[typoon]

What is the difference? I never really know what the difference is with ripping tracks with Variable Bit Rate enabled and ripping tracks with out it enabled. Could someone enlighten me?

Thanks.

[voodoo]

VBR sets a target bitrate and tries to keep this target as an average. Where more bitrate is needed (in complex parts) it is allocated, as where it is not needed (in simple or silent parts) less bitrate is used.

It is supposed to be a 'best of both worlds' thing, giving the optimal bitrate (with respect to the target bitrate) at any given time.

CBR (constant bitrate) is a steady stream of information, regardless of content. Thus 1 minute of 128 kbps CBR of silence takes about 1 MB, while the same silence in VBR takes near to nothing.

V

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

VBR sets a target bitrate and tries to keep this target as an average. Where more bitrate is needed (in complex parts) it is allocated, as where it is not needed (in simple or silent parts) less bitrate is used.

There are a couple of different ways that VBR gets implemented in different programs. iTunes VBR, for example, sets a floor that the bitrate will not go below, and goes to higher bitrates for more complex passages. Other tools like LAME have target quality settings (e.g. V0, V1, V2, etc.) that cause the encoder to adjust the bitrate differently at different settings.

[typoon]

So is it better to rip your CD's using VBR? From what it sounds like it is the better thing to do.

[besson3c]

So then what is the difference between ABR and VBR?

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

So then what is the difference between ABR and VBR?

I always think of ABR as a type of VBR. Average bit rate (ABR) encoding does what voodoo describes -- it selects a target bitrate and tries to maintain that as an average, varying higher or lower depending on the complexity of the passage. Most tools for VBR encoding use a "target quality" setting instead.