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agentju90
agentju90 (Rank: Melitta Benz)

what is the best bitrate for audio books?

i know with music the higher the bitrate the better. but i'm dloading some books for dad. the one book is 4 gigs. would a low bitrate be better for a book? if so what? he's filling up my hdd with books.

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Asked in audio book, bitrate, downloading asked on: 05/14/2008 01:19am
closed on: 05/21/2008 01:19am

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j4xX

j4xX

Rank: Student (300)

8 hours after the question was opened (05/14/2008 08:32am)

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With 320kb/s it would be optimal.
That would be not too much and not too little.
Possible ones became approx. 200kb/s are also audible.
Among them you have 12KHz-16KHz within the range to lose.

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siasl74

siasl74

Rank: Albert Einstein (16,202) | computers (1,185), general knowledge (124), downloading (13)

12 hours after the question was opened (05/14/2008 01:02pm)

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Given that migh quality MP3s are 192kbps, and usable mp3's are 128kbps, you can probably drop down below that to something around 96kbps and still have perfectly usable voice quality - after all, phones usually use a maximum of 64kbps.

It all depends on your comfort level. Beyond 128kbps I'd argue that there's not much benefit for a voice recording.

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wumpus

wumpus

Rank: Professor (4,576) | computers (158), general knowledge (150), mp3 (5)

19 hours after the question was opened (05/14/2008 08:10pm)

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I have to disagree with j4xx's answer.

A 1x CD rom drive only transfers 150Kb/second and gives excellent stereo sound quality without any compression.
You can go a lot lower than that and still have very acceptable quality.

Have you got one downloaded already?
If so, I'd suggest putting it through a re-sampling program to convert the file to different bitrates and see which is the lowest you find acceptable.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised just how low you can go and still get acceptable quality for voice. I'd suggest as low as mono at 32Kbit may be acceptable for this application.

Supplement from 05/14/2008 08:12pm:

Is there an option for Variable Bit Rate (VBR)?

If so, this could be the answer; it increases the bitrate in sections where there is a lot of sound detail, and reduces it again when less quality is required. Best of both worlds.

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