Originally posted by: SickBeast
Originally posted by: Shockwave
Originally posted by: SickBeast
It's not about saving a little bit of space for me. I find that LAME alt-preset-standard sounds exactly the same as a CD. Invisible compression if you will. I can notice 192kbps compression. To get that with a non-VBR MP3, I need to use at least 256kbps if not 320kbps.
I find people who DON'T use LAME even more annoying than you find the VBR folks. They're uploading second-rate music that would have sounded flawless if they had encoded it properly.
What hardware are you using?
To encode? An Athlon Mobile at 2500mhz. It can actually compress LAME files faster than my 2 52X CD-ROM drives can rip in EAC with error checking turned on (both drives ripping at the same time). So I'm guessing that's around 20X, so it's not too bad at all.
For playback, I'm running an Apple iPod w/ Bose Triport headphones. It's a damn nice setup if I must say so myself. It allows me to hear subleties in music that I would not have noticed otherwise (including MP3 artifacts). The headphones were overpriced for what I got (my buddie's Grado 80's sound as good if not better) but I needed something relatively small and lightweight, comfortable, and most importantly, with good isolation.
The Triports are the only product on the market that I have ever seen that can provide this, unfortunately. They cost $150.