ripping cd's and keepng cd quality...

[TRH]

For most purposes, 192k/s is transparent with most audio formats, and universally accepted as a good rule of thumb with MP3 encoders.
By 'transparent' I meant blind listening tests showed that one can't tell the difference between it, and the original (cd quality). A CD's typical bitrate ) is around 1500k/s @ 44.1KHz... if I remember right. There's some minor variances, but don't worry.

Enough technobabble, unto the 'do' part.
EAC's already been recommended. Use it. It's the absolute best way to ensure you have the best possible starting point getting from the CD to your hard-drive to start compressing/encoding things from there.
If you can only play back MP3s, stick with ~224k/s except where you stereo equipment is showing fizzle -- in that case, 256k/s or a suitable VBR (variable bit rate) encoding will work fine. 320k/s is when you're wasting space.. the difference between 256k/s and 320k/s with MP3 is extremely insignificant, and I haven't found anyone yet that could tell the difference. Now, 192k/s on a good stereo, you'll get some crackle and fizzle here and there from the loss -- your good coverage of the spectrum and tweaking to ensure maximum input/output accuracy are working, that's all.
If you have a choice besides MP3, try to use a similar bitrate AAC (HE-AAC, specifically) VBR mode or Vorbis (ogg) format. Either of them has its ups and downs in its own ways, and you oughta conduct your own research into what suits your needs, and what will work best for your situation. Regardless, either of them offers more advanced features than MP3, in almost every department -- their main downside, I'll warn you now, is hardware/software support for playback.

If space isn't at all a problem, use a lossless format like FLAC or Monkey's Audio.

Remember, it's what you hear, not the other guy. Sorry if this dragged on a bit, I tend to get too technical.

More reading is always available over at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/

 

[4x4junkie]

For most purposes, 192k/s is transparent with most audio formats, and universally accepted as a good rule of thumb with MP3 encoders.
By 'transparent' I meant blind listening tests showed that one can't tell the difference between it, and the original (cd quality). A CD's typical bitrate ) is around 1500k/s @ 44.1KHz... if I remember right. There's some minor variances, but don't worry.

Enough technobabble, unto the 'do' part.
EAC's already been recommended. Use it. It's the absolute best way to ensure you have the best possible starting point getting from the CD to your hard-drive to start compressing/encoding things from there.
If you can only play back MP3s, stick with ~224k/s except where you stereo equipment is showing fizzle -- in that case, 256k/s or a suitable VBR (variable bit rate) encoding will work fine. 320k/s is when you're wasting space.. the difference between 256k/s and 320k/s with MP3 is extremely insignificant, and I haven't found anyone yet that could tell the difference. Now, 192k/s on a good stereo, you'll get some crackle and fizzle here and there from the loss -- your good coverage of the spectrum and tweaking to ensure maximum input/output accuracy are working, that's all.
If you have a choice besides MP3, try to use a similar bitrate AAC (HE-AAC, specifically) VBR mode or Vorbis (ogg) format. Either of them has its ups and downs in its own ways, and you oughta conduct your own research into what suits your needs, and what will work best for your situation. Regardless, either of them offers more advanced features than MP3, in almost every department -- their main downside, I'll warn you now, is hardware/software support for playback.

If space isn't at all a problem, use a lossless format like FLAC or Monkey's Audio.

Remember, it's what you hear, not the other guy. Sorry if this dragged on a bit, I tend to get too technical.

More reading is always available over at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/

That's an excellent post.

VBR (variable bitrate) is really where it's at. WHen using this mode, the software actually varies the bitrate of each frame within the mp3 file (raising it to encode a complex musical passage, or lowering it so as not to waste so much space encoding simpler parts).
A setting that results in files of ~190-210kbps using LAME (mp3 encoder) will be just as transparent as full 320kbps to virtually everyone. High freqs to 18-19kHz are retained by default with such settings as well (these settings are often referred to as "V 1", "V 2", "V 3", etc., or "--alt -preset standard" on older versions)

I use LAME VBR to compress my stuff down to ~130kbps just for use on my portable player. Quality is nearly identical to that of a standard 192kbps file.

Check out TRH's link. Excellent reading there.

 

[AllanD]

Variable bitrate seems hi-tech, but most playback equipment has
minor issues with it particularly in regards to properly displaying run time
of tracks.

If yuo have the storage space (large hard drives or a large iPod)
or you don't need to save space it's not worth bothering with.

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[Jay FX4]

+1. I never bother with variable bitrate. Why take the chance of compatibility issues? With variable you can set your min/max bitrate, but the idea that less complex sections of a song will have a reduced bitrate doesn't cut it for me. And the overall file sizes don't seem that much smaller.

 

[kunar]

i've been using audiograbber at 320 Kbit/s, ive done a hand full of cd's this way now. it makes a pretty big difference in the music, it sounds great. storage space isnt a huge issue so i think im just gonna leave it that way, but i have wondered if i could go with a slightly lower bit rate without any noticeable loss in quality....

 

[Jay FX4]

i have wondered if i could go with a slightly lower bit rate without any noticeable loss in quality....

Probably. You could probably go with 256, maybe 224 and not really notice a difference. The question is, if you're archiving your collection, do you want to compromise? That's up to you.

 

[kunar]

Probably. You could probably go with 256, maybe 224 and not really notice a difference. The question is, if you're archiving your collection, do you want to compromise? That's up to you.

i know it, ive thought the same thing... i think im just gonna stick with what im doing now...

 

[4x4junkie]

Variable bitrate seems hi-tech, but most playback equipment has
minor issues with it particularly in regards to properly displaying run time
of tracks.

If yuo have the storage space (large hard drives or a large iPod)
or you don't need to save space it's not worth bothering with.

AD

What... Are we living in 1995 here??

Anything made in the last 7-10 years supports VBR (software, hardware players, you name it. MP3 CD car decks were probably the last ones to not properly read them (although they'd still play them), but that seems to no longer be the case either).

But I guess if you want to fill your little portable player all the way up with only half to 2/3 as much music of the same sound quality, (or you have a 160GB hard-drive player with seemingly-endless storage capacity), then that's certainly your choice


Kunar, did you check out that link TRH posted?


.

 

[Jay FX4]

But I guess if you want to fill your little portable player all the way up with only half to 2/3 as much music of the same sound quality, (or you have a 160GB hard-drive player with seemingly-endless storage capacity), then that's certainly your choice

I was going to add a comment earlier but decided not to bother. But now that you said that, I guess I'll say it...

Personally, I rip everything at the absolute best quality possible, for the sake of archiving. Worst case scenario - I lose all my physical CD's. If that happens I want to have mp3's that sound as close to the source material as possible.

What I was going to say earlier is that with max quality mp3's, you can always re-encode it at a lower bit rate. If you have a "little portable player" with limited space, you can shrink your existing top quality mp3's using a lower bit rate and/or VBR for the purpose of using them exclusively on a portable player.

It's much easier and faster to re-compress an existing mp3 than it is to go through the process of re-ripping songs off the actual CD. As we all know, ripping a CD requires locating the disc, inserting into drive, ripping songs, encoding them, and creating ID3 tags. An existing mp3, already on the computer, can be shrunk in one step.

My philosophy is do it once, do it right. Once an mp3 is ripped, it's ripped. You can't improve the quality of an mp3 once you make it. There's only one direction you can go with the quality - down. That's why I always start with the best possible source. You can leave them as-is and rest assured you have the closest thing to the actual CD, and at the same time, you have the flexibility to shrink those files for a portable player, email, whatever.

 

[4x4junkie]

I was going to add a comment earlier but decided not to bother. But now that you said that, I guess I'll say it...

Personally, I rip everything at the absolute best quality possible, for the sake of archiving. Worst case scenario - I lose all my physical CD's. If that happens I want to have mp3's that sound as close to the source material as possible.

What I was going to say earlier is that with max quality mp3's, you can always re-encode it at a lower bit rate. If you have a "little portable player" with limited space, you can shrink your existing top quality mp3's using a lower bit rate and/or VBR for the purpose of using them exclusively on a portable player.

It's much easier and faster to re-compress an existing mp3 than it is to go through the process of re-ripping songs off the actual CD. As we all know, ripping a CD requires locating the disc, inserting into drive, ripping songs, encoding them, and creating ID3 tags. An existing mp3, already on the computer, can be shrunk in one step.

My philosophy is do it once, do it right. Once an mp3 is ripped, it's ripped. You can't improve the quality of an mp3 once you make it. There's only one direction you can go with the quality - down. That's why I always start with the best possible source. You can leave them as-is and rest assured you have the closest thing to the actual CD, and at the same time, you have the flexibility to shrink those files for a portable player, email, whatever.

This is all very true, I won't argue with you on that, but if you're doing it for archival purposes, I would never use a lossy format like MP3 at any bitrate, I would use Monkey's Audio (.APE) or Free Lossless (.FLAC) for that purpose (I think Windows Media offers a lossless option as well, but be sure to turn the copyguard shit (on by default) off before you rip to that if you don't want any headaches later down the road). Lossless is actual true CD quality, and can be encoded over to MP3s at any time just as easy.

 

[Jay FX4]

This is all very true, I won't argue with you on that, but if you're doing it for archival purposes, I would never use a lossy format like MP3 at any bitrate, I would use Monkey's Audio (.APE) or Free Lossless (.FLAC) for that purpose (I think Windows Media offers a lossless option as well, but be sure to turn the copyguard shit (on by default) off before you rip to that if you don't want any headaches later down the road). Lossless is actual true CD quality, and can be encoded over to MP3s at any time just as easy.

Good points! I have never heard of this Monkey business. I will look into it. I have heard of FLAC, but I don't know much about that either, aside from the fact that it's lossless. What kind of file sizes are we looking at with FLAC? I would obviously expect them to be larger than mp3, but if the files aren't outrageously huge, I'd definitely consider re-ripping my favorite CD's.

 

[4x4junkie]

Lossless files typically come out around 55-65% of the uncompressed .WAV file. Depending on the complexity of the music though, they can be anywhere from 20%-80% of the WAV size. Although with 1TB SATA hard-drives dipping under $100 now, who cares? lol

Again I'll say check out TRH's link (www.hydrogenaudio.org). There's just too much info there to try to explain anything here (they even have a "Wiki" section). There are separate forum sections for discussing pretty much any file type too

 

[Nhaz]

The very fact you are using a MP3 format pretty much does away with high quality sound. cranking the bit rate helps. but for people like me that are blessed and cursed with being able to hear above 20khz Mp3's sound terrible to me since I can hear all the highs being cut off on most tracks.


Old flyvac style TV's used to give me rather bad headaches since I could hear the flyvac whining away. To this day I can't stand piezoelectric style tweeters they grate on my ears.

I find 192 bit rate about the best for my ears. At 320 bit I start hearing stuff that isn't in the recording.

Wav format actually records everything without cutting off the highs. Having good equipment helps too. The problem being wav format is about 8-10 times the size of mp3's this has been a problem for a long time since a cd can only hold so much. If you have a USB capable deck in your truck/car you may want to consider recording in wav format and then transferring to a large USB key and plug that into your deck.

 

[Jay FX4]

I have done the math and I know I could fit my entire collection (400+ CD's) on my 120GB hard disk @ 320. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that with monster WAV files. I wish my HU could decode FLAC files, that would be the ideal scenario. I have done tests, and I can't tell a difference between a WAV and a 320 mp3 on the truck sound system, likely because the sub and un-amped speakers are masking any flaws. My hearing is very good, I can definitely tell the difference between my more recent higher quality rips and my old rips that threw away everything over 16kHz. I've done a lot of testing with Cool Edit Pro 2.0, totally cutting off different frequencies. When I cut everything below 20kHz, I essentially hear silence. So as far as the high frequencies go, mp3's are not limiting me there. Anyone who can hear frequencies well over 20kHz has a one-in-a-million set of ears. That's almost getting into the frequency range of dogs....

 

[Nhaz]

Terabyte drives are 100 bucks were I am and dropping. If file space is a problem pickup a terabyte drive or a 2 terabyte drive =>