Why don't you use Ogg Vorbis? A song encoded in Ogg Vorbis quality level 3 (nominal bitrate of 112 kbit/sec) sounds better than one encoded as a 128 kbit/sec MP3. Personally, I can't hear any differences at quality level (nominal bitrate of 128 kbit/sec) compared with the original, but that might be caused by my equipment.
Ogg Vorbis quality settings go from -1 (45 kbit/sec) to 10 (500 kbit/sec). It is always VBR. Even if you select quality 10, the actual bitrate will, most of the time, always be lower than 500 kbit/sec - it doesn't know what to do with all those 'unnecessary' bits!

I pressed Submit before I was done...

Anyway, I was telling this because you mentioned you wanted the most bang for your byte.

Also, I think there's something inherently wrong about MP3 VBR. Why does the encoder limit itself to multiples of 32 kbit? I haven't seen the Vorbis encoder do that.

Most of eMusic's catalogue is VBR.

But they are not as cool as they once were.

> Why don't you use Ogg Vorbis?

Compatibility, mostly.

I agree that the main advantage of a superior encoding format is better bang-to-byte ratio. So if I was shooting for 160 kbps average using MP3 VBR, I could perhaps do 128 kbps average with Ogg. The results in the listening test study were decisive in favor of Ogg and MPC:

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/plot18z.png

> Personally, I can't hear any differences at quality level (nominal bitrate of 128 kbit/sec) compared with the original, but that might be caused by my equipment

You should try some A/B testing with the uncompressed WAV files and Ogg files of various encoding levels to see what your threshold is. Mine is definitely 160 kbps, and I hear a HUGE difference in dynamism betwen CBR and VBR at that bitrate. The music is much more "alive" with VBR.

Heh, a man after my own heart, thanks for spreading the word.

The strange thing is that I happened to be ripping old Robert Plant CDs to VBR at the very moment I read this.

I just do 128KB/s avg for various reasons:
1) It's still way ahead of most of the retail encoding.
2) I rarely get the luxury of headphones or close listening these days (now that I'm a boring responsible grownup who needs to hear the phone).
3) Being a coder, 128 is just a nice familiar number (am I the only one who rounds to binary in real life?). It also helps preserve the 1min==1MB exchange rate, which is very handy for estimating capacities.

Matthijs --
Here's why I don't use Ogg: there are hardly any portable/car players which support it (or there were last I shopped ~1yr ago). Otherwise, yes it's great.

Whoops, slow on the draw there. :7

VBR is really the only way to encode MP3. Every other way sucks.

I use EAC w/ LAME to rip CDs. EAC has error checking to ensure a perfect copy of the CD in question.

Undoubtedly, the best bang for the byte!

I would suggest migrating away from Audiograbber to Exact Audio Copy.. the newest version is amazing. Audiograbber hasn't been truly updated in ages-- I was surprised to hear it was even still around. I remember doing some work for the author at least 5 years ago, and getting a free registration code in reply.

Also, I would check out hydrogenaudio.org's forums for tips on command lines and what builds of LAME are the best ones. there is also "ABR", which is somewhat like VBR.. but yeah, you can read up on it :)

Jeff,

You might want to try a couple of things; first, use the --preset switches with LAME, even if it means encoding from command line, and second, ditch Audiograbber. Real Men (tm) use ExactAudioCopy (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/). Not only can it flawlessly rip audio even from scratched CD's, it can also burn your rips and it's quite possible you'll be able to make byte-perfect copies since EAC knows about read/write offset correction.

Oooookaaaayyyy... Two other people suggested EAC while I was writing my reply :D

I guess that'll convince you ;)

I've entered a URL. Apparently, it will use mt-comment-renamed when you enter a URL, but show the email address without obfuscation when you don't.

Isn't that quite the opposite of what it should be like?

Jeff two things,

1) EAC all the previous posts are right, you are using a vastly inferior ripping application.

2) I have over 250 gigs encoded in FLAC, and while it is mostly for archival purposes, you just haven't lived until you listen to your MFSL albums encoded in FLAC for year, after year, after year in all their pristine glory without any degredation. Furthermore, with storage space as cheap as it is nowadays I just don't see the need for lossy audio compression.

I guess you are all super hero's because I can't tell the difference between a CD and the same CD encoded in 96Kbps and my ears are perfectly fine. I have made a lot of research in this area some time ago before I ripped all my music to mp3 so I could get rid of my cds that were taking up to much room. I decided to encode them in 96Kbps because I've read report where it said that the average human can't tell the difference at above 80Kbps with pop/rock songs, so I went for sure with 96Kbps, in case I had above average ears. Most people do not believe this, so I even tested it with some and they really could not tell the difference when they did not know at which compression rate it was encoded.

> I guess you are all super hero's because I can't tell the difference between a CD and the same CD encoded in 96Kbps and my ears are perfectly fine

Well, it depends heavily on how you're listening to it. I recommend good headphones. That said, everyone's ears are different, but.. 96 kbps? Ouch.

> EAC all the previous posts are right, you are using a vastly inferior ripping application.

Yes, yes, I know, I've used Audiograbber for a long time (since '98?). It's definitely not being updated.

> is also "ABR", which is somewhat like VBR

I am aware of "ABR" which is Average Bit Rate, eg, it forces the music to a plus or minus some percentage of a fixed bit rate. It's gotten bad press.

You might hear the difference when you burn the 96 kbps back to cdrom and ask somebody else to do a blind test with you. I've got no doubt that you'll instantly hear which CD is the original and which was degraded to 96 kbps. You computer speakers probably aren't a good indicator of sound quality.

Of course if you only ever listen to your MP3s on a computer 96 kbps might be OK, but me being an audio junkie I can't stand the idea of losing that much quality.

Back in 2001 when I was seriously testing this stuff (with a then-relatively-high-end Xitel Storm Platinum, Aureal 2-based audio card and Sennheiser HD600 headphones through an Akai AA-R30 amp) I could tell the differences between the original and even 320kbps CBR encode with LAME. There was a slight degradation in the dynamic range, particularly the bass which was, for lack of a better word, flatter.

I've used LAME --r3mix for years, but recently (a couple of years) moved to Vorbis - particularly the oggencgt3b1 (IIRC) encoder fed through Exact Audio Copy (which comes highly recommended). I did some serious pseudo-blind listening tests (i.e. listening to the same pieces of the same track on a lame --r3mix encode, oggenc -q 6 encode and the uncompressed WAV in a looped, shuffled playlist for about 40 minutes) and found Vorbis to be somewhat higher in quality while slightly lower in disk space.

Add to all of the above the fact that Vorbis is genuinely patent-free (no royalties to Franhaufer by _anyone_) and you've got a winner. Most portable equipment (including no-name flash players) supports it nowadays, I just wish it were easier to find car electronics that does (there's only the Kenwood Music Keg and Yakumo Hypersound Car, both very difficult to get).

My ultimate ripping goal is to have a complete lossless archive of all my CDs (probably using EAC) and then have the ability to batch convert it to the "best" compressed format du jour. I'd probably just play the lossless one on my home stereo (if there is no stuttering over the Wi-Fi net) and then one fairly well compressed one for portable audio players. Today that might be 160k CBR or a medium quality VBR and in a couple of years it might be something else and eventually it might be lossless as the memory density of the players increases.

The issues right now for me are that I use an iPod Nano so iPod/iTunes compatiblity is important for me, and I haven't found a good way to preserve all the tagging from the lossless format to compressed formats - especially if you take advantage of "special" tags like iTunes ratings.

Hey dont give up on web sites just yet. I know a site that offers downloadable music which is encoded on-the-fly, set to your parameters. Plus, they charge you buy the megabite (not the song) so its much cheaper that itunes. Some formats they carry are: Mp3, ACC, OGG, FLACK, Lossless and they support VARIABLE BIT RATE ENCODING.

I cant put up the the link but if you email me i'll give it to you.

> know a site that offers downloadable music which is encoded on-the-fly, set to your parameters

That's the illegal russian music site. Pirating stuff yourself isn't exactly noble, but paying pirates to send you pirated material is a very different thing.. and way over the line!

I have read many articles that say the site is legal. I'll email the links to anyone who wants to read them. Feel free to prove me wrong because i dont want to buy music from them if they are pirated, but as far as i know, they are not.

The Russian music site, allofmp3, is legal as far as I know. The Russian trade office asserts that the site operates within Russian law. Apparently their copyright system allows for music to be sold at very low cost....I don't know how they handle royalties to the artists. Another reason the cost is low is because of the strong dollar vs. Russian currency.

I do believe that the site is being challenged internationally, especially some U.S. corporations.

If you find actual evidence that they are a 'pirate site', then please reference it for us.

Here's a FAQ about allofmp3.

<a href="http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm">http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm</a>

Personally, I would not use it because I think the odds of the original artist getting any of that money is nil. I know the RIAA are total bastards, but at least when I buy an album domestically I know the artist gets *something*, even if it's a few percent of what I paid.

I'm using the latest LAME encoder, 3.97b and I've been experimenting with different settings to get the best sound from the smallest possible file. I should point out that the resultant files are for use on my portable player, not for archive or home-listening.

I used to use huge all-in-one programs to rip CDs to mp3, but I later realised that they had unnecessary functions I'd never use and took up too much room on my PC's hard drive.

To rip the CDs to WAV files, I use Isobuster. Its basic features are free to use without registration:
<a href="http://www.download.com/3000-2248-10208087.html">http://www.download.com/3000-2248-10208087.html</a>

There's no CDDB look-up, so you have to name the extracted files yourself, but that's the only trade-off for such a great piece of software.

Next, I use All2LAME as a front-end for the LAME encoder. Again, it's a very small program but does exactly what it says on the tin:
<a href="http://members.home.nl/w.speek/all2lame.htm">http://members.home.nl/w.speek/all2lame.htm</a>

I use the following command line to encode:
-V9 --vbr-new -q0 -mj -b32 -F --lowpass 19.7 --nspsytune --cwlimit 10.7 --athaa-sensitivity 1

It's slow but well worth the wait. Don't be alarmed by the V9 switch, the lowpass setting accomodates bitrates of up to 192kbps if necessary.

Once I've got my mp3s, I fix the VBR header and add ID3 tags. You need to add the VBR header manually because LAME VBR files don't include it. It's necessary to do this because your media player may not display the correct length of the track. Winamp definitely has a problem displaying track-length times of LAME VBR files if the header isn't present. There's a number of mp3-tagging programs which fix the VBR tags, but an easy one to use is MP3Tag Studio. Again, the program is free:
<a href="http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/">http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/</a>

If I'm encoding a full album, I'll trim the start of the first track and the end of the last track, using MP3Trim. It may only save a few bytes, but when your portable player is restricted to low capacity, you need to save all the space you can. This program's basic features are also free to use:
<a href="http://www.mptrim.com/">http://www.mptrim.com/</a>

Finally, once I've done all that, I'll use MP3Gain to increase the volume of the files to 95.5 dB for pop/rock/dance and 91.5 dB for classical/jazz/spoken word:
<a href="http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/">http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/</a>

Using my command-line, I can achieve compression of about 4% on some tracks without any noticeable crunch or muffle. The files are perfect for my portable, as my headphones still allow amb1ent noise to filter through when I'm taking the bus to work each day. I wouldn't recommend the command-line for true audiophile listening, of course. I'd say the sound is better than FM and ATRAC.

Is there some bad feeling about iTunes here? I used to use Audiograbber years ago, then CDex for quite some time - but bought a Nano for Xmas. It has prompted me to start the long (but strangely satisfying) task of encoding *everything* to MP3, and I've found iTunes to be awesome for the task; great tagging, all the right options etc.

Came across this site because I was investigating the merits of VBR and can pretty much say I'm convinced by the above arguments that 192 VBR offers the best bang for your buck in the size/quality tradeoff. Since I use an iPod, I am also concerned about how VBR will affect battery life - though the Apple page on this - <a href="http://www.apple.com/uk/batteries/ipods.html">http://www.apple.com/uk/batteries/ipods.html</a> - doesn't address it directly. If anyone has an insight on this I'd be very keen to hear it.

Hm, just found...
<a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=28651">http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=28651</a>

Interesting point made earlier about archiving at max quality then downsampling to the device in question, but it's taken me weeks to get through only about a third of my CDs so far, I can't face going back!

"You computer speakers probably aren't a good indicator of sound quality."

Sometimes I'm surprised by this. My little Logitech computer speakers are not hi-fi by anyone's standards but they easily reveal the difference between different formats - in fact they easily dispell the myths that there is no audible difference between DVD-Audio and CD and no audible difference between CD and MP3.

There is absolutely a difference between DVD-A and CD's. Put in Yes Fragile DVD-A and within 30 seconds there will be absolutely no doubt in your mind-no A/B test required. Some DVD-A's unfortunately don't yield such spectacular results, but most do.

As for CD's and MP3's, studies I've read show that 320k (constant) is indistinguishable from CD. I don't doubt that an experienced audio engineer in a sound proof studio with $10,000 monitors might be able to spot the slight difference in compression, but beyond that, I think it's safe to say 320k is enough if you are shooting for CD quality. And actually 256k has also been demonstrated to be indistinguishable. I won't go any lower than 256k, myself. I have pretty decent headphones and fairly nice studio monitors and I feel like I need this rate or higher else I'm getting an inferior product, and to me, it's all about the listening experience. I can hear the difference between 256k and 192k, and often, but maybe not consistently, the difference between 224k and 256k. For this reason I always go for 256k or higher. With hard drives as huge as they are these days, why not go for the highest bitrate? I don't need 4,000 songs on my mp3 player anyway. I'd rather have 100 songs of excellent quality. I can always change what's on it.

As for VBR, I'm interested in doing a lot of A/B tests on various recordings. I'll always go with 256k or 320k CBR if possible, but this is not always an option at mp3 download sites. I want to know what average bitrate with VBR is generally needed to achieve a comparitive quality of 256k or higher CBR. I know it is quite dependent on the sound source however so I suppose I'll never get the definitive answer I want. Unless somebody here can give me some insight into this??

Interesting, I think the fact here is AAC @ 128 doesn't sound bad, but niether does it sound fantastic. When considering this I decided better to spend 279 dollars for 279 songs then buying each CD seperately an spending a fortune. iTunes is alright.....

As for VBR, sounds good, then again something about having a file that's going to vary from another VBR encoded from the same source doesn't sit well with me. At least with CBR you know what's what, the bitrate isn't changing all the time.

I think 320 for mp3's is really high, if you want the best then go for it, although I also think 256 offers the same quality, although like people say is there really that big a difference in size?

Ah well... if I could have all my iTunes in 192 that would be preferable, 192 seems to be the sweet spot.

Hmmm...arguing about CBR and VBR doesn't seem to bring any conclusive answers as to which is better.

Assumming file size is NOT an issue, I begin to wonder whether CBR or VBR is better from a quality stand-point.

I was always told that a bitrate of 320 in CBR is better than VBR. Is it true that 320 CBR is an exception in terms of quality standards? That is, will music ripped at a bitrate of 320 kbps using CBR have higher quality than music ripped in VBR?

Interesting thread. I rip all my CD's to AAC at 192 in iTunes. I can dump them on the Nano, and using Airport Express, send them to the stereo in the other room. NO they don't sound as good as the CD's, but are much easier to deal with and I am not throwing away the CD's so I have the "originals" if I ever want to re-encode. Since what I have read, the iTunes AAC maker is CBR, that is what I choose to use now that I have to convert some FLAC music, which can be done in a single step in Toast, quite easy. I am not sure what license they are using for their AAC converter, or even how good it is, but iTunes does NOT convert FLAC and program like XAct are a two set process I don't want to be bothered with. So just for compatibility sake I choose the CBR setting at 192 in the Toast FLAC to AAC settings. I'm on a Mac so there are less choices I guess for converters. I did do a single FLAC to AAC at VBR, playing the AAC back in QuickTime with the INFO panel open, the rate never changed, which was surprising, I guess I need other software to see if the rate varies. I have Peak and Soundtrack, not sure if they will show the rate changes as the file plays. Anyways, it is a fairly big decision we all have to make, as redoing 200 CD's or FLAC conversions is time consuming a pain, but as long as you keep the original source music, you are not dead, besides all our hearing will eventually and slowly faulter..........

"And if I'm spending my own money to "own" this music, why pay for the crappy encoded version anyway? I'd rather buy the CD with the raw, uncompressed versions of the music and rip it myself."

amen to that.

Has anyone experimented with the VBR option in iTunes? It allows you to select VBR up to 256kbps.

The AAC VBR option? Go ahead and turn it on (it can't hurt), but it's not "true" VBR as what most people are used to. It's basically ABR (average bit-rate)... slightly tweaked from the normal CBR. (Which is technically ABR, too. Don't ask. No need to get into details.)

Also, don't bother with AAC beyond 192 Kbps. In fact, 160 Kbps should be enough for most. If you can ABX at higher bitrates, you are super human.

Fantastic thread!!! Learned a great deal. Thanks!

Audiograbber vs. EAC...

...use what you like. Audiograbber hasn't been updated in years now, but the basic engine is there and works fine. EAC offers more bells, whistles and error-checking if you think you need it. I have both and use them. They're both using the LAME engine to encode the files so it's really up to you.

VBR...

...been using it for quite some time. Here's a useful website:

jthz.com/mp3/

There you will find that you can use LAME to invoke the lowpass filter etc. There's some helpful tips on command lines like...

-V2 --vbr-new -q0 --lowpass 19.7 -b96

...and an explanation to 'Why the freakin' lowpass?'

And for all of the discussion about what's the best bitrate, if you're using headphones, you should be able to hear richer, more detailed renderings of your music at higher rates. If 128 works for you, be happy. The command line above will give you an MP3 file that sounds great and has response up to 320kb/s, but mostly in the 192kb/s range.

I'm going to give eMusic a try. But I will always buy the CD of the music I really want to own.

I was too curious about this, I'm thinking what should I use in importing using MP3 Encoder in iTunes, is it 192kbps or 320kbps?
What most people use bit rate that will suit for them?, somebody help me I want to know if 320kbps is the best bit rate.

Hey there, great site, nice explanation of VBR and such!
Before I went AAC+ I was using EAC and LAME and I was AMAZED how much more depth you can give your MP3's by tweakin LAME a little.

I had played a lot with the settings and came out on this:
-V2 --vbr-new -q0 --lowpass 19.7 --cwlimit 10.7 --scale 0.99 -b96

But in the end I realized that --alt-preset standard or --alt-preset fast extreme create almost the same "transparent" output.
(meaning you can't hear the difference anymore between MP3 and CD)

since I am all Mac now, I use AAC+ with variable bitrate (built into iTunes) - creating transparent results at 64k already.
Most my music is coming from online (AAC+)streams anyway (SomaFM!), my mp3-collection is only a historic collection of stuff I really liked.

regards

andreas

I have a problem...I have a DJ friend of mine wanting me torip about 300 CD's into MP3 format and mix them and burn to cd's... In the past I used CBR at 256kbs and he said it was "slipping" when played at high volume.

So I am wondering at what MP3 settings to rip at? I think I want VBR, and right now I have the setting on EAC at 192kbs, but I am concerned about clipping again.

Any advice???

Please contact at adrianjohnm@hotmail.com

you should normalize to 98% or even 96% volume level, that should really help any clipping...

as for 'slipping' if you really mean that, the music is sliding? or something like that, i have no idea, the latest lame 3.97 encoder does not screw up like that for me

(although slipping at high volume does not make sense ;) playing something loud should not introduce artifacts like a slip... so i'd bet he said clip)

>I'm on a Mac...

Since you're on a Mac, you most likely should be able to do a batch conversion from the command line... There should be something like faad/faac available for MacOSX which would allow you to do a batch conversion of your files using a bit of shell scripting the flac command with the -d flag and piping the output to faad for the encode... similar to:

for i in `find /your/path/ -iname '*flac'`;do flac -d "$i"|faac <your_options> -o /path/to/"$i".aac;done && cd /path/to/*aac && rename flac "" *

You need only one line, leave the computer crunch the files and return to see your files. The third command (don't know if it is available under MacOS, but I would surprised if it wouldn't) should strip your converted files from the suffx "flac" before the aac extension, leaving you with clean .aac files.

I just read through all the post and learned quite a bit. My ending question, however, is that with hard drives so large and cheap, why would I not want to record in MP3 at 320 Kbps, maybe with Windows Media Player?

I have about 800 CDs and if I've done the math correctly, at about 50 minutes each this would only take up 89.47 GB at 320 Kbps, which is only about 44 GB more than if I'd record all of them at 192 Kbps.

Am I overlooking something here, or is my math wrong? Also, wouldn't MP3s at 320 Kbps be considered pretty much CD quality, and plenty acceptable for general listening?

Thanks for any comments
eobler@bellsouth.net

"Also, I think there's something inherently wrong about MP3 VBR. Why does the encoder limit itself to multiples of 32 kbit? I haven't seen the Vorbis encoder do that."

That is due to the mp3 format, the bitrate is set by 4 bits in the 30 bits long frame header (of which 11 are indicator bits). 0000 = bitrate free, 1111 = bitrate reserved. then depending on layer the bitrate can be deduced from a lookup table. For the usual mp3 format (which is, i think:mpeg 1 layer 3) the table looks like this:32,40,48,56,64,80,96,112,128,160,192,224,256,320.

What an interesting blog with a lot of illumination;
While this started as the most bang for the byte, i guess eventually one gravitates towards least lossless for the byte.

I realize I can rip to any lossless codec [choose your fav - http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison]. Hopefully the different codecs are interchangeable. Besides I could change to lossy formats depending on the player.

The CD would still remain the 'archival copy' for me. I dont have to deal with the DRM nonsense.

Wow, it was well worth the time reading this blog. Thanks to everyone who contributed. What I'm wondering is how to convert existing MP3 audio files that I have @128 bitrate to a 320 bitrate. Is there some converter out there that will do the job?

John: You cannot increase the quality of mp3s by converting from 128 to 320. You need to rerip from the original source or a lossless file like flac to 320 in order to gain that quality.

Thank You for the info Josh

Is there a downside to converting from high-quality mp3s (say, 320 kbps CBR) to lower-quality VBR as opposed to converting directly from CD? When I go CBR->VBR in WinLAME, it gives a warning about converting from "one lossy format to another", but the result sounds fine to me.

Thanks folks . . . . . I am off to buy a few more Audio CDs and Audio DVDs and I'll keep them that way . . . No ripping for me . . . .

>>Here's why I don't use Ogg: there are hardly any portable/car players which support it (or there were last I shopped ~1yr ago). Otherwise, yes it's great.

Last I checked, there is. The iPod, believe it or not. *Ok* sorry, buy the iPod than put firmware on it. (ok i kno that post is old but yes!) The open-source RockBox will give your iPod the ability to play Ogg!

OK, here's a question... I have about 600 CD's - originally burned from mostly 128kbps MP3s (along time ago). I've now added them to my iTunes library, and after I was done, I noticed that I had set the default setting for importing files to MP3 @ 192kbps... now, the do take up a bit more space than the original 128kbps files, and I know that there's no improvement in sound quality - but what I am more worried about: Has the quality decreased? If yes, I would need to reimport all 600 CDs... and: How can I figure out whether the .cda files were originally 128 kbps or 192 kpbs????

THE BEST WAY TO RIP CD IS BY EAC, OR ANY LOSSLESS AUDIO RIPPER. FOR ME I USE EAC OR RIP IT AS AN .APE FILE. THESE THINGS ARE MONSTERS IN RIPPING AUDIO CD. I HAD A PROJECT RIPPING AUDIOPHILE CD'S ENCODED 24/96 RIPPED TO 16/44 VIA .APE AND THE OUTCOME IS SATISFYING ALMOST UNNOTICEABLE IN TERMS OF QUALITY, LOW PASS AND HIGH PASS NOTES CAN STILL BE HEARD. THE DOWNSIDE IS THE WAY IT EAT UP MY HARD DISC, ABOUT 700 TO 800MB PER CD. BUT NONETHELESS IT IS PRETTY MUCH LOSSLESS AND HIGH IN QUALITY.

MICHAEL, .CDA FILES ARE ENCODED 16BITS/44100HZ SO 128/192/224/320 KBPS DOES NOT APPLY..IT IS WHEN YOU RIP IT THAT IT IS ENCODED AS SUCH. IT IS BASICALLY YOUR CHOICE ON HOW MUCH KBPS WOULD SUITE YOU.

Dear Jeff,
Great blog with useful info. I am interested in making archival copies of brain entrainment discs I own (HemiSync, HoloSync, etc.) Have you any suggestions for the best method to do this, insuring the integrity of the encoded binaural beats? Is either WMA lossless or a WAV format any better than the other? Since this encoding is sometimes hidden in white noise would a fixed rate be better than a variable rate?
Thanks,
Dennis

VBR is fantastic for standalone audio. Using it with video is another story...

i've found that it makes a difference in where you listen to your music from, while my laptop is being repaired i'm using a this laptop where the only thing thats better is the processor, the speakers are right next to eachother, but whats even better on my laptop is it has HD sound, i don't know weather i should convert my music to mp3 or keep it wma, my bullet for my valentine CD is mp3 with 320kbps, while others are wma at only 128kbps, i dunno weather i should, i would like some info, so Email me at jamboy1@hotmail.co.uk

I am finding out that some iPods-- even the latest and greatest models-- have problems with VBR files. They can't seek properly, don't resume right, etcetera.

This may be the fix:

http://txfx.net/2005/02/08/vbr-mp3-fix/
http://www.willwap.co.uk/Programs/vbrfix.php

the bit rates and the formats I use is 224kbps mp3 CBR and 255 - 355 WMA VBR. Any lower on any of these formats has too many artifacts.

Here is my take. At 128, which is what most songs I have were or are, on my iphone they suck. The level of audio is crap. I have been using 192 or higher and the quality as well as the volume are far far superior to 128. I also use vbr as it seems to have a better sound. What I can't figure out, is why some songs that were 128 that I changed to a higher bit rate sound no different. I have used several devices as well as different headphones and no noticable difference at all. Not sure. Most do, some don't.

"What I can't figure out, is why some songs that were 128 that I changed to a higher bit rate sound no different"

You can't simply reencode the same file at a higher rate because the information "above 128kbps" so to speak has already been stripped from the file. If you were to reencode the 128kbps file at 192kbps, you're just filling it with redundant information. You need to go back to the original source (probably CD) and reencode it at the higher bitrate.

With statements like this, "I happened to pick the outlying song on this particular CD ..."

{outlying song??? what the hell are you talking about?}

and this, "There's something magical about that extra 32 kbps; the difference between a CBR MP3 at 128 kbps and 160 kbps has always been unusually large to my ear."

It sounds like you've been spending WAY too much time hanging out with all the other fruit loops over at hydrogenaudio.

Cool. I was wondering what the VBR codec meant. Now I know how good it is. I actually was going to do loseless, but settled for VBR because its highest ripping bit rate was between 240 and 355, higher than 192, lower than about 400, and not MP3 (I like to stick to WMA). This article gave even nore reason to use VBR. Its interesting how that works.

Okay, so we're up to iTunes 8.2. The ripping options in iTunes are plentiful. Plus, iTunes wins in convenience b/c it is an all-in-one music management app; as it handles ripping and provides 'library content management'. (as apposed to ripping with one program and manually adding it to your music app of choice). …oh, and you need iTunes to run your iPod…

That being said, I would give up the convenience of ripping with iTunes for better audio quality. So...
1. Anyone know how iTunes stacks up against EAC (ExactAudioCopy) as a ripping tool?
2. Does iTunes use the LAME encoding engine?
3. Has Apple/iTunes addressed the problems it once had with VBR files?

Thanks.

I converted lossless .flac files to both the highest quality VBR .ogg and then the 128 nominal VBR .ogg and could not tell the difference from the FLAC version. Usually I can hear and ID a 128kbps .mp3 as soon as I hear the muddy highs, but with the .ogg VBR I was very impressed. Took it from a 60MB .flac to a 7 MB .ogg

One problem with VBR is not all car stereos will play VBR. And I had the same problem with my BOSE system at home. It can plan CBR coded MP3's, but not VBR. So it means I only play music from my IPOD connected to my stereo, vs. having the ability to just throw in a MP3 CD with a 150 songs on it.