Formats & Batch Ripper

[thejamesjr]

Can the following be converted In batch ripper without losing quality?

320kbps (CBR) MP3 to 256kbps (VBR) MP3
WAV to FLAC uncompressed or compressed

[Spoon]

Re: Formats & Batch Ripper

>320kbps (CBR) MP3 to 256kbps (VBR) MP3

Converting to a lossy codec looses quality, that is the definition of lossy, even 128Kbps >> 320Kbps would loose some quality

>WAV to FLAC uncompressed or compressed

No Loss, Lossless is lossless.

[wondermouse]

Re: Formats & Batch Ripper

WAV to FLAC - yes - flac is an uncompressed format so if you get a wav, turn it into a flac, then back again, you end up with what you started with.

320 CBR to 256 (or V0) VBR, no, but intheory there should be very little loss of quality, although you will lose some by unencoding and recoding the MP3 files. If you ripped the same wav file to MP3 320 and VBR 256, then I personally haven't found a great difference between the two formats.

One good way of making some MP3 files smaller is where you know the source is MONO, encode in MONO as well. In that case a 160k CBR Mono file will sound exactly the same as a 320k CBR Stereo file, while taking up half the disc space. Lots of 50s and 60s stuff is in mono, but sometimes it's difficult to know from the sleeve notes which tracks are mono and which are not.

Hope that helps a little...

[thejamesjr]

Re: Formats & Batch Ripper

Yeah, I just finished ripping my CD collection to 320 (CBR), and was just a bit curious as to what formats could be converted from this. I knew 256 (VBR) would save me a little space on my HDD, but I prefer to have that slightly better quality. Now I'm debating whether I should rip to FLAC while I have my CD's out.

Thanks for you're help.