MP3 quality (128k etc)

Mr .Bungle

Hi, since i got myself a CD MP3 player just have a few question about MP3 quality

1) Is 128 k Cd quality?
2) Is it worth recording things in higher quality such as 160k and 192k

well thats about it, cheers

leeroybrown

No, 128k is not quite CD quality. A CD just uses diditally sampled music with about 10 Megs per minute. A 128k mp3 resamples this digital audio and reduces the size to approx 1 Meg per minute, by removing redundant data and improving formatting.

160k and 192k are worthwile if the difference is noticable to you on the CD player you're using.

THe best thing to use is VBR (Variable Bitrate mp3's) if they are supported on your player. They are encoded to a defined average bit rate. The bit-rate is then increased and decreased from this rate continuously depending on the quality required by a certain section of the music. This ensures that the ratio of sound quality to size is about as good as possible.

_CreeD_

Its also important to try different encoders. Have a look here http://www.r3mix.net, its an excellent site that should cover just about everything you need to know about high quality encoding.
Personally I recommend using LAME and then Audiograbber as a front end (LAME is just a barebones commandline encoder, Audiograbber can rip the cds, perform the naming/ID3 tag insertion etc then run LAME itself to encode). LAME comes in 2 flavours, a DLL for plugging-in to apps like Audiograbber easily, or an EXE. The EXE offers much more flexibility, all described at the site mentioned above. You can get audiograbber to use the EXE instead of the DLL pretty easily, if you decide to use this combo mail me and Ill send you instructions (not hard, just dont want to take up space here since no doubt a lot of folks will recommend other combos/software packages....Just trust me LAME is by far an away the best sounding encoder so no matter what front end you use make sure its compatible).
Also as Leeroy states VBR is best, the VBR-MTRH method in LAME is excellent.

leeroybrown

The LAME encoder is also an LGPL'd free open-source project. By using it you are supporting open-source development.

JustHalf

192kbps is excellent quality - I think 192kbps VBR is even better. I had a 128kbps copy of a song from a CD, and I re-encoded it from the original at 192kbs VBR, and it's much better quality... the 128kbps copy sounded far more "tinny" and light, whereas when encoded at 192kbps VBR it gained far more depth.

DiscoStu

dont bother with audiograbber use cdex. its free and does eveything that audiograbber does.
http://www.cdex.n3.net/

JustHalf

Or Exact Audo Copy (EAC).

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

PiE

Cdex won't run on (my) winXP, EAC works splendidly though :]

Da Bounca

How many mb worth of music can you store on the player?

If its low enough, you may as well put on lower quality so you have a decent amount of songs.

Mr .Bungle

185Mb per Cd. Hmm would my player support those VBr or whatever mp3s? it says it supports 32-320k mp3s...

Gerry

It only takes 12cm cd's or something? I've a goodmans CDMP 345 and it takes the normal 650 or 700mb cd. Tis pretty cool, I just slapped some 192kbit VBR mp3's onto a cdrw today, and it played them no bother, something which eludes windows media player. It also skips all the non-mp3 data files, which is nice since a lot of cd players will play through data tracks as well.

leeroybrown

The specs for the player should say exactly what formats it supports. There would probably be some good info on-liune about it. And even if it doesn't support VBR a lot of the mp3 CD players are firmware upgradable to add support for newer versions.

And anyway, 185 Megs is still 2 hours of good quality music encoded at normal 192kbps.

You could pick a few songs and encode them at various bit rates. Then you could burn them onto one CD for a test to see how high a bit rate gives you the best ound from it.

Mr .Bungle

Yeah it plays mini CD's. Is there any easier to use encoders? appartnly the X-Audio ones are **** but i can't get my head around the LAME encoder and EAC doesn't really work properly without using LAME

_CreeD_

Try this command line:

%s %d --nspsytune --vbr-mtrh -V0 -q0 -b128 --lowpass 19.7 --athtype 3 -Z -X0

Where %s = Source and %d = destination names, may be different depending on the front end you use. So the LAME exclusive command line (On a one by one basis) is the above minus these variables (But this one works for Audiograbber as is).

Mailman

Diamond RioVolts don't like them according to their documentation but if you stick with LAME which closely follows the MP3 standard you shouldn't encounter too many side effects with the exception of wrong track times after FF and RR on a track.I've been happy with 192kbps LAME VBRS created using EAC on all the MP3 players I've tried so far.