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Thread: MP3 or WMA?

  1. #17
    YUKIKAZE arthurleung's Avatar
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    I use TTA and convert to MP3 (~224 VBR) when I need the song on portable player.
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  2. #18
    Dark side super agent
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    I use a proggy called CDex. It's quite old now but is easy to use. I use it to rip to Lame MP3 using VBR with a minumum of 224Kbs and max of 320kbs with good effect.

    CDex can also be configured to use different encoders if you wish.
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    Quote Originally Posted by autopilot View Post
    Indeed, 30%+ of my music is in Ogg. But support is just too poor for me to recommend it to everyone. LAME MP3 is the 'safe' option.
    I agree entirely, however, .ogg support isn't going to get any better unless more people use it, so I'd say rip to .ogg, find a decent mp3 player that supports it if you're bothered about portability (hello iAudio, and yes, look, it plays flac as well) and be damned.

    So, yeah, if, like me, you haven't the room for lossless formats, vorbis is the way forward.

  4. #20
    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    i'm surprised at people recommending CBR MP3 (192K, 320K, whatever)

    is there any point to using a meg of space to store 25 seconds of silence? not really. always use VBR (oggenc only supports VBR; LAME has decent VBR support with the "--alt-preset standard" flag)

  5. #21
    Senior Member charleski's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by directhex View Post
    LAME has decent VBR support with the "--alt-preset standard" flag)
    The -Vx switches offer better fine-tuning of quality according to need.
    LAME Knowledgebase

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    EAC to vbr0 (the best vbr it'll do). I don't know about minute per MB, but this is certainly good enough for my ears...and relatively low std of pc sound equipment.

    That said, I accept anything over 192cbr

    I'll give that Vx switch a go too, charleski

  7. #23
    disMember M0nkeyb0Y's Avatar
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    cheers guys a nooby question: but will ripping these using summin like EAC put them in the handy artist/album/track tree format that WMP does? If not how do I emulate this - laziest options first please!

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    Senior Member charleski's Avatar
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    Open EAC Options from the EAC menu. Go to the Filename tab. Enter %A\%C\%N - %T in the Naming Scheme box (you can change the %N - %T to whatever track filename you prefer).

    Oh, and set the root folder for your music collection in the Directories tab. It will then automatically save the files in the correct location.

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    Mp3 at 320kbps is definately the way to go. Maximum quality from the most well supported format

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    If you want to digitise your music collection for posterity and archive it and space isn't an issue, I'd use FLAC which is lossless. WMA lossless I think isn't as good (I've never used it because I don't like using a proprietary format). You can always transcode it at a later date to some more compressed format, whether MP3, ogg, wma, whatever for your portable mp3 player.

    CD rippers such as EAC and CDex work very well and as others have mentioned, you can set up the directory naming system and automatically fill in the ID3 tags using CDDB.

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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by s_kinton View Post
    Mp3 at 320kbps is definately the way to go. Maximum quality from the most well supported format
    but why does silence need 320Kib/s ?

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    Nothing runs like a Deere cotswoldcs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by charleski View Post
    Another vote here for EAC+lame. I use -V 3 --vbr-new (-V 2 for classical) for the compression settings. It's fast and excellent quality.
    Me too! I've recently moved from 192 VBR to the new "-new" setting (225Kbps VBR if I remember correctly.) Anything over 192 is good for MP3 but I personally like using VBR as it offers better quality and is more efficient.

  13. #29
    Lovely chap dangel's Avatar
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    I rather like WMA but i'd better explain why as it'a a 'microsoft' thing and all microsoft things are bad, right?

    Quality (lossless, compressed):

    1. OGG
    2. AAC
    3. WMA
    4. MP3

    One should note, it's a big gap from 3->4 tho.

    So why WMA? Well it works on my PC, on my car's headunit (quite common in fact), on my portable player and DRM is optional. It _is_ without a doubt far better quality than MP3 in my experience and I can get away with smaller files to boot.

    I've a lot of love for OGG but it's just not got support and AAC is irrelevant to me - which leaves WMA as a good choice for a quality format without the bulk of MP3.
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    Senior Member charleski's Avatar
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    Personally, I think people get a bit too hung-up over lossless. I've done a few ABX tests with the equipment I actually use for listening to music and found the differences between the original and the various lossy formats to be non-existant once you get over a bitrate of 190kbps or so. Various tests by other people do indicate that OGG is superior to mp3, but player support for it is very spotty once you get it off the PC. VBR mp3s at a decent bitrate are fine unless you're using a high-quality system which has been precisely set up.

    If you're worried about archiving, the original pressed CD has more longevity than any HD or DVDR copy anyway, so you might as well just rip it to the format you're actually going to use.

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    Synergy leverager
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    Personally, I ripped my CD collection to FLAC, but I'm a bit anal like that. I like the idea that I'm listening to the original music, and I have a good (enough) audio system (using Slimserver/SqueezeBox) to tell the difference. I also like having a bit-accurate rip of the CDs, so that I can re-rip them to other formats. So I also have my CDs ripped to MP3 (at 112k high quality) for use on mine and my wife's mp3 players (useful for running, you can't hear the quality difference...much).

    I bought a second hard disk - 200Gb cost about 40 quid.

    Still, the thing to do is rip a few CD tracks of different styles to MP3, OGG, and FLAC, and take a listen. If you can't tell the difference, and it doesn't bother you, it doesn't matter! As I understand it, OGG is better at supporting gap-less playback, so that might be a factor in your decision.

    As for ripping, I use dbPowerAmp (www.dbpoweramp.com). Its the dogs knackers I reckon. Easier to configure and use than EAC.

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    Quote Originally Posted by directhex View Post
    but why does silence need 320Kib/s ?
    Silence sounds a heck of alot better at 320kbs!!

    On a more serious note, I use 320kbs mp3 coz space istn an issue for me. I just rip using media player coz im too lazy to find, install and learn any other programs

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