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Topic: When To Use Joint Stereo? (Read 6139 times) previous topic - next topic
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When To Use Joint Stereo?

Hey guys

When ripping CD's I usually opt for the highest VBR settings and leave the channels / sample rates at auto

But if you would the best of the best MP3 files, is it advisable to use joint stereo at CBR 320 even though joint is usually advisable for lower bit-rates

I see on most download sites that the best MP3 options are CBR 320 stereo so is there a reason the industry sticks with stereo while others prefer joint

Also, I listen to dance compilation albums that are wildly different in terms of clarity, volume and quality and find on some tracks with VBR 0 joint stereo that in quiet parts there are artefacts but that may just be the vinyl crackle on certain tunes

Do artefacts still appear as much on stereo as that is a straight like for like as a posed to joint stereo having to redo certain parts to minimise loss

When To Use Joint Stereo?

Reply #1 –
Trust the encoder. Don't specify either.

(Disclaimer: provided you're using LAME like God intended.)

When To Use Joint Stereo?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Canar on
Trust the encoder. Don't specify either.

(Disclaimer: provided you're using LAME like God intended.)


Yes latest Lame so should everything be set at auto then?

When To Use Joint Stereo?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: BEDROCK on
Quote from: Canar on
Trust the encoder. Don't specify either.

(Disclaimer: provided you're using LAME like God intended.)


Yes latest Lame so should everything be set at auto then?



Yeah, if you're not a developers or at least quite familiar with the software, I would not try to screw around with how the encoder works, or at least not with music I wanted to keep.

When To Use Joint Stereo?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Canar on
Trust the encoder. Don't specify either.


Trust the encoder re: stereo mode, yes. LAME's joint stereo makes smart decisions about switching between simple and mid-side stereo, whatever benefits the audio the most.

However, if you rely totally on defaults, LAME produces 128 kbps CBR, which is not what we recommend, or even what lame --help recommends.

lame --help actually says -V2 (~190 kbps VBR) is recommended. We worked hard on our recommendations in the wiki, and agreed that VBR (-V3 to -V0) was ideal. We also note that 320 CBR is not proven to be audibly better than -V0.

When To Use Joint Stereo?

Reply #6 –
LAME is a very good and highly tuned encoder,  so you will never really need to do anything other than specifying the desired bit rate,  or target quality for VBR.

If I'm not mistaken, LAME does use joint stereo for most (all?) bit rates,  and it evaluates each individual frame in the audio stream to determine if it's more efficient to encode it as left-right stereo or mid-side stereo.