I decide which rate (64, 128, etc) to record at depending on the type of recording I am doing.
If it is just vocals , I go with a lower rate (64K or even less). If music, I use 128K.
I don't notice much of a difference when I go higher than 128K, so for me, it's not worth wasting additional drive space, to step up to 160k or higher. To me compact music formats are meant to be small, so I can carry a lot more songs with me on CD's and storage devices. I can listen to my original CD's if I want them to be absolutely perfect. But I really can't tell much of a difference between an MP3 at 128K, and my original CD. So 128K is fine to me.
I just recently started using the Ogg format, as mentioned at the top. I recommend viewing the thread link provided above.
NO MP3 will be "cd quality", especially anything < 256kbits
Not 100% CD quality, but probably about 99% or so for 192kbps.
Which means that ears can't tell the difference, although a Tektronix signal analyser can.
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Originally Posted by A friend of mine who has a Linux kernel named after his girlfriend.
If I was VirtualBox, I could load my virtualization module into Hannah and boot up another kernel in the same address space.
Well in response to the original post, I rip all my music to 192Kbps MP3. Although I like both ogg-vorbis & acc, I decided to go MP3 because virtually everything (my Axim, iPod, modded Xbox, etc.) can play it by default. A 192Kbps MP3 is slightly over 7MB for a 5 minute song. You will get better performance on a variable bit rate, but I have always preferred constant.
I personally don't see much point to encoding at 320Kbps in a lossy codec. If you really care about quality, there are lossless formats like SHN and FLAC (but don't expect to use them on your Axim). Figure a lossless codec will end up being about 1/2 the size of the uncompressed WAV (this is more or less a limit due to the inherent enthropy in music). A great, free tool for lossless encoding can is called mKw Audio Compression Toolkit and can be found at etree.org (if you trade live concerts, never trade one that has ever been compressed wiith a lossy codec).
I encode in 256 VBR. If you're not worried about space, I'd recommend you do the same. Basically, I'd recommend encoding at the highest you can afford, with 128 being the bare minimum.
I think the decision of what rate to record MP3's at is a personal choice.
No person's recommendation is going to be the right one for everybody. We all have different needs regarding our music.
To me, MP3s recorded at 128k sound close to CD quality. I'm certain other people who are much more picky about their music will disagree.
I spent a lot of time experimenting with different quality settings while wearing headphones, before I converted my entire CD collection to MP3s.
I settled on 128k because the quality sounded close to the original CD, and the file size was small.
I can always listen to my original CD if for any reason I want an even higher quality ... but I don't see ever needing to do so. For me 128k is perfectly acceptable. :)
One thing no one has mentioned is that it depends on the source that you are ripping. If you are ripping audio book CDs, comedy albums, or other spoken word material, 64kbps is fine. More than that would honestly be a waste.
For music, the previous posters have provided some good info. I wouldn't try to improve upon it. I generally consider 160k to be the minimum quality I can tolerate, or 96k to 128k for WMA files. I do actually like WMA as a smaller alternative to MP3, with MP3 as my primary format. I don't like Ogg Vorbis primarily because there is far less support for it in non-PC devices.
I use a Sony Sports Discman MP3 CD player as my primary listening device, my X5 as the secondary, one of my DVD decks for tertiary, and the PC comes in last.
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cribbagewiz
I have heard it said that the death penalty is not enough of a deterrent.
I think that's because it takes too long to be carried out.
Please ignore my ignorance, but what do VBR and joint stereo do? Thanks.
They are both techniques designed to compress audio more efficiently.
Variable Bit Rate (VBR) takes advantage of the fact that audio can and does change greatly over time in both frequency and dynamics. More simply put, a song can have simple parts (a single piano playing) and complex parts (a whole orchestra playing). Encoding requires a lower bitrate to represent simple sounds with little reduction in quality than more complex sounds, so with VBR encoded audio the bitrate varies over time to accomodate these changes. A 192k VBR file means the average bitrate is 192 kilobits per second but it can fluctuate between 8k and 320k depending on the demands of the incoming sound. In fact, all mp3s are - to some extent - encoded at a Variable Bit Rate, it's just that the variability is considerably lower with Constant Bit Rate encodings.
Joint Stereo in MP3 terminology is a name applied to one of two slightly different mathematical techniques (Mid/Side Stereo and Intensity Stereo) which can more efficiently encode the stereo information contained in the original recording. Intensity stereo is only used at bitrates <=96k, which is unsuitable for most music so I will ignore it as this post is becoming too complicated already. Mid/Side stereo does not store Left and Right channels separately but as an average of both channels and the difference between both channels. This is advantageous because the majority of the available bits can be used on the Mid channel which contains most of the audible information.The Mid/Side encoding technique is also used (for slightly different reasons) in both FM Radio transmission and Dolby Surround.
@simon-ph: As some posters have pointed out different rates are suitable for different sources so the decision can be difficult. However, it is accepted by many that the best balance between filesize and quality can be obtained by using the LAME 3.90.3 encoder with the alt-preset-standard setting.
A common error with MP3 encoding is assuming that quality increases in a linear fashion, IT DOESN'T! For example the audible difference between a 64k MP3 and a 192k MP3 is huge and the bitrate differs by 128k, whereas the audible difference between a 192k MP3 and a 320k MP3 is comparitively tiny with the same 128k difference!
WMA, Ogg, AAC etc. should provide better quality at lower bitrates compared to MP3 as they address some of its shortcomings and apply additional techniques that MP3 does not support. Bear in mind though that all encoders are sensitive to their source material, some songs will sound better than others regardless of what format you use (excluding lossless techniques), there is no such thing as a perfect lossy audio encoder.
As I mentioned in a prior post, the rate you should record at is a personal choice.
What sounds good to you may not satisfy someone else.
Personally, I find 128k MP3 to be pefectly acceptable. I can barely tell the difference between my original CD and a 128k MP3.
OddbOd ... that explanation above was excellent. :approve: Just one question ... why would someone want to choose Constant over Variable ? Your explanation leads me to believe that VBR would produce a smaller file, and ultimately have the same quality as the CBR. So why would anyone choose CBR over VBR ?
Now, in late 2004, there is really only one reason to continue using mp3's - the codec's widespread use. However, the next generation formats such as ogg, wmv, aac, and others (mp3pro?) offer much better sound quality at the same bitrate, or conversely, lower bitrate/filesize for essentially the same quality.
Personally, I like using ogg files for ripping CDs. Maybe I's just unreasonaly suspicious of M$ knowing which CDs I'm copying, and so on (especially with the RIAA suing people and causing generaly havok). Also, I have been running linux at times, and ogg is on of the main formats for linux boxes.
I am anxiously awaiting my Axim, but having read that it has a pocket version of Windows Media 10, it should be pretty easy to rip CDs onto smallish wmv files and listen to them on the Axim. Has oneyoune tried this?
Maybe I's just unreasonaly suspicious of M$ knowing which CDs I'm copying, and so on (especially with the RIAA suing people and causing generaly havok).
Bryan
Why would you bother to tell them? You don't need to send info to M$ to encode.
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cribbagewiz
I have heard it said that the death penalty is not enough of a deterrent.
I think that's because it takes too long to be carried out.
... why would someone want to choose Constant over Variable ? Your explanation leads me to believe that VBR would produce a smaller file, and ultimately have the same quality as the CBR. So why would anyone choose CBR over VBR ?
The primary reason for choosing CBR is when you are transferring over limited bandwidth. A good example is web radio which always uses a fixed maximum rate, if it didn't then the listeners would get dropouts as the encoder would encode higher than the average rate half of the time (on average :rolling:). This is linked to the other reason which is predictability of the output files' size, with CBR you know what size an MP3 of any given length will be before you encode it.
VBR won't always produce smaller files (they should be about the same size) but it should always outperform CBR encoding with regard to quality as the available bits are used more intelligently.
One last thing, because of the vast differences in audio recordings some 128k MP3s sound great whereas others sound awful. I prefer to encode once using a quality based method as it is much quicker than the "suck it and see" approach which can entail multiple encoding sessions.
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