Hello,

I'm new to mp3 encoding. Sometimes ago I found that EAC and LAME is the best combination in making high quality mp3s. I'm now using EAC V0.95 prebeta 5 and (as suggested in many sites) LAME v. 3.90.3.

I have a very large space just for music (almost 100 GB), and want to archive my CDs collection (not many, just about 300 songs and mostly classical). After learned from some sites, I understand that VBR>ABR>CBR, although they always seems quite "friendly" to CBR 320 (--alt-preset insane) ...so I think I prefer VBR than CBR.

So, since space is no problem for me, I want to ask you all the experts in hydrogenaudio, what is the best, highest possible quality, and with no file size consideration at all, VBR setting to archive my CDs? I tried using --alt-preset extreme -V 0 -b 128 and it's seems satisfying, but I'm not sure whether this is really the highest possible quality I can get with VBR...

Can you help me? Although I prefer VBR, but if some of you think that CBR 320 is higher than any VBR settings, well, just let me know since I really want the highest quality setting possible for archival purposes.

One more questions: is it possible to decode mp3 to wav using EAC? If yes, how to do that? Thx.

If you have that much space for only 300 songs, I would strongly suggest looking into lossless compression. That way you don't have to worry about the quality at all, since it will exactly the original.

Oh yes, I have considered that already. The problem is, it would not be handy to make compilation CDs of lossless compression files (which I think tends to have bigger file size than mp3s). The 100 GB is for archives in my HD, but I

CBR, ABR or VBR with MP3 encode in 32-320 Kbps interval. 320 Kbps is the highest possible peak bitrate with CBR, ABR or VBR and VBR will be never better than CBR 320 Kbps but if your source is very compressible 320 Kbps CBR is useless.

Oh yes, I have considered that already. The problem is, I think it would not be handy later to make compilation CDs that contain lossless compression files (which I think tends to have bigger file size than mp3s). The 100 GB is for archives in my HD, but sometimes I would also like to make compilations of the files in a CD. Thta's why I prefer mp3. Am I right to say that (I'm newbie so please correct me if I'm wrong), generally a CD can contains much more mp3s than wavs or apes (lossless compression)?

Of course as lossless compression formats create much bigger files compared to lossy formats.

How will you be using those compilation CDs? I'd recommend encoding everything to your hard drive as lossless (if you really do have that much space for 300 songs and aren't going to significantly expand your collection any time), then encoding it down to alt-preset standard mp3s whenever you want to make a compilation CD. I believe foobar2000 can be set up to do this with just a few clicks.