Hello everyone,

I'm fairly new to this but haved gleaned a huge amount of knowledge from this site. I just want to ask if there are any suggestions on how to improve my technique for creating MP3's for playing on my newly acquired Creative Zen Xtra MP3 player.

Here's what I do now:

Secure mode extraction using EAC, with external compressor set to Lame 3.90.3 with user defined encoder set to following command line:

--alt-preset standard --id3v2-only --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" --tg "%m" --tc "EAC 0.95pb5, Lame 3.90.3 @ --alt-preset standard" %s %d

I then check and update ID3v2 tags if necessary with Mp3tag

I then scan files with MP3library 2.20: EDIT, ANALYZE ALL MP3's option.

I also use Notmad explorer and so use Red Chair's Tag Verifier utility.

any other suggested checks/steps here?

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Also I keep hearing about MP3gain/normalization and "clipping", do I need to worry about this? Would the methods above still occasionally lead to clipping in MP3 files.

Is there a way I can check to see if clipping would be a problem for my files?

Also I believe this player has EAX volume normalization, would this eliminate any problems with clipping?

Thanks in advance for any comments on this

P

From what i know you shouldn't touch EAC's normalization. (lathough no proof for it)
An additional step would be to replaygain the files as you've indicated.
Apart from that i wouldn't know, because i don't encode mp3's.

Madman2003.

You can use MP3gain to do two things:
a) make all MP3 have equal volume
b) remove any clipping introduced by the MP3 encoding/decoding process

The normalization feature on your player most likely achieves a) (maybe not as good as MP3gain), but most likely not b). Actually if it is implemented badly it could introduce more clipping.