Favorite mp3 rip level??

[orangat]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
.....
Ok...lets try to explain better for you then. When you burn an audio CD in NERO or similar program...if you drag and drop an mp3 into the CD it gets turned into a CD audio file(or basically a wav). So if you have a flac on your computer the same is true. That is what I was saying.

As I said before the point it that you can pick which type of compression you want to apply once you have the FLAC file. If I have a 1 GB flash player but I want 300 songs on there. I just load up dbpoweramp and convert the flac files the 128 kbps mp3! no problem.

Now if I have a 40 gig mp3 player I am loading songs on for a trip and I want better sound quality...no problem just convert the flacs to 320 kbps mp3 files.

If I am listening to them on my computer, I am getting full CD fidelity. Plus if I was the ever accidentally scratch my CD I have a perfect backup copy...sure can't hurt to have.

I don't understand whats so tough to understand about how nice this is. I also don't understand why you keep finding the need to try to poke holes and find flaws in my suggestion. You made yours, I made mine, please move on.

The OP wanted to know what bitrates are good, not archival quality backups. Your one word reply of FLAC is unhelpful.

He specifically mentioned 4 things.
- mp3
- bitrate 128/192/256/cbr/vbr
- portable for gym/car audio so not serious listening
- not for serious listening

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: orangat

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
.....
Ok...lets try to explain better for you then. When you burn an audio CD in NERO or similar program...if you drag and drop an mp3 into the CD it gets turned into a CD audio file(or basically a wav). So if you have a flac on your computer the same is true. That is what I was saying.

As I said before the point it that you can pick which type of compression you want to apply once you have the FLAC file. If I have a 1 GB flash player but I want 300 songs on there. I just load up dbpoweramp and convert the flac files the 128 kbps mp3! no problem.

Now if I have a 40 gig mp3 player I am loading songs on for a trip and I want better sound quality...no problem just convert the flacs to 320 kbps mp3 files.

If I am listening to them on my computer, I am getting full CD fidelity. Plus if I was the ever accidentally scratch my CD I have a perfect backup copy...sure can't hurt to have.

I don't understand whats so tough to understand about how nice this is. I also don't understand why you keep finding the need to try to poke holes and find flaws in my suggestion. You made yours, I made mine, please move on.

The OP wanted to know what bitrates are good, not archival quality backups. Your one word reply of FLAC is unhelpful.

He specifically mentioned 4 things.
- mp3
- bitrate 128/192/256/cbr/vbr
- portable for gym/car audio so not serious listening
- not for serious listening

Great and your two pages of criticizing said reply was equally unhelpful.

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: orangat

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
.....
Ok...lets try to explain better for you then. When you burn an audio CD in NERO or similar program...if you drag and drop an mp3 into the CD it gets turned into a CD audio file(or basically a wav). So if you have a flac on your computer the same is true. That is what I was saying.

As I said before the point it that you can pick which type of compression you want to apply once you have the FLAC file. If I have a 1 GB flash player but I want 300 songs on there. I just load up dbpoweramp and convert the flac files the 128 kbps mp3! no problem.

Now if I have a 40 gig mp3 player I am loading songs on for a trip and I want better sound quality...no problem just convert the flacs to 320 kbps mp3 files.

If I am listening to them on my computer, I am getting full CD fidelity. Plus if I was the ever accidentally scratch my CD I have a perfect backup copy...sure can't hurt to have.

I don't understand whats so tough to understand about how nice this is. I also don't understand why you keep finding the need to try to poke holes and find flaws in my suggestion. You made yours, I made mine, please move on.

The OP wanted to know what bitrates are good, not archival quality backups. Your one word reply of FLAC is unhelpful.

He specifically mentioned 4 things.
- mp3
- bitrate 128/192/256/cbr/vbr
- portable for gym/car audio so not serious listening
- not for serious listening

Great and your two pages of criticizing said reply was equally unhelpful.

As was your two pages of justification of a crummy one word reply - FLAC.
At least I gave a good response on using Lame presets.

 

[Cerb]

FLAC, ebfore anything else. The OP has a nice machine, fully capable of transcoding as necessary.

What happens if something isn't good enough down the road? With FLAC, it's no big deal--transcode to the lossy format. That is why lossless is good. You can worry about lossy size and quality when you need it for a DAP or other very limited capacity/power/bandwidth use. Meanwhile, you've got the original audio data, fully tagged, sitting there on the HDD, with no re-ripping needed, except in the case of filesystem or hardware failures (in which case the lossy stuff is just as bad off).

Please, go lossless. It's wonderful! You've got it just plain done, and can do anything you need with the audio, without going back to the CD.

For portable listening, I use -V 0 --vbr-new, but out of laziness. At least 90% of my stuff is plenty good enough at -V 4, and likely even lower.

I would put a fair bit of trust in this, for dealing with the MP3 bitrates:

Best Quality: archiving
-b 320 - This is the strongest setting for MP3, with the lowest risk of artifacts.
With the exception of a few situations, quality is rarely better than the highest VBR profiles described below.
Alternative: Lossless formats like WavPack, Flac etc allow true archiving bit for bit like on original CD.

High Quality: HiFi, home or quiet listening
-V 3 --vbr-new (~175 kbps), -V 2 --vbr-new (~190 kbps), -V 1 --vbr-new (~210 kbps) or -V 0 --vbr-new (~230 kbps) are recommended.
These settings will produce transparent encoding (transparent = most people cannot distinguish the mp3 from the original in an ABX blindtest).
Audible differences between these presets exist, but are extremely marginal.

Portable: background noise and low bitrate requirement, small sizes
-V6 --vbr-new (~115 kbps), -V5 --vbr-new (~130 kbps) or -V4 --vbr-new (~160 kbps) are recommended for this use.
-V6 --vbr-new produces an acceptable quality, while -V4--vbr-new should be close to perceptual transparency.

Very low bitrate, small sizes: eg. for voice, radio, mono encoding etc.
--abr xx (e.g. --abr 80)
For very low bitrates, up to 100kbps, ABR is most often the best solution.
--preset voice is only available in the command line front-end, and is there for compatibility.
It is currently mapped to --abr 56 -mm, so that means that the recommendation would be to encode in mono, and use ABR.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=28124

 

[PurdueRy]

nm

 

[SnoMunke]

So the OP asked for bitrate recommendations for MP3... GOD (or any other deity) FORBID I suggest an alternative (lossless) and give reasons why that suggested alternative is better. That is just not allowed here...right? We don't suggest how things should be done better right? This is not a TECHNICAL forum right? We must all conform to one mind and one thought right?

MP3 sucks at any bitrate. Period. And if you any of you had a decent sound system, compared MP3 (at ANY bitrate) and knew what to look for, it would be readily apparent that a lossless format DOMINATES a compressed format. God FORBID that I suggest to the OP to look at a lossless option.

We don't suggest better solutions here do we? It is just IMPOSSIBLE for some of you all to think out of the box. I guess that is why the rest of us our here. If it wasn't for us snobs, the rest of you would still want to use stone tools/utensils...

 

[bigboxes]

Yeah, I made the mistake in buying a 10ft. Monster Cable 1/8" -->rca and got ripped. They definitely were the better cables at the audio store, but this was before I knew similar cables could be bought online for much cheaper. Fool me once...

There is nothing wrong with lossless as long as you admit you are a snob. It's just not practical. Who knows, I may re-rip all of my CDs into FLAC one day when the cost of hdd space drops even further. The future may be made of 1000gb HDDs that cost <$100 and bandwidth may reach 30Mbps for our homes, but that day hasn't reached us yet. Unlimited wants + limited resources = Economics 101.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: bigboxes
Yeah, I made the mistake in buying a 10ft. Monster Cable 1/8" -->rca and got ripped. They definitely were the better cables at the audio store, but this was before I knew similar cables could be bought online for much cheaper. Fool me once...

There is nothing wrong with lossless as long as you admit you are a snob. It's just not practical. Who knows, I may re-rip all of my CDs into FLAC one day when the cost of hdd space drops even further. The future may be made of 1000gb HDDs that cost <$100 and bandwidth may reach 30Mbps for our homes, but that day hasn't reached us yet. Unlimited wants + limited resources = Economics 101.

LOL at least you learned your lesson.

I don't think I need to admit to "being a snob." For $130 or so you can get a 300 GB hard drive. I have 420 GB total hard drive space. After ripping all my music in FLAC I have used 60 GB of the 300 GB hard drive and thats including some games, pictures and other stuff.

I think its pretty practical nowadays but you are welcome to disagree. At least you can state your opinion without trying to degrade other peoples .

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: Cerb
FLAC, ebfore anything else. The OP has a nice machine, fully capable of transcoding as necessary.

What happens if something isn't good enough down the road? With FLAC, it's no big deal--transcode to the lossy format. That is why lossless is good. You can worry about lossy size and quality when you need it for a DAP or other very limited capacity/power/bandwidth use. Meanwhile, you've got the original audio data, fully tagged, sitting there on the HDD, with no re-ripping needed, except in the case of filesystem or hardware failures (in which case the lossy stuff is just as bad off).

Please, go lossless. It's wonderful! You've got it just plain done, and can do anything you need with the audio, without going back to the CD.

For portable listening, I use -V 0 --vbr-new, but out of laziness. At least 90% of my stuff is plenty good enough at -V 4, and likely even lower.

I would put a fair bit of trust in this, for dealing with the MP3 bitrates:

Best Quality: archiving
-b 320 - This is the strongest setting for MP3, with the lowest risk of artifacts.
With the exception of a few situations, quality is rarely better than the highest VBR profiles described below.
Alternative: Lossless formats like WavPack, Flac etc allow true archiving bit for bit like on original CD.

High Quality: HiFi, home or quiet listening
-V 3 --vbr-new (~175 kbps), -V 2 --vbr-new (~190 kbps), -V 1 --vbr-new (~210 kbps) or -V 0 --vbr-new (~230 kbps) are recommended.
These settings will produce transparent encoding (transparent = most people cannot distinguish the mp3 from the original in an ABX blindtest).
Audible differences between these presets exist, but are extremely marginal.

Portable: background noise and low bitrate requirement, small sizes
-V6 --vbr-new (~115 kbps), -V5 --vbr-new (~130 kbps) or -V4 --vbr-new (~160 kbps) are recommended for this use.
-V6 --vbr-new produces an acceptable quality, while -V4--vbr-new should be close to perceptual transparency.

Very low bitrate, small sizes: eg. for voice, radio, mono encoding etc.
--abr xx (e.g. --abr 80)
For very low bitrates, up to 100kbps, ABR is most often the best solution.
--preset voice is only available in the command line front-end, and is there for compatibility.
It is currently mapped to --abr 56 -mm, so that means that the recommendation would be to encode in mono, and use ABR.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=28124

Originally posted by: SnoMunke
So the OP asked for bitrate recommendations for MP3... GOD (or any other deity) FORBID I suggest an alternative (lossless) and give reasons why that suggested alternative is better. That is just not allowed here...right? We don't suggest how things should be done better right? This is not a TECHNICAL forum right? We must all conform to one mind and one thought right?

MP3 sucks at any bitrate. Period. And if you any of you had a decent sound system, compared MP3 (at ANY bitrate) and knew what to look for, it would be readily apparent that a lossless format DOMINATES a compressed format. God FORBID that I suggest to the OP to look at a lossless option.

We don't suggest better solutions here do we? It is just IMPOSSIBLE for some of you all to think out of the box. I guess that is why the rest of us our here. If it wasn't for us snobs, the rest of you would still want to use stone tools/utensils...

Thank you

 

[Centoros]

I rip mine at 192 so I can use them on my iPod.

 

[orangat]

The OP specifically mentioned 4 things.
- mp3
- bitrate 128/192/256/cbr/vbr
- portable for gym/car audio so not serious listening
- not for serious listening

So he wasn't asking about FLAC. He wants to know FLAC/WAV->WHAT 128/192/256?

..MP3 sucks at any bitrate. Period..

I completely disagree. Read the c't link I posted. Trained golden ears have trouble telling apart some 128kbit samples from cd quality on expensive 30,000DM setups let alone PORTABLE MP3 players and CAR STEREOs that the OP stated his listening environ.

 

[ribbon13]

Originally posted by: bigboxes
There is nothing wrong with lossless as long as you admit you are a snob. It's just not practical. Who knows, I may re-rip all of my CDs into FLAC one day when the cost of hdd space drops even further. The future may be made of 1000gb HDDs that cost <$100 and bandwidth may reach 30Mbps for our homes, but that day hasn't reached us yet. Unlimited wants + limited resources = Economics 101.

You can get what, like 3 FLAC albums per GB?... if you can afford to actually BUY 900 albums of music, you can afford a decently sized harddrive

Not practical, snobbish. You sir, have delved into ignorant trolling.



orangat, just... == postcount ++

Let's review the OP

Originally posted by: dalfollo
I am burning my CD collection to disk and I ould like to gear some feedback on suggested levels to rip the CDs to:

Disk == hard drive? Or are you going original CD - MP3 on hard drive -> Burned disc?

- Do you use straight or VBR (variable bit ripping (?))
- Currently I am ripping music at 192 VBR; and spoken word (Comedy/books) at ~80 or 112 VBR

Last time I did a large amount of ripping a couple years agao, i used 256 straight....

Any suggestions appreciated....mostly i will be burning disk for the car; transfering to an MP3 player for the gym....if i really want to hear the music perfectly i can just use my home stereo....so i want to save some space for my collection, but I do not want over do it....these are not archive copies....I wnt it to sound decent...

Thanks.

CDDA or MP3 CD in the car? Do your players support Ogg?

 

[Cerb]

3/1GB is optimistic. 2.5/1GB is closer to the reality of it. Still, that's over 300 CDs in 160GB, and 500 in 250GB (about $100).

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
.......


orangat, just... == postcount ++

........

This coming from a person who joined later than myself, has 8x the number of posts and slotted a totally useless 5 word post - FLAC.

 

[bigboxes]

Originally posted by: orangat

Originally posted by: ribbon13
.......


orangat, just... == postcount ++

........

This coming from a person who joined later than myself, has 8x the number of posts and slotted a totally useless 5 word post - FLAC.

Ribbon, you had 6,000 posts in your first month. You "reply" and I "troll". :roll: I usually enjoy your responses so I am not here to get into a fight. You seem to have everyone's situation figured out. I notice that you claim to purchase the best equipment. Well, I just do the best I can. I upgrade and add to my equipment as finances allow. I have a little over 1000gb (5 drives) of usuable storage space in my file server. The OS drive died (head crash) and I am awaiting finances to replace that. I would like to have my media backed up to another hdd, but currently just have it backed up to dvd. It's not like I built it overnight. The drives have slowly gotten larger as I replaced older ones. Today, drives are much larger, but that was not the case when I built it. So, I have a lot of projects that take priority over purchasing a bank of expensive 500gb hdds for capacity and redundancy. And that's what it would take as I already have a 160gb & two 300gb seagates and one 250gb wd in the file server.

It's all a matter of compromise between perfomance/cost. I would like six 500gb seagates in my file server, but I settle for upgrading/adding hdd(s) as I can afford them. I would like to house my music collection in the largest file size possible, but I compromise to allow the ability to store more data on the available space.

 

[bigboxes]

Originally posted by: orangat

Originally posted by: ribbon13
.......


orangat, just... == postcount ++

........

This coming from a person who joined later than myself, has 8x the number of posts and slotted a totally useless 5 word post - FLAC.

Ribbon, you had 6,000 posts in your first month. You "reply" and I "troll". :roll: I usually enjoy your responses so I am not here to get into a fight. You seem to have everyone's situation figured out. I notice that you claim to purchase the best equipment. Well, I just do the best I can. I upgrade and add to my equipment as finances allow. I have a little over 1000gb (5 drives) of usuable storage space in my file server. The OS drive died (head crash) and I am awaiting finances to replace that. I would like to have my media backed up to another hdd, but currently just have it backed up to dvd. It's not like I built it overnight. The drives have slowly gotten larger as I replaced older ones. Today, drives are much larger, but that was not the case when I built it. So, I have a lot of projects that take priority over purchasing a bank of expensive 500gb hdds for capacity and redundancy. And that's what it would take as I already have a 160gb & two 300gb seagates and one 250gb wd in the file server.

It's all a matter of compromise between perfomance/cost. I would like six 500gb seagates in my file server, but I settle for upgrading/adding hdd(s) as I can afford them. I would like to house my music collection in the largest file size possible, but I compromise to allow the ability to store more data on the available space.

 

[dalfollo]

Originally posted by: jdkick
My preference - MP3 @ 256k CBR.

I used to create mp3's @ 192k but after doing some stereo upgrades in my car, I noticed that 256k had better low end and clearer high's (even @ 192k, symbals were noticably splashy). Hearing the difference depends on the speakers/headphones and amp... they all impact the frequency that are actually reproduced.

As mentioned by Duvie, I use CBR because not all hardware will support VBR.

If you're just listening to these in the gym on earbud style headphones, then I wouldn't go crazy... 192k or maybe 160k is probably sufficient. IMO, 128k is certainly not "cd quality".

This may be the clearest answer I was lookign for...thanks for the post!

To all the others...thanks so much for the posts, I have learned and relearned a lot...I just don't have the patience and time to deal with "Uber Encoding"...I am loading EAC and LAME on my PC (in fact I will have a separate post about how to load LAME) and CDEx

Currently I am using (God forbid) Real Networks as the ripper it is working OK.....For anything I like I will be going with 256 CBR....for Speaking probably 192K VBR....and maybe some Uber-Encoding when I get to my collection of Roger Waters and old Pink FLoyd...

Thanks to all.....

Anyone want to suggest a good 20GB MP3 player?? (actually I am reading the other posts..) Thanks again!

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I use 128k mp3z for storing on 512mb cards for my PDA. On my system, 256k AAC encoding.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Originally posted by: dalfollo

Originally posted by: jdkick
My preference - MP3 @ 256k CBR.

I used to create mp3's @ 192k but after doing some stereo upgrades in my car, I noticed that 256k had better low end and clearer high's (even @ 192k, symbals were noticably splashy). Hearing the difference depends on the speakers/headphones and amp... they all impact the frequency that are actually reproduced.

As mentioned by Duvie, I use CBR because not all hardware will support VBR.

If you're just listening to these in the gym on earbud style headphones, then I wouldn't go crazy... 192k or maybe 160k is probably sufficient. IMO, 128k is certainly not "cd quality".

Creative Zen Photo

This may be the clearest answer I was lookign for...thanks for the post!

To all the others...thanks so much for the posts, I have learned and relearned a lot...I just don't have the patience and time to deal with "Uber Encoding"...I am loading EAC and LAME on my PC (in fact I will have a separate post about how to load LAME) and CDEx

Currently I am using (God forbid) Real Networks as the ripper it is working OK.....For anything I like I will be going with 256 CBR....for Speaking probably 192K VBR....and maybe some Uber-Encoding when I get to my collection of Roger Waters and old Pink FLoyd...

Thanks to all.....

Anyone want to suggest a good 20GB MP3 player?? (actually I am reading the other posts..) Thanks again!

 

[MidNiteMysT]

so what exaclty is this "lame" you all keep talking about? is it a program you use to encode and/or rip?

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: MidNiteMysT
so what exaclty is this "lame" you all keep talking about? is it a program you use to encode and/or rip?

:Q

LAME

 

[LoathedSynapse]

Or, perhaps a more useful link would be LAME compiled

 

[orangat]

Although 3.98a is probably almost exactly or exactly the same as 3.97b I would always suggest using beta or final versions not the alpha build. 3.97b2 should be the version everyone should be using.

 

[MidNiteMysT]

Is using lame much better than using something like nero? is it really a big difference? i dont really mind the speed of encoding.