enzo1982
commented
3 years ago The LAME resampling option was present in older versions of fre:ac, but was removed with the addition of DSP support and the libsamplerate based resample component.
Unfortunately, though, when using LAME with VBR 8, it will resample to 24 kHz even if fed 32 kHz input. So this is a valid request in principle.
However, I will no re-add the LAME sample rate option just to support this use case of encoding low quality MP3 while relying on a broken player that fails at 24 kHz audio. A simple work around, if you really want to take this route, is to use VBR 7.9 instead of VBR 8. This will result in 32 kHz output.
Please consider using higher quality encoding, though. While these old vinyl records may not provide the best quality to start with, LAME at VBR 8 will introduce additional digital artifacts that are different from the analog artifacts of the vinyl records. This will further degrade quality and may very well be audible and annoying to listen to.
I'd like to add a feature on LAME's configuration dialog box: subsampling (48, 44.1, 32, 24 kHz). Until now, given there's no such feature in the dialog box (but LAME in the command line version makes resampling possible with the --resample switch), the selection is automatic in function of the quality of the encoding. That is, with Freac, VBR0 is resampled at 44.1kHz while VBR8 is resampled at 24kHz. Which is an inconvenience, because some players cannot play files sampled at 24kHz. I'd like to force 32kHz in the circumstance, to encode tracks coming from old 78RPM records (Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and the likes) that don't need the extreme quality of more modern music. So, I need this selection possible in the LAME configuration dialog box.
NOTA: I know some would recommend ABR instead of VBR in such circumstances, but I still want to encode in VBR.