Posted by NRen2k5 on 01/25/06 21:30

martin.mrazek@gmail.com wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I need to put a series of lectures on the Internet, thus I'm trying
> to find optimal balance in trade-off between size and quality. A good
> result is obtained by
>
> lame --abr 60 -m m file.wav file.mp3
>
> but it is still too lengthy and the decrease of ABR to 30 means too
> substantial deterioration of quality.

Does it? The whole point of VBR/ABR is reduction of bitrate when not
needed and expansion of bitrate when needed. The fact that the bitrate
dips down to 30 should not deteriorate the quality; it should in fact be
keeping it consistent.

> So questions are: (1) is the ABR technology the best option as
> regards this purpose?

With LAME, at those low bitrates, yes.

> (2) Wouldn't be other format than MP3 less capacity intensive? (ogg,
> wmf...) or are there any advices when working with speech rather than
> music?

Yes, Ogg Vorbis or Windows Media would be a better thoice than MP3 for
voice-only recordings.

There are also codecs meant _especially_ for speech, such as "Speex".

However, Windows Media Player, etc. cannot play Vorbis or Speex "out of
the box". You'll need to instruct visitors to your webpage to download
the Vorbis or Speex codec to be able to play your recordings.

Looking back to MP3, its obvious advantage over the other codecs is that
practically _anybody_ can play an MP3 on _anything_.

- NRen2k5

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