MP3 Ripping Question
 

Prior to getting my iPod, storage constraints dictated that I rip MP3s to my player at a 128k bit rate. I've always seen this described as "near CD" quality. Now that I have the luxury of 60 gigs of storage, I'm curious whether I'd hear a noticeable quality difference if I ripped at 192k instead. As an experiment, I ripped an album to the iPod last night at the higher rate, and it seemed to me to have a brighter, crisper high end, but it also might have been the album itself. I confess to being too lazy to do side-by-side comparisons, so I thought I'd solicit opinions from FTers. For what it's worth, I use the iPod with Bose QC2s, which are fairly decent phones.

You should. :p For what its worth, for me, there is a noticeable quality difference between higher bit rates if you have good headphones. ^

128k is not CD quality, despite the massive proliferation of MP3s ripped at that bitrate. MP3 is a "lossy" codec, so you are losing data, regardless of the bitrate. The encoder used also plays a huge role--some are better than others.

I'd take a look at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/ as there is lots of material there to get you started.

I'm somewhat of an audio snob--all of my CD's are ripped once to FLAC and then transcoded to 320k CBR (--alt-preset-insane) mp3s for playback on devices that don't do FLAC. Since FLAC is lossless, the files take up much more room than MP3s--but they are a direct digital copy of the original. I only transcode the MP3s for the aforementioned playback purposes. The reasoning here is that disk is cheap.

Where possible, if "ahem", obtaining music, I try to get a copy in a lossless format (FLAC or lossless WMA) and then transcode that.

I use EAC to feed the FLAC encoder, and LAME to encode to mp3.

Having said all of that--and if this kind of storage and effort sounds like it's too much, 192k/sec VBR MP3s should be your baseline. They (if encoded with a decent encoder) are almost transparent to the listener in most cases. Anything higher (bitrate wise) should be fine. 128k/sec VBR will result in compression artifacts on lots of music, particularly if encoded with a crap encoder.

Even with cheap headphones you'll notice a difference between 128 and 192. It's usually the high tones that get muddy/warbled at the lower bitrates.

Does iTunes support variable bitrate encoding? That will give you the best sound at any given file size.

I don't use iTunes for ripping. I have a couple of programs that do a better a job. What you say seems to confirm what I heard, i.e. the highs were brighter and crisper at 192 kbs. Looks like I'll be spending the weekend re-ripping all of my CDs. ;)

Thanks, everybody!

Take a look at Red Chair Software's sync programs. They have one for the ipod and others for popular players (Dell, Rio, etc).

I use anapod which is their ipod sync program.

The nice thing about Red Chair's sync is their AudioMorph feature. You can store the original music as FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA or wav on your hard drive and it will transcode the file to mp3 on the fly as you're copying it down to your portable player. You can set the bitrate for the transcode to whatever you want (128,160,192, etc).

If all your files are mp3, you can also set it up to 'on the fly' shrink files during sync to save space on your player (320k mp3 on the hard drive, 128 or 192k) on the player.

Very cool! ^

I'll second the recommendation of Red Chair's Anapod. It's great software, though their customer support is virtually non-existent.

It also should be noted that MPEG4 formats, like AAC (which is Apple's default) will sound better at the same bitrate than MP3 files. I personally do my encoding at 192 kbps AAC on my Mac Powerbook. Definitely a difference over 128, either format.

Anyone have an opinion on the difference between 160 and 192/128?

Hmmm. My iPod handles AAC. Maybe I should encode to that.

Not sure what you're asking. The difference between 160 and 128 is more noticeable than 192 and 160.

For classical music wearing headphones, there is a difference (IMHO) up until about 192k, even with a good encoder.

Gangster rap thru a cassette adapter out of one's car stereo? 128k would cut it :D .

I thought LAME was a MP3 encoding codec? It's not lossless, but it's a lot better than some of the other ones (Xing comes to mind).

I second what Cluebyfour said -- he's got the scoop.

Encoding to AAC locks you into the ipod, now and forever.

every player supports mp3.

Should've read "flac" where I said lame there. I'll edit. :eek:

No problem. I love LAME, and while it's not lossless, the quality is very good for the file size