CD Ripping/Encoding Options - Need Advice

[Chinasaur]

Hey all,

My mp3 collection dates from the '98-'99 timeframe @ 128. Some normalized. Most are muddy/bad/just plain suck. I plan on re-doing the whole 5GB's at 320K, VBR @ Highest and Freq at 44khz. I have a mild hearing loss in upper and middle registers.

Question:

1. Should I rip at 48kHz vs 44kHz?

2. For my hearing loss can I downgrade sampling to 256 and not hear it? I can differentiate between 192 and 256.

3. I don't burn to CDDA but should I rip/encode at highest available to protect my options even if I can't hear everything?


Thanks :)


:cheers:

[QIbHom]

I've got a slight hearing loss in the mid-range, but I can still tell when something isn't ripped at a pretty high rate. If you lower the encoding rate, you lower it for all the frequencies, I think.

Also, it isn't just hearing that affects how one experiences music. It is also vibration. My mother, who was the first teacher in Michigan to teach music to deaf kids in a public school, found that deaf kids were more on pitch than hearing kids, because of the vibrations.

So, I'd go for the bigger, lusher files.

[Chinasaur]

QIbHom,

Thanks. Yeah..that's where I've ended up. I did 320 vs 192 and I can hear it so I guess I'm not as bad as I thought. Maybe it's just the cheap mp3's :)

Now I need a bigger HD :(

:cheers:

[pointwood]

Just use FLAC and you'll never have to encode your CD-collection again ;)

You will need a much bigger harddrive for that though :)

[Chinasaur]

Pointwood,

You're not kidding. I saw FLAC format for first time at www.magnatune.com (great music BTW) and wow...2/3rds the size of .wav's. :scared:

:cheers:

[pointwood]

Hmmm...2/3rds? I often find it to be closer to 1/2 the size. Still huge compared to Vorbis, AAC, MP3, etc. but lossless also comes with some cool advantages!

And yes, Magnatune.com is cool! I think I was the person that convinced him of providing FLAC :) In any case, it's much better than plain wav which is what he started with.

[Chinasaur]

Pointwood,

Ok. Half is correct. I checked. I bought Beth Quist's "Silver" today and it was 609 .wav and 366 FLAC. I'm downloading the .wav .zip's and ripping to 320... I ccan't afford the overheard of FLAC right now :)



:cheers:

[pointwood]

You could also download the FLAC's and encode to Ogg Vorbis, MP3 (or whatever format you prefer) from them - will give you the same quality and the FLAC includes metadata too, plus I could imagine the size of the download would be smaller :)

[Chinasaur]

Good idea! :thumbs:

I saw OS X has a FLAC client. And yeah, be a bit quicker.

:cheers:

[excaliber]

You could try Ogg Vorbis as well, its free and compresses better than MP3. Keeps same sound quality though.