Submission Standards Changes & New Encodings!

[Modus]

When I click "submit" in the top bar, the page still says:

Bitrate must be EITHER 192kbps OR VBR1. Please see Encoding Guidance for more information.

The encoding guide also says:

As our Submission Standards and Instructions mention, audio must be 16-bit, 44.1kHz stereo with a bitrate of either:

• 192kbps (constant or average bitrate) *OR*
  
• VBR1 (variable bitrate, quality = 1).
  

Am I misunderstanding? I thought 192kbs was the minimum bitrate now and we could submit in 320kbs or whatever we want.

[Liontamer]

When I click "submit" in the top bar, the page still says:

The encoding guide also says:

Am I misunderstanding? I thought 192kbs was the minimum bitrate now and we could submit in 320kbs or whatever we want.

No, you just misunderstood the change. The standards & encoding guide are consistent with what it says in the original post. Those are the encoding standards right now, either 192kbps CBR or V1 VBR. You cannot submit music at 320kbps CBR, that's too high.

[Brandon Strader]

If your music is full enough your VBR1 will average around 256/320 anyway

To make VBR1 mp3 files, you need WinLAME

[Modus]

If your music is full enough your VBR1 will average around 256/320 anyway

To make VBR1 mp3 files, you need WinLAME

OK that's a relief. 192kbs is just really low to me.

[Liontamer]

OK that's a relief. 192kbs is just really low to me.

That's not "really low." Most can't tell 192 from lossless in ABX testing.

[Brandon Strader]

Studies have shown that people can be fooled simply by titles... Like they served Pizza Hut pasta in a fancy restaurant but made it up to sound fancy and such, and the people loved it... then they served the fancy pasta and said it was Pizza Hut and people were like "Well you can tell it's not the high quality stuff, but for Pizza Hut, it's ok." And they were FOOLED!

Or when they put an organic banana next to a regular banana, people claimed that the organic banana tasted better even though in the testing, they only used 2 regular bananas: there was no organic banana.

I can definitely hear the difference between 128kbps and 192kbps but beyond that, nope. But it still feels good knowing that the best possible quality of your song is uploaded to OCR (without being a wav of course) so that's why I recommend VBR1 instead of 192kbps.

[zircon]

Well, with these kind of listening studies they do it blind so you can't tell what you're listening to. ABX means they'll play 192, 256, and then X, where you don't know what X is.

[Modus]

That's not "really low." Most can't tell 192 from lossless in ABX testing.

It's probably psychoacoustics, but my brain tells me there's a difference when I do the comparing. Regardless, storage is so massive and cheap nowadays that I'm surprised the "global standard" is still 192kbs. I guess it doesn't matter though because variable bitrate is an option.

And this where my argument ends because I don't want to make enemies out of OCR staffers. I really don't o_o

[KyleJCrb]

I can hear some slight fidelity loss between 128kbps and most anything higher. It's VERY slight, though. Otherwise, I can't tell the difference.