Lainaus:

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Q: In the latest version (prerelease4) you can't choose the stereo mode anymore and all mp3's are encoded as Joint Stereo. But I want to encode in full stereo mode, as it would give me better quality. Can you add that option back into winLAME?

A: Starting from prerelease4 on, winLAME got a new user interface for the LAME options, and I followed the LAME's teams recommendation (see here). I asked one of the LAME team members if the stereo mode should be made available in the UI again. Here's what Gabriel Bouvigne answered:

I would strongly advise you to NOT provide this kind of choice to the end user. Activating legacy stereo instead of joint stereo will decrease quality in 99% of the cases. Lame is internally able to switch between LR stereo and MS stereo on a frame basis, trying to use the most efficient mode on each frame. On usual signals, using LR instead of MS is quite inneficient, using more bits. When there are not enough available bits to stay at the transparency threshold, we must decrease quality. This situation is more likely to appear in legacy stereo mode.

I think that most users only want this because of placebo effect. They feel better if they can change default options, and because of this they are convinced (without blind tests, of course) that the results are better. If we never offered the option, users would probably not mind, but now that we provided the choice in the past, they want it. Most AAC encoders (Apple, Nero) are not offering the choice, and are using MS or LR at their own convenience when the user is encoding a stereo track, and no one is complaining about it, mainly because those encoders never offered any other choice.

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lame.exe --longhelp:

Operational options:

   -m <mode>       (j)oint, (s)imple, (f)orce, (d)dual-mono, (m)ono

                    default is (j) or (s) depending on bitrate

                    joint  = joins the best possible of MS and LR stereo

                    simple = force LR stereo on all frames

                    force  = force MS stereo on all frames.

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Lainaus:

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Kai siis todellakin ymmärrät, että saavutat yhtä hyvän lopputuloksen myös joint stereota käyttämällä?

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Lainaus:

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Joint stereo puretaan toistettaessa normaaliksi stereoksi. Joint stereo on siis vain pakkaustekninen kikka, eikä sen pitäisi vaikuttaa millään tavalla stereokuvaan tai kuvaamaasi ongelmaan.

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