Posted by Greg on 11/16/31 11:37

I'm a newbie to MP3 encoding, and recently I've been trying to read anything
I can find on the internet about different methods, options, etc. of
encoding MP3s. I do have a copy of CDex 1.51, and the most recent stable
version of LAME (3.96) substituted for the 3.92, and I'm starting to
experiment with different settings so I can eventually conclude which suits
me.

Anyway, a couple of questions regarding the LAME encoder options in CDex:

1) I'm assuming that the quality settings (q or VBR quality) do not affect
file size, only encoding time....is this correct?

2) If I choose one of the quality settings (q=0,2,5,9) rather than one of
the presets, I can then still choose a setting for VBR quality as well
(provided I choose one of the VBR methods, of course). How do these two
parameters (q and VBR quality) relate? I'm confused with having more than
one quality setting in these cases.

3) In the quality settings, if I choose one of the alt presets, do these
correspond to any particular value of q?

4) I've not seen any recommendations on the output sample rate. Best to
leave this as "auto"?

5) Any opinions as to whether or not using on-the-fly-encoding is a good or
not so good idea? I've encoded a couple of CD tracks so far just to get my
feet wet, and I haven't heard any clicking type of noises, so perhaps I'm OK
leaving this option checked. But maybe it depends a bit on other settings
that I'm using as well?

6) One last thing....I'm running on Windows XP, so no ASPI driver files on
my machine right now. I'm currently using the native SCSI library, and so
far things seem fine. Am I good, or is it better to go get ASPI drivers,
install them, and uncheck the native SCSI library option in the settings?


I hope my questions don't seem too stupid....I appreciate any help you folks
can offer on my questions.

Thanks!
Greg

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