I am currently in the process of putting all my music CD's on my computer. I have been using the 320 setting but the problem is I am going to run out of room and was wondering if I were to lower the quality is the difference going to be really noticeable. I currently have been backing these files up on multiple external drives but on the hard drive on my computer I am going to run out of space. If someone could help with their opinion on the quality setting it would be greatly appreciated thanks
Variable Bit Rate mp3s (VBRs) have the most compression for a giving quality. I would recomend LAME as the encoder. If you use LAME, use slow analysis setting. I would also recomend not buring at V0 which is the best quality setting. That can be compaired with the quality of a 320 which is over kill. It is believed by many you can't appreciate anything better than 190. You will save up to 25% over a constant Bit Rate compression going from 320 to V0. The space saving is not predictable. I have seen the bit rates range from 320 to 180 for the V0 setting. A better plan is to spend 100 bucks and buy an huge external drive when they go on sale. They are comming out with 2 TB low energy drives very soon. You ought to be able to pick up a TB drive on Presidents day for about 100 buck in the US. Then you can use V0 and not worry the if you are using too much space. I would also recommend using either EAC (free) or dbPowerAmp ($25/year) rippers to do the job. Both have the Accurip option; use it. Poweramp is less work. If you are ripping lots of disks and have $25 to burn dbPoweramp makes sence. You ought to at least use the 30 day free trial. I would install the Apple and Flac encoders in your 30 free days. After the 30 days you will not be able to rip without paying but the handy tag reading tool will continue to work. If you keep your pointer on a file in File Explorer you will see a popup box with all the tag info. That tool is invaluable once you start to understand what you are reading. It will read any format that you installed an encoder for. Good luck.
Not really concerned with burning. I am basically going to put all my cds on the computer and then basically just put them on my Zune. Due to the fact that most cars now come with the ipod plug in I am just trying to get away from the whole cd thing altogether otherwise I will just have a bunch of worthless stuff like my albums and cassette tapes. I was just wondering what is the best quality to save this stuff at but yet not overkill. I am currently filling up my hard drive and I still have a ways to go as far as my cd collection. I currently have the zune software looking at my hard drive on my comp rather then my external drive. I could switch it but I thought it might not be good to use the external drive too much because I am not sure of the life span of these things. I have also backed everything up on a western digital passport. So I now have double backups. Mainly was wondering if 320 is the best to keep saving the stuff at or if I could lower it. Basically it just worrys me to be getting rid of basically the hard copies of my stuff but then again I am trying to sell them before I just end up with another worthless format piled up in my spare bedroom. Thanks in advance of your response The Pig
As Mez has rightly pointed out, VBR is the way to go. I used to rip to 320cbr myself, but on the valuble information that Mez has also given me, i stepped down to vbr. dBpoweramp can hog your machine alot, so i would recommend EAC. And theres a handy set up guide here.
