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Favorite mp3 rip level??

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Once I connected a decent HT system to my PC and 'heard' the difference between 320cbr EAC/Lame and uncompressed CD audio/.wav file, I stopped doing any encoding. With large HDDs, space seems no longer a concern.
 
Originally posted by: sandeep108
Once I connected a decent HT system to my PC and 'heard' the difference between 320cbr EAC/Lame and uncompressed CD audio/.wav file, I stopped doing any encoding. With large HDDs, space seems no longer a concern.
Click to expand...

You should look into flac instead of wave or an equivalent lossless audio codec.

VBR QL2... can't tell the difference between that and the highest qual (QL0) and it is about the same size as 192cbr. As for you lossless advocates you might as well leave the CD alone. Ripping to disc is all about the compromise between quality/size. We'd all love 320kbps or lossless, but the amount of space it would take to store/backup is not practical.
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I just ripped all of my CD's in FLAC. Needless to say the storage they all took up on my drive (300 GB) is miniscule compared to the advantage of having a perfect backup/copy of the song.
 
You should look into flac instead of wave or an equivalent lossless audio codec.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I will. Have just started (earlier just used EAC/Lame) so it should not be too much effort to convert to it.
 
I can't believe how many people are telling you to rip to a lossless format for mostly car and gym listening. They're either nuts or they have disk space and mp3-player memory to burn.

Unless you're an acoustic engineer or have otherwise superior hearing, 192 LAME CBR will do just fine for either of those.

--James in S.D.
 
Originally posted by: CapaJC
I can't believe how many people are telling you to rip to a lossless format for mostly car and gym listening. They're either nuts or they have disk space and mp3-player memory to burn.

Unless you're an acoustic engineer or have otherwise superior hearing, 192 LAME CBR will do just fine for either of those.

--James in S.D.
Click to expand...

Hmm...

I know when I was a young pup, I my hearing was much better. I could even hear the whine of the TV set, that my daughter can hear, but now I can't. I'm 47 now and my hearing is decent still, but I know the highes aren't like they used to be. I get hearing tests each year and very little loss has been noted there.

So all things considered, is a 47 year old going to hear the difference in a smaller files size MP3? Some songs I have are at 128 bit for example. I'm looking at getting an iPOD nano for the car so I don't have to haul CD's anymore.

 
.wma Lossless (800-1000+)

...And yes I can hear the difference on my z5500's. With 700gb of HD space to store them I don't worry much about size. MP3 just sounds crappy to me... but again I am very picky about my audio.
 
Originally posted by: acole1
.wma Lossless (800-1000+)

...And yes I can hear the difference on my z5500's. With 700gb of HD space to store them I don't worry much about size. MP3 just sounds crappy to me... but again I am very picky about my audio.
Click to expand...

I really wonder how age and hearing figures into this. As I said above, my hearing was noticably better on the high end around 20 vs now in my mid/late 40's.

The reason I bring this up is that generally, hearing deteriorates with age, esp the high end of the spectrum - so I'd imagine the pickiest people will mostly be those in the 15-25 year old group and after that is probably gradually begins to taper off a bit.
 
Originally posted by: CapaJC
I can't believe how many people are telling you to rip to a lossless format for mostly car and gym listening. They're either nuts or they have disk space and mp3-player memory to burn.

Unless you're an acoustic engineer or have otherwise superior hearing, 192 LAME CBR will do just fine for either of those.

--James in S.D.
Click to expand...

The point is...why rip twice. If at some point you might be listening on your connected speaker system and sometimes at the gym, why rip it at 192 to only want to rerip it to get better quality? It is much easier to rip into flac and then use a program like dBpoweramp to convert to your desired format than have to get the CD out each time you want a new format.
 
VBR = Variable Bit Rate by the way...
Also, if your stand alone player can't play it, there is something wrong because my cell phone plays them flawlessly (k700i)...

Using LAME, -V 0 --vbr-new, FTW
 
Originally posted by: techwanabe
Originally posted by: acole1
.wma Lossless (800-1000+)

...And yes I can hear the difference on my z5500's. With 700gb of HD space to store them I don't worry much about size. MP3 just sounds crappy to me... but again I am very picky about my audio.
Click to expand...

I really wonder how age and hearing figures into this. As I said above, my hearing was noticably better on the high end around 20 vs now in my mid/late 40's.

The reason I bring this up is that generally, hearing deteriorates with age, esp the high end of the spectrum - so I'd imagine the pickiest people will mostly be those in the 15-25 year old group and after that is probably gradually begins to taper off a bit.
Click to expand...


I would tend to agree. I can tell a ever so slight decline in the sharpness of my hearing, but it is still rather good at 20.
 
Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Originally posted by: CapaJC
I can't believe how many people are telling you to rip to a lossless format for mostly car and gym listening. They're either nuts or they have disk space and mp3-player memory to burn.

Unless you're an acoustic engineer or have otherwise superior hearing, 192 LAME CBR will do just fine for either of those.

--James in S.D.
Click to expand...

The point is...why rip twice. If at some point you might be listening on your connected speaker system and sometimes at the gym, why rip it at 192 to only want to rerip it to get better quality? It is much easier to rip into flac and then use a program like dBpoweramp to convert to your desired format than have to get the CD out each time you want a new format.
Click to expand...

I agree... why rip twice? As for lossless codecs, I have heard it is possible to convert a lossless codec to a different lossless codec (and vice versus) without any degradation of the sound file...so any lossless codec should be ok...
 
Originally posted by: SnoMunke
Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Originally posted by: CapaJC
I can't believe how many people are telling you to rip to a lossless format for mostly car and gym listening. They're either nuts or they have disk space and mp3-player memory to burn.

Unless you're an acoustic engineer or have otherwise superior hearing, 192 LAME CBR will do just fine for either of those.

--James in S.D.
Click to expand...

The point is...why rip twice. If at some point you might be listening on your connected speaker system and sometimes at the gym, why rip it at 192 to only want to rerip it to get better quality? It is much easier to rip into flac and then use a program like dBpoweramp to convert to your desired format than have to get the CD out each time you want a new format.
Click to expand...

I agree... why rip twice? As for lossless codecs, I have heard it is possible to convert a lossless codec to a different lossless codec (and vice versus) without any degradation of the sound file...so any lossless codec should be ok...
Click to expand...

That is correct
 
Unless you're an acoustic engineer or have otherwise superior hearing, 192 LAME CBR will do just fine for either of those.
Click to expand...

Well maybe everybody will pounce on me, but I tried flac last night and still could hear the compression on the flac audio file. I tried quality 2 also (only 30% compressed) instead of default 5 (50% compressed), but still could hear a difference, when comparing playing back the different files. But yes, flac sounded much better than any mp3. Since it is lossless, I presume it will restore the wav file to its original state (I will try it out and see) so may be good for archiving / backing up your CD collection. But I think I will stick to no compression and rip to wav using EAC and add more HDDs as required at least for my PC/HT setup.

As far as portable devices and lower end speaker systems go, I guess flac at 50% would be superior simply because you can always restore the original or use it for lossy compression into any file format you need without further loss of quality, as remarked by a previous poster.
 
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