Bitrate reporting and quality also windows media player

[buyslake]

In Windows explorer, I can turn on Bit Rate for a column display for a music file. It reports the Bitrate as 320, however in the dbPowerAmp properties box it says the average bit rate is 198. 1) Is the 320 the highest bit rate in the song if it was created using a variable bit rate? 2) Or why is it reporting 320 in Windows Explorer and also in Windows Media Player?

Another question about Windows Media Player. If you take a song that is already in your Windows Media Player library, it has a constant bitrate of 320, and change it to a constant bit rate of 192, 3) Will the library automatically update the bitrate information from your hard drive or do you need delete the song in your library and reload it?

4) Does the song sound better if a variable bit rate is used OR a constant bitrate?

For example in you can select the preset "CD Quality" and it shows the bitrate as 192 however when it is finished creating the new file it shows the bit rate as 320 in windows explorer. OR you can select no preset and set the bitrate to 192 and when the file is created it shows the bitrate as 192 in windows explorer.

My question is, 5) will this preset "CD quality" sound better then selecting constant bitrate and setting it to 192? If it is better, will it be really noticeable?

[LtData]

Re: Bitrate reporting and quality also windows media player

In my experience, Windows Explorer has always showed VBR files wrong. I'm not sure about WMP, as I don't use it. dMC has its own Explorer columns you can turn on to show what it reads as the bitrate. The option for this is in dMC Configuration (Start --> Programs --> dBpowerAMP Music Converter --> Configuration --> dMC Configuration)

[xoas]

Re: Bitrate reporting and quality also windows media player

1. If you are talking about mp3 files, 320 kbs is the highest bitrate that mp3 specifications allow regardless of whether bitrate is constant or variable.
2. Answered by LtData.
3. I would suspect, but I don't know for sure, that WMP reads and displays the bitrate from the file tag (which would be updated if you converted the file to a different bitrate) but I don't generally use WMP-you could experiment and let us know the result one way or another.
4. It probably does not matter in terms of quality if you use vbr or cbr. The major exception would be that some players (cheap portable mp3 players or some car mp3 players) might have difficulty reading/playing vbr or abr files. For those uses sticj to cbr.
5. I rather doubt you would notice a difference (and I am not really sure there is one). The only true test would be for you to rip a few tracks to both settings and compare.

Best wishes,
Bill

[Spoon]

Re: Bitrate reporting and quality also windows media player

Yes you are using the Windows columns, right click and click on more, dbpoweramp's are at the end of the list.