quality dropout), and before they futzed with their players/schematics, you could download from artists pages up to at least that quality. I suspect their player, or by virtue of uploading to them, further compresses your content, kind of like a more advanced RealPlayer. I'd agree with whoever said "128 kbps" -- 96 kbps would sound even worse.

groove wrote:If your are streaming from the WEB avoid CBR, as most streaming server and client have problems to keep the rate constant.
This is the setting recommentation I found on the website of the lame association a couple months ago for web use. It has serve me well but I don't know about MySpace recommendations.

Channels: Stereo (Do not choose "Auto" but force it to Stereo)
Stereo Mode: Normal (Not Join Stereo has this will sum both channels)
Output Sample Rate: 44.100 khz ( the lame association is recommending 44.1 over 48; I don't remember the rational of it but I guess you could use either)
Encoding Mode: Variable Bite Rate (Standard) (The VBR Fast setting is less accurate so use Standard)
Encode Quality: High
VBR Quality: 100 (best)
Filter Frenquency Below 10 hz; enabled

Hope this help

This is interesting. Thanks for that, Groove. The bounce is very slow with those settings funnily enough.
I think, in the past, I've always left channels on "Auto" on when exporting directly from DP. It's only been for rough mixes though so not a big deal. I usually bounce to 24 bit Aiff and then get iTunes to convert it with 192 or 320 kbps if I need an MP3. Not sure if that's the best practice either.
If it's going to Myspace it's going to sound so poor anyway but certainly important to get a proper stereo MP3.
Soundcloud.com claim to have everything at 128 but it also sounds like 96kbps to me.

I always convert my files in Peak, rather than do it inside DP, though the labeling options in Peak leave a little to be desired. I also convert from CD-R to .mp3 inside of iTunes, which has a more full-featured labeling schematic -- I do it this way mainly to preview how things will present and sound inside of iTunes, which, anymore, is almost as important as how it will sound playing from a CD inside of a stereo.