Encoding accuracy

[matt27]

Greetings.
I use lame to rip my music and have noticed how different encoding speed options are rated for quality, as in slower encoding yields higher quality. First, I would like to know if by 'quality' we are talking about fidelity between ripped data and encoded data only? So, a slower encoding rate will ensure fewer discrepancies between rip results and encoded ones? If this estimation is correct, how prone to error is encoding process? Is the potential error rate significantly greater at faster encoder rates as opposed to slower ones? A number would be nice here. Finally, if encoder rate is important enough to warrant a separate, adjustible feature, how much faith can I have in my laptop's ability to 'copy' music files from one hard drive to another? File copying certainly means encoding data. Is the copying, or encoding process, inherently subject to infidelity? It's important that my copied music files are exact to sources. Can I adjust computer's copying process to ensure greater fidelity between sources and copies?
I've been puzzling (and fretting) over this so please excuse longwindedness.
Thanks!

[Spoon]

Re: Encoding accuracy

Error is a bad word as it assumes correct/incorrect, where lossy encoding (such as mp3), there are levels of quality.

[Ney]

Re: Encoding accuracy

I have a bit of a problem figuring out what your question is. But let me try to answer what I think I understand.

1) Copying files is normally very secure, most (if not all?) Operating systems have error checking when copying. And in the case that an error does occur it will mean currupt data either making the fle unusable or it will be very audiable. This however is not something you should worry about at all!

2) "File copying certainly means encoding data" No!

3) The encoding speeds in Lame (and other codecs) simply means some slight changes in the encoding algorithm. Slow simply means a bit more complex bit allocation algorithm. I'd always advice to use slow rather than setting the bitrate up. But the difference should be minimal either way.