I use CDEx to rip all my audio CDs, and up until now have been using 192Kbit CBR to encode everything via LAME. Of course, all my idiot friends (hi, idiot friends!!) have always made fun of me for using such an “overkill” bitrate. They tell me 128K is plenty, but they must be deaf or summin’, cause those extra 64 Ks make a huge difference to my poorly trained ear.
So I’ve always just ignored them (as I tend to do ’bout most things) and continued to rip at 192/CBR.
But then today I stumbled across an elderly but very interesting blawg posting about one guy’s thoroughly unscientific experimentation with various encode parameters with CDEx/LAMEEnc. He now uses VBR from 192K to 320K because, although he admits it results in even bigger’n’fatter output than CBR at the lower extent of that range, he thinks it’s much closer to the original source. That source, incidentally, is some old Breeders stuff I wish I owned. I used to have a big crush on Kim Deal, even though I thought she was sort of ugly. Weird, eh?
The guy went on to talk about his sensitivity to higher registers, and how that affected his final decision. That’s always been one of my problems, too, even though I suspect I’m starting to develop midrange deafness. I can still always tell when a CRT TV is on, though, because I can hear it whine. I’ll definitely have to play with these settings a little and see if they make a difference to me.
http://weblogs.asp.net/erobillard/archive/2005/03/27/396015.aspx