Seeking Opinions

[drar2014]

Hi everyone, I just purchased CD Ripper and I am excited to start ripping my music collection. I plan to rip mp3s to put on my phone for listening while on the road, and FLAC to play off my computer at home. I was looking to get some feedback/advice on my settings, specifically mp3. Right now I have it set to BitRate (ABR), 320 kbps, Encoding Normal. I know this will create a larger file, but I'm putting the songs on a microsd card in my phone, so I have a little more room to spare. My goal is to get the best quality songs/files while not creating too large of a file. I have a good set of headphones, and my music player can handle the file size. Have I reached a good compromise with my settings?

Thanks.

[garym]

Re: Seeking Opinions

Hi everyone, I just purchased CD Ripper and I am excited to start ripping my music collection. I plan to rip mp3s to put on my phone for listening while on the road, and FLAC to play off my computer at home. I was looking to get some feedback/advice on my settings, specifically mp3. Right now I have it set to BitRate (ABR), 320 kbps, Encoding Normal. I know this will create a larger file, but I'm putting the songs on a microsd card in my phone, so I have a little more room to spare. My goal is to get the best quality songs/files while not creating too large of a file. I have a good set of headphones, and my music player can handle the file size. Have I reached a good compromise with my settings?

Thanks.

I wouldn't call it a compromise at all. You are erring on the side of overkill. Lame mp3 at -V2 (average 192kbs) would be generally transparent for most people on most songs. I use FLAC for home and lame mp3 -v2 for my portables. Do yourself a favor. Install foobar2000 and the ABX component. Then do some ABX tests between FLAC and various versions of lossy. I think you'll be surprised as to how small you can go. In my own case I could easily use lame -V4 or -V5 and be fine in 95% of cases. The lame -V2 is overkill for me.

[drar2014]

Re: Seeking Opinions

I wouldn't call it a compromise at all. You are erring on the side of overkill. Lame mp3 at -V2 (average 192kbs) would be generally transparent for most people on most songs. I use FLAC for home and lame mp3 -v2 for my portables. Do yourself a favor. Install foobar2000 and the ABX component. Then do some ABX tests between FLAC and various versions of lossy. I think you'll be surprised as to how small you can go. In my own case I could easily use lame -V4 or -V5 and be fine in 95% of cases. The lame -V2 is overkill for me.

Thanks your advice, this is what I am looking for. I did a little more research and I see your point about my settings being overkill. I think I'll take it down a notch and try the foobar2000 / ABX test you recommend with a max setting of Target: Quality (VBR) at 240kbps and go down from there.

Thanks again.

[garym]

Re: Seeking Opinions

Thanks your advice, this is what I am looking for. I did a little more research and I see your point about my settings being overkill. I think I'll take it down a notch and try the foobar2000 / ABX test you recommend with a max setting of Target: Quality (VBR) at 240kbps and go down from there.

Thanks again.

and remember, with a FLAC archive, you can always simply point at your parent directory of FLAC files, click the mouse a few times, and come back the next morning and have a full set of tagged, lossy files of any sort of size/setting. That's the beauty of having lossless files as your archive.