question about bitrate

[davestradamus]

i am currently using winamp to play pretty much all my music through a crappy and soon to be upgraded sound card. most of my music is 320kbps, but some has a variable bitrate. most variable files only get 192kbps but should be capable of 320 i think. is my bitrate limited by my soundcard or my RAM? this has me thinking my 320kbps files arent really giving me 320. any thoughts.

ooh, and i am thinking there should be a home theater/media pc spot on this forum. i am posting this in the NOOB section because thats where i belong, not this thread.

peace, love and all thats associated
and take a shower you hippie.

-david

 

[MDS]

The bit rate is the number of bits per second and the bit rate to use was chosen when the file was encoded.

Your 320 kbps files use 320 thousand bits to represent each second of the audio and every single frame has the same number of bits - even if you have long periods of absolute silence. WinAmp is playing 320 kbps and that never changes.

A variable bit rate encoding allocates more bits to encode the more demanding parts of the audio and fewer bits for less demanding sections so the number of bits in each frame varies. The bit rate you see is the average number of bits per frame. 320 kbps CBR (constant bit rate) is the max bit rate for encoding MP3; a 320 kbps VBR would not be possible because that would mean that the average bit rate equals the max bit rate and thus nothing is variable.

 

[davestradamus]

that was very helpful. thank you. really cleared that up for me.

castles made of sand
slip into the sea,
eventually.

-davd