Difference between CBR, VBR, and ABR?

[bryan12112]

I'm using JetAudio to convert my CD's to Ogg Vorbis. It gives you the option between those three. What do each of these mean? Is one better than the other as far as sound quality goes?

[exapno]

CBR Constant Bit Rate
VBR Variable Bit Rate
ABR Approximate Bit Rate

As far as OggVorbis goes, I believe that it's inherently VBR. If I'm converting to Ogg I use JetAudio to convert to FLAC then convert the FLAC file to Ogg using OggDrop Xpd (www.rarewares.org).

[rskbug]

ABR = average bit rate

[exapno]

ABR = average bit rate

My mistake, thanks for pointing that out. I don't know why I didn't put "average"... it's easier to spell ;)

[Pumpkin72]

Is one better than the other as far as sound quality goes?

Yes, VBR is better to select the audio quality. With VBR, it's the codec who dynamically determines the optimum resources (kbps) to assure a quality level during all the track. The bad side (which is not bad most of the times), is that you can't determine the resulting file size.

ABR is good if you want to control file sizes, though audio quality will be worse on the "difficult" parts.

And CBR is definitely worse to select audio quality. It's only recommendable for audio streaming, since in that case bandwidth (i.e. bit rate) is limited.

[arbennian]

Remember, if you encoding to Ogg Vorbis that Ogg is inherently VBR. So it in the end, it won't matter which of the three you pick. I think those options are intended for MP3.

[bryan12112]

All right. Thanks for the help, everyone.