R13 trial questions: lame - stereo / joint stereo? ID3 tag padding? Upgrade policy?

[Bill_F2]

I'm in the first day of a v13 Reference trial. So far I (mostly) like what I see.

I have a couple issues ripping to lame stereo. I'm ripping to V1 or V2 high quality, and can't get an mp3 in stereo - all my rips have resulted in joint stereo mp3 files.

I don't see any way to force padding of ID3 tags. Is that option available anywhere? Is it a default?

I assume ripping to mp3 uses an intermediate wav file. The only way I could find to keep the wav file was to use the multi encoder. Is there another trick? (I'm used to EAC. I'm installing to a new PC and am testing DbPA to see if its somewhat friendlier than EAC. I also have PlexTools Professional XL, but find it isn't very good at tagging and naming, though the rips are quite good.)

The registration page isn't very specific about how updates are handled. It says both the PowerPack and Reference license cover "Free minor version upgrades". Based on other shareware I've purchased this can be quite variable - from a token payment to nearly the full purchase price each time a full upgrade is released - which in some cases is fairly frequent. How does this tend to work with DBPowerAmp? Is there a 'perpetual' upgrade license available for Reference?

Thanks in advance, Bill_F

[bhoar]

Re: R13 trial questions: lame - stereo / joint stereo? ID3 tag padding? Upgrade poli

I'll only answer on the issue of "joint stereo" and lame settings. Summary: when working with contemporary MP3 codecs (released within the past few years), forcing the stereo modes manually will undoubtedly cause a degradation of sound quality - allow Lame to decide, per frame, what encoding style to use...manually forcing it to allocate half of the bitstream to each channel will, again, undoubtedly cause lower quality.

See: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....e=Joint_stereo

In general, using contemporary LAME, it is best to just use the quality presets (such as via the slider in dbpoweramp):

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lame

-brendan

[Spoon]

Re: R13 trial questions: lame - stereo / joint stereo? ID3 tag padding? Upgrade poli

>I assume ripping to mp3 uses an intermediate wav file

Not to mp3, no wave files.

We have no padding option for mp3 (it is not really required in files which are about 5MB), padding is needed in FLAC where the files are 30MB and changing the tag woul write the whole file.

There is no perpetual license for Reference, major upgrades happen no sooner than once a year (ie R13 to R14, minor upgrades are R13 to R13.1)

[Bill_F2]

Re: R13 trial questions: lame - stereo / joint stereo? ID3 tag padding? Upgrade poli

Thanks for the replies -

- regarding stereo / joint stereo: I'll read those hydrogenaudio links later.
After I posted I found a thread where Spoon wrote that it's better to use joint stereo always. That hadn't been my understanding, but I'm far from an expert. My own ears (not the best after 42 years of R&R) tell me (have told me?) that stereo is better - I've noticed occasional artifacts with joint stereo. However, I haven't done blind tests, so some of this may be bias.
- I think that its a bug when I select stereo and get joint stereo (as detected by itunes and EndSpot Pro).

- regarding padding of mp3 tags. I understand that its expensive to edit id3 tags on large files - that padding is advisable. For ripped CDs, the files generally be small enough this probably isn't a concern. Every week I capture and archive several internet radio shows, and usually keep the shows as 4 hour files. This file is typically ~ 300 MB, so I want to pad those tags. I have other tools I can use with these files so it isn't a big deal. I just had come to expect this option.

- re: licensing. It's your program and you know what you need to stay in business. I can accept and respect that and will make my own decision on what I think I need. So far I've done just as well with secure as with ultra-secure (24 of 24 ripped 100% to AccurateRip), and I don't know if I'll need batching. So I may not require a Reference license. I need to stress it with some lightly scratched CDs before I decide. I have decided to buy one or the other - It's worth it for the tagging and album art by itself.

Bill_F