Hi, new to the scene - I bought my first mp3 player and already frustrated with the mp3’s sound quality. The player came with some demo songs in it, and the quality of their audio are rather good, pretty transparent, so I ripped some songs using NeroEE or Creative software at their same format ( WMA 192kbps, 44khz), and the quality of their audio is horrible; why is this? I’ve tried other formats ( MP3, MP3pro, WAV) at their highest bit rate with pretty much the same result; nothing like the original source. I read the sticky thread about LAME MP3, but could not follow it much; the fact is I don’t know much about LAME, ABR, VBR, CBR, alt-preset ------, EAC, etc.. Do I need to use better software to rip CDs or different programs? - What am I missing? I really could do with few suggestions on how to get better MP3’s audio, which to me is more important than disk space. I’d really like to keep the player, the ability to carry lots of song is very appealing, but if I don’t get MP3’s to sound similar the original source, I have no choice but go back to pcdp. Please help this noob out edit: (Zen Micro + Audio Technica CM7ti)
Stick with normal MP3. WMA and MP3pro are not as good as MP3's made by EAC with Lame. Which brings me to my next point. Use Exact Audio Copy with the Lame Encoder for the best sounding MP3's available. Here is the guide which tells you everything you need to know on how to set up http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/mydeneaclame.cfm and use this thread to see what results best suit you. I would recommend the VBR settings as they sound the best and take up less disk space than CBR. http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/1912 BTW nothing will sound identical to the original source unless you rip to WAV format which is not disk space friendly. The other alternative would be to rip to MPC but you plan to listen to songs on your MP3 player so it would be best to stick with MP3. p.s. what is pcdp
Ok, I’ve done some A, B, C testing, ripping the same songs in various formats with Nero 6’s PowerPack Lame MP3 Encoder, mp3PRO, WMA also with Creative Media Source MP3’s and the AEC LAME are clear the winners. Still, not as good as the original source but at the least I can start using the player. I don’t know how people can listen to normal MP3’s. A BIG thanks to the person(s) working on this software - kudos. I have a question: during installation I was asked to use either the LAME standard settings or the recommended settings ( from Hydrogen Audio forum), and chose the latter, but don’t understand the code. Are these the best encoding settings? The AEC’s Compression option window show this – Additional command line option: %l--alt-preset 128%l%h--alt-preset standard%h %s %d Bit rate: 192 kBit/s I don’t mind using more disk space for better audio. If anyone has other suggestions, please let’s have it. Thanks
I would just like to add something. The only time I have questionable sound quality is from songs downloaded from the internet (P2P) It must lose something in the transfer. Most of the music in my truck is MP3 ripped from my CD's at 192 and I can here no difference between the MP3 CDs and the originals. My last 2 MP3 CDs were made using Nero 6.6 and the sound quality is quite good
