I've seen that some rips and soundtracks are in VBR, varying from the 128kbps to the 320kbps. So I was wondering, is that quality necessary for the VG music? Specially for games from old systems, like the NES.

For example, music from the Super Mario Bros. for the NES may not need a 320kbps quality like the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack. But people still rip old soundtracks in higher quality, resulting in unecessary memory usage.

I think that 192kbps is good for soundtracks from games like the XBox, Wii, GC, PS2, PS3 & the Xbox 360. But for the SNES, DS & N64 soundtracks I think that a maximum of 160kbps is enough, and for the NES a 128kbps as a maximum can do just fine.

What do you think? And what settings do you use while encoding or ripping?

On my Player, all songs are in only 96kbps, to be honest. I compared the quality from e.g. 320 to 192 and 96 with different earphones, but for my ears there was no difference. Maybe I'm deaf:-) But how else do you want to store 1800 Songs on only 4Gb... Old Stuff, from 8Bit Era, the lowest Rate will be enough, I think.

That's a very interesting question.. but i got absolutly no idea of the answer.

It could be interesting to find the quality at least required for a good "rip" from old soundtracks yes, like 8-bits systems (or even before).

After that i'd say it vary a lot. It can be different on certain system, certain games, if it is a recording or a rip..

I see more and more poeple with crazy hard drive space (like 1 or 2 TB wtf?), i think they can have fun with lossless encodes.
Now, my personnal point of view is that a "good!" VBR encode (up to 320) is really enough. And since i don't have a kick ass soundcard i don't really care about lossless.

Everyone have their own opinions, their own preferences, and it's better like this.

I specialize in NES audio and use 192 kbps VBR quality as the maximum highest and 128 as the minimum highest. Usually 160 kbps is sufficient enough as most of the chiptunes hover around 96-128 for 100% quality most of the time, but I always leave that extra bit of high quality when the music needs it.
I've found that some older games (like the original 'Metroid') still sound satisfactory/good with only 128 being the highest

Personally, I consider 192 VBR to be good enough for just about any kind of music (video game or otherwise).

I think it could be due to preference. I've listended to the Dracula X soundtrack in 64, 96, 128, and VBR, but I prefer it at 64. It depends on the soundtrack. Some sound better at a lower bit rate IMO.

In line with what Anatar mentioned earlier, it all really depends on what you're using to listen to the music. I personally have a $2,000 stereo system (Not even close to being considered as a high-end stereo system), which can make the distinction between an mp3 for an NES song, and a lossless version of the same NES song, very clear. However, not everyone has a decent audio system, so the distinction is not as obvious. As for the difference in quality between mp3 bitrates, I can tell the difference between 128-160 kbps and 320 kbps through most mediums. I have never encoded anything at 192 kbps, so I have no opinion there.

Moving on, I would also like to say that you don't need 1 TB of hard drive space, even when encoding at a loseless level, unless your music collection is extremely large. All my lossless audio files combined, VGM and non-VGM, would probably fit nicely on a 400 GB hard drive.

With that said, lossless is the optimum way to go if you've got decent equipment.

there are as many optimal bitrates as there are vgm fans :D. personally i prefer lossless (i have a 500gb hdd for my music). i'm not into the older soundtracks, but listen to music from ps1 and forward.

some people say they hear no difference between mp3 and lossless - i used to say that too - but trust me, eventually, as you listen to more and more music and experiment with different encoders, you will begin to notice the subtle differences between even 320kbps and lossless, at least for stuff like Final Fantasy Symphonic Suite and other orchestral works:D

from my experience, music with strings or voices (choirs) are more susceptible to damage from mp3 conversion than for example piano or drums. if you're recording music from, say ps2 or ps3 you should consider the instruments used in the soundtrack. for strings/choir/orchestral in general 192kbps is NOT sufficient, go for 320kbps if you even have to convert it to mp3 at all.

generally though you should go for lossless for newer vgm. it might use up a bit more hdd space, but when filesharing, people can download the lossless version and convert it to mp3s with bitrate of their choice, or simply enjoy the lossless quality (i do :)).

and really, a flac file with compression setting 8 will not be much bigger than a 320kpbs mp3 file, i think.

CBR should never be used anymore. ever.

VBR offers the best quality in the smallest file space.

always use lame -v 0 [alt preset extreme] and no one will ever complain that there is a better mp3 setting. at least no one that knows what they're talking about.

recommended encoder settings and technical explanations of their differences (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lame#Recommended_encoder_settings)

a note about lossless: lossless is fine, but you should upload lossless and an mp3 rip (hopefully -v 0) if you want it to end up on GH.

another note: the encoder matters more than the bitrate. there's no excuse for using anything other than lame when it comes to mp3s.

i concur, everything should be in v0/vbr if u want mp3's, its how i rip...until portable mp3 players get larger (and stay fairly cheap) there's no point in ripping flac's, unless u just wanna JUST listen on ur computer b/c ipods don't naturally play the format

does anyone even buy from itunes or anything? the quality isn't that great, doesn't seem like a good deal to me

until portable mp3 players get larger (and stay fairly cheap) there's no point in ripping flac's, unless u just wanna JUST listen on ur computer b/c ipods don't naturally play the format

ipods don't play flac, but they do play some sort of apple lossless format, am i right? anyway i'm not into ipods :D, i've got a 30 gb COWON iAUDIO X5L, which plays flac and has far better sound quality than any ipod (or so i have heard):coolegg:

lossless rules :D

As far as I know, iPods can play ACC files, which seem to be better than mp3s and can handle more than 2 audio channels.

actually, if you use a portable player lossless makes MORE sense since you will likely be transcoding anyway

i concur, everything should be in v0/vbr if u want mp3's, its how i rip...until portable mp3 players get larger (and stay fairly cheap) there's no point in ripping flac's, unless u just wanna JUST listen on ur computer b/c ipods don't naturally play the format
Why play music on a computer when you could play it on a stereo system that is dedicated to playing music? At any rate, there are better lossy audio formats out there, so why even bother to use .mp3?


As far as I know, iPods can play ACC files, which seem to be better than mp3s and can handle more than 2 audio channels.
The iAudio X5L that teblad owns naturally plays .ogg vorbis files, which is comparable to .acc files in terms of quality. Though even if acc files sound better than ogg vorbis files, the iPod player's sound reproduction is not as good as the X5L's.

Why play music on a computer when you could play it on a stereo system that is dedicated to playing music? At any rate, there are better lossy audio formats out there, so why even bother to use .mp3?

because 1) most people in blind tests can't even tell the difference and 2) it's the most commonly used format. uploading in mp3 means more people will download it.

because 1) most people in blind tests can't even tell the difference and 2) it's the most commonly used format. uploading in mp3 means more people will download it.
In response to your comments:
1) If people can't tell the difference between .ogg vorbis and .mp3 of similar quality levels, then why would someone use the mp3 format when the ogg vorbis would save them some space?
2) I'm pretty sure people would download music in any audio format so long as it was free? There are lots of audio players for the computer that can play ogg vorbis files, several CD burning programs can burn with ogg, and even iPods can play 'em.

The iAudio X5L that teblad owns naturally plays .ogg vorbis files

whoah. i didn't even know this (since i've never had to deal with ogg before). but that's great! i love my iaudio :D

192 is fine for me, but I'd prefer 320. Maybe it's my ocd, lol.

Sarah, I love you for what you said about V0 and the futility of CBR, and particularly for mentioning the importance of a decent encoder!

Lackadaisical: An iPod CANNOT play Vorbis audio unless you install another firmware. Name one that's any good. (Rockbox kills your battery, and has endless issues with the iPod's scrollwheel. iPod Linux kills your battery and is the biggest bastard to install I've ever seen.)

Back on topic... If you have a piece of music with poor frequency range, or something else that makes it easy to encode (say the stereo field is narrow, or what have you) and you encode with a sensible encoder (LAME) at a sensible setting (V0) it will set the necessary bitrate to maintain quality. You don't have to do a damn thing. By setting V0, you're saying "Make this sound as good as it possibly can, but don't waste bitrate if it's not necessary."

Let the encoder do the job for you. Don't piss with the bitrate unless you have a good reason. Give it your source file, use V0, and let it do the hard work.

LAME is a truly beautiful piece of work. Joint Stereo is utter genuis in its implementation.

Lackadaisical: An iPod CANNOT play Vorbis audio unless you install another firmware. Name one that's any good. (Rockbox kills your battery, and has endless issues with the iPod's scrollwheel. iPod Linux kills your battery and is the biggest bastard to install I've ever seen.)

I don't get your first point at all: You're telling me that iPods CAN play Vorbis with different firmware and I said that iPods can play Vorbis, so what's the difference? I never said that iPods could play Vorbis naturally like the iAudio X5/L -- I just said that they could.

As for Rockbox, the battery life on my mp3 player hasn't been affected much, so I will just say that the "battery killing" might have a little something to do with the Rockbox settings and features used. Though it could be that iPods are doomed to be [relatively] crappy no matter what's done to try and make them better.

Lackadaisical, sorry mate... I read back my post and realised that I sounded like an arrogant prick. It wasn't my intention. :)

I just wanted to clarify that an iPod will not play Vorbis by nature. IE, an out of the box iPod will see an OGG and have no idea what to do with it. I could just see it - the next post reads "I tried to transfer OGG to my iPod and it said piss off! Help!" and thought I'd try to get there first. ;)

I wish they played OGG too, and there's no reason at all why they shouldn't... But I expect Apple hate OGG because of the fact that it's a) open source, b) DRM free, and c) comparable to AAC which they'd rather we all used. ;)

Re Rockbox, I installed the newest version yesterday and discovered it has improved a GREAT DEAL! :D

The scrollwheel issues have gone (hurrah) and battery use has got a little better. 12 hours from one charge. It's still not quite as good as the Apple firmware (18-20 hours) but at least I can play my Vorbis stuff now! Rockbox themselves know this - depending on the device, battery life is either better, the same, or significantly worse. Yours must be one of the devices for which Rockbox has been properly optimised. You lucky sod.

And, I'm getting off topic here, so sorry again...

Peace :)
DF