CD Ripping/Encoding Options - Need Advice

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:

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.

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:

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

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

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:

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.

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:

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 :)

Good idea! :thumbs:

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

:cheers:

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