Requesting MP3 encoding advice

[Pullmyfinger]

I want to backup my CD collection (around 200) in MP3 to listen to on an MP3 player and my PC and I'd like advice on what encoder and settings to use, I'm mostly concerned about sound quality and not so much about storage space (but not unconcerned enough to use FLAC or something like that) so far I have been using Windows Media Player at 320 kbps and the other settings at default but I don't know if that's the best choice, any suggestions?

[Hatta]

Use LAME -V0. An incredible amount of work by people a lot smarter, with much better equipment, and better hearing than you or I has gone into finding the settings for LAME that give you absolutely transparent audio quality without being excessively big. The V0 preset is the result of that work.

LAME is free, crossplatform, and I'm sure you can find a GUI front end to your liking. If you have to use MP3, this is the way to do it. You should check if your audio player can handle AAC though. It sounds better at any filesize than MP3, and is supported by many players.

[Hatta]

I forgot to mention, you will absolutely want to do this with Exact Audio Copy. It checks each sector as many times as necessary to be certain that it's correct. Otherwise, any scratches you might have on the disc could end up as tics and pops in your audio file. IIRC it can encode straight to LAME too.

[Pullmyfinger]

Thanks a lot, I'm trying out EAC right now, it seems to have nothing but praise so I'll see how it works out

[ott0bot]

Hatta's advice is pretty good, especailly about exact audio copy. (or called error correction on many programs). I actually use iTunes. It's actually got pretty high quality encoding software, even my teachers (who are professional engineers use it).

I think the main thing you want to think about is quality. When you rip or convert audio to mp3 you loose information, so when you go to burn it again onto a cd it up-converts to a file similar to a AIFF or WAV. Now when it does that you don't get the info back. This can some times result in digital noise or artifacting(little pops and blips here and there). AAC is a bit better, but only lossless formats allow you to compress without losing data. These files of coarse are larger than mp3's or AAC. FLAC would be a good one, but you said you weren't interested in that. So basically just be aware that when converted your audio to mp3 it will not be 16-bit 44.1 cd quality audio. If you own most of your cd's this is not a problem, because you can always re-import as a higher quality file. Just some more info.

Here's another discussion we had a while back on the forums:
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... t=lossless

[Pulsar_t]

It's amusing how a decade ago 128-kilobit mp3 qualified as CD quality whereas nowadays if it's less than 192kb it's hardly worth listening to, unless it's a rare song!

[Pullmyfinger]

Thanks for the advice guys, I've been trying Exact Audio Copy and so far everything is great, there is only one thing that seems odd, I'm encoding with EAC in vbr, and since the files used to be in 320 kbps cbr ripped by windows media player the file sizes have obviously been smaller, however, when I rip a live album the vbr file size always turns out to be much bigger than the 320 kbps rip, around 40 mb more per album.

[Pulsar_t]

I think EAC hasn't been updated in a good while and it uses an older LAME library, which in turn means V0 consumes more bandwidth than needed (you're probably using the encoder to its maximum value and thus 320kbps is used throughout the whole stream). Why is it actually larger than CBR 320kb is baffling. Worst case scenario is that they would be similar in size!

As for me I use Winamp 5 Pro at 192kbit CBR, HQ profile and JS. Let's face it: analog speakers (unless you have digital?) lose more quality than it's worth to scrutinise the differences in quality at the higher spectrum of the bitrate enigma. I have a ripped Michael Jackson album @ 160kbits and it still sounds pretty good. Just use the more CPU intensive profiles and the highest bitrate you care to go for until size becomes an issue. Oh and download the standalone LAME library and use it with EAC. I think there's a separate ini bundled with the DLL so you can tweak options as you desire.