tommyortom
03-12-2005, 11:27 PM
i read the digital audio gude, and it was pretty cool info. what would you suggest for me if i really could care less if it is "CD quality"
128 MP3s are fine for me, so quality only has to be "decent" on my 4 gig mini, i got about 700 songs on it. what would you suggest to do to my mp3s to fit even more on it? is there anything i can do?
Teqnilogik
03-12-2005, 11:40 PM
128 kbps AAC will give you better quality than a 128 kbps MP3 encoded with iTunes, Windows Media Player, or Musicmatch Jukebox.
If you are satisfied with 128 kbps MP3 then I would say perhaps that's all you need to keep your ears happy. Also if you want to be able to play your music anywhere then MP3 is the format to go with.
I would recommend downloading Exact Audio Copy (www.exactaudiocopy.org) and the LAME 3.96.1 MP3 (www.rarewares.org/mp3.html) encoder. Exact Audio Copy will provide you with perfect rips using its Secure mode. This means you will not get pops and clicks in your ripped songs. You can setup the compression options to encode using the LAME encoder as well. In the Compression Options, choose User Defined Encoder, browse for the LAME MP3 encoder on your computer, and then enter this as the command-line: --alt-preset 128. This will give you MP3s with an average bit-rate of 128 kbps. You should be satisfied with the quality and you'll hear that it sounds better than what most commercial apps use for their MP3 encoding.