r3mix.net

Well I figured I'd keep a running journal offline since it might be awhile until I get my DSL connection back up. I was just playing around with LAME and found that it had this new option (--r3mix). So I looked into it and there's a site that discusses MP3 encoder quality. What I read here was very informative because they have basically taken the trouble out of finding the right encoding settings for people like myself, who can tell the difference between a 128kbit/s MP3 and one encoded at 192kbit/s.

When I had encoded my entire CD collection over a year ago, I played it safe and had LAME set to encode at "--preset CD" which, among other things, encodes the MP3 with an average bitrate of 192. I also forced stereo mode because previously, I could hear the difference between a joint stereo MP3 and one in stereo. Turns out that I was using a really shitty encoder (Xing), which gave me the impression that joint stereo was crap. But after reading r3mix.net, it seems like it's actually a good thing, if you use an encoder like LAME.

So what this means to me is that I can encode using the --r3mix settings and get smaller MP3 file sizes, which is important to me since I've filled up my 20Gig Phatnoise cart. I just re-encoded Pearl Jam's Riot Act and have already saved 20Megs. Nice.