- Till now "we" got no Problems when encoding mp2's at 128kbit when doing our KVCDs, so NOW when we do focus on DVD-R anyway its a good decision to make it better by rising the bitrate to for instance at least 160kbits.
- The problem of AC3enc.dll (out of liba52 FFmpeg core and so ffmpeg.exe also) is not the sound quality, its an issue of the bits treatment where some few player models do not support these resulted AC3s in a way of a proper playback.
Related to volume: If you add a normalizing like acid( -g max) then the volume is like the original AC3 from the orig DVD. And till now nobody in the world started a big topic about too low ORIG. AC3's
- Related to lower bitrates: There wont be a deeper cutoff in higher frequencies but a noticable distortion in higher frequencies which results in a "flanging" effect. Do encode a stereo signal using 96kbits mp2 and you will hear the high freq's but including that annoying flanging effect. Many people do interprete that as a "simple" cut-off of higher freq's but thats not the real mess.
So for me the resumeé is: IF using free encoding software, I choose mp2enc.dll in the case of 2.0CH output and azid.dll/AC3enc.dll in case of 5.1 input/output. - remember, we're talking about free software.
My player does not have any problems with AC3's delivered from the ac3enc.dll --- but thats like the way/sense as we choose our SAplayers for a proper KVCD playback (GOP up to 30 and non std. resolutions at mpeg1 video etc.) - and so that counts for our audio encodings too - as we're doing backups for our personal purposes.