- The max bitrate REMAINS 192Kbps; if you want to visit my house and prove you can pass a blind test differentiating between 192Kbps and 256Kbps, be my guest. If you win, the bitrate will be raised. If you lose, you owe OC ReMix $300 for my time
- This decision was reached by vote of the judges panel on a thread I posted; our mirrors are handling MP3 bandwidth admirably and, combined with torrents, have proven that this increase should be sustainable, so I posed the question and the judges responded.
- If you already have a piece queued up you think would benefit from a higher quality encode, please get in touch with a judge, BUT please note that any such changes may delay the evaluation of your track. I’d recommend against it unless it’s a 6-7 minute track where the encode really brutalized things.
- As to the logical follow up question of “OMFG WHY NOT 10MB?! OR EVEN… 100MB!!!?“, well, to be honest 6MiB has been serving us quite well for a long time. There are logistics involved at OCR that are fairly unique, and specifically when you factor in the (necessarily) manual evaluation of both arrangement and production PLUS the general deterrence towards mega-medleys, etc., we feel it makes a lot of sense.
- We are considering going back and soliciting higher quality encodes of mixes ALREADY posted, but have not formalized any plans. Please don’t ask to update any existing tracks you may have had posted on the site, as we won’t do it – in other words, don’t call us, we’ll call you.
That’s it, pretty much. While I’m sure someone can manage to put a negative spin on this by complaining that it took us too long, that it should be raised higher still, or that Larry smells (only one of which is true), I see it as a “good thing” that represents our steady, stable, persistent improvement of the site over time.