I am not really that new to the realm of compressed audio. I have had an MP3 player (first a Nomad, then an iPod) for several years. I have been lurking through these forums, and posting occasionally, for at least a year. But I surprised myself last night. And I am not certain if I should be concerned or elated.

I currently own an 80GB iPod, and I have reached the point where I have to debate which songs I can live without and delete from the iPod so that I can make room for new music. I never thought I would amass that much music. Of course, I said the same thing after I upgraded from a 40 GB player to a 60 GB. The music I have stored on my iPod are as MP3’s encoded with LAME at v2 (the “safe” recommendation).

Since I am re-ripping my CD collection into a lossless format (WavPack), just for kicks, I decided to ABX them against MP3’s at lower bitrates. I wanted to see how much I could compress an audio track before I began to notice degradation. At v9, I had no difficulty distinguishing between the MP3 and the WavPack. When I bumped it up a notch to v8, to my shock, I had a hard time telling the difference. Of course, this was just one song, so I tried another. I tried a third song (which was an Italian aria), and I could finally notice some degradation in the vocals. I am not sure what the proper adjective is, but something was amiss when Pavarotti hit some of the higher notes.

I think I could be happy with v7 for my iPod, but to be “secure”, I may use v6 or v5. Either setting would allow me to pack more music onto my iPod.

I wonder if there is a sign up sheet for the “I’ve been encoding my music at a bitrate higher than necessary for my ears” club.

Well... I think V2 to me is "the limit". In V5 I can spot artifacts already. When I download MP3, it's always V2 and up. I think I'd have a hard time to rip all songs in V3 or V5 just to find out later that a considerable amount of songs are spotting artifacts here and there.

The one thing I had hard time to ABX is OGG. The frigging codec gives you a pretty hard time to tell the difference with the lowest insane bitrates. I can't ABX q2! (max is q9 or q10). If my portable plays OGG, then it's OGG.

So OGG sounds like your hard drive space solution ABX-proof.

That's so true EagleScout1998.

Using V2 is most of the times a waste of storage space depending on the player means you have (or to how hard your ego goes, LOL). I know your iPod is not the trashest portable out there, but I believe its hardware is not capable to show any gain of quality from a -V5 to a -V2 MP3, for example.

If one keeps lossless backups, then on portable players V2 is almost always a waste of space, even if one is one of those ultra rare people who can ABX it with non-killersamples. Thats because during and ABX-test, the conditions are very different to during normal listening. During normal listening, you dont directly compare between lossless and loss, and you dont listen to the same section back and forth dozens of times. Plus, when using portable players, the noisefloor of ones surroundings is much higher than in a quiet room.

So, i'd say, for portable use, V5-V3 is the most efficient choice, depending on your hearing-abilities.

P.S.: As for OGG - i dont know if those issues were fixed, but a year ago it was easy to recognize q0-q3 if you were sensitive to the 11-14khz frequency-range, because vorbis introduced noise in that range.

If you want to save more space, then try AAC. Nero at -Q 35 still gives impressive results.

For compatibility stay on MP3 of course. Indeed, V5 vbrnew is a great solution for good quality and file size. I never heard someone say: "humm, this is definetly the MP3 not the CD!" (I don't mean the ABX experts here ;-) especialy you, Guru )

V5 is my standard setting when I'm encoding to mp3. My motto is "why using V 2 by eating more file size, but no guarantee for no artifacts / problem samples, when V5 also sounds great to me?!"

Using V2 for iPod / other portables is useless, though. Will you ever can hear whether it's V2 or not? I don't think so. Even if you connect your portable on a hi-fi system, I think you will have difficulties.

Certainly higher bitrates for portable enviroments could be seen as waste if one has a lossless archive and I myself transcode to V5. But for an all in one mp3 solution I would advise one to be more cautious unless you want to re-rip again and again. Personally I would go for 224~256k in such a scenario based on some intensive testing I've done. It was easy to abx -v5 on many samples, moderately easy on -v4. At 190k most little annoyances disappear, but bigger problems are still annoying. I've been hit twice with 2 songs showing bad artifacts at 190k v2. At 224~256k many bad cases improve or resolve (ABR mode can help at times)

Using some quality headroom can give you some peace of mind. At these 128k and lower bitrates one has to be carefull about encoder versions, settings etc etc.. Lots of testing is required. At very high bitrates you have much more leverage - even a very old LAME encoder will give good results.

I think it's a good choice that you re-rip to a lossless codec, because once that is done, you don't have to worry that the ever evolving development of lossy codecs will make you ripped music "obsolete" or a waste of space.

From that lossless basis you can experiment with lossy codecs and settings in a more relaxed way, assuming that you have enough HD space to hold you entire CD collection...

Welcome to the club.

And that is the problem I may ultimately face ripping lossless. I have a 750 GB hard drive. I hope that would be enough. But then, I have a lot of CDs. I know that when I was ripping lossy (MP3 v2), I had over 30,000 files.

If you are having virtual space issues, here's a suggestion: Rip all your original CD's to lossless and burn them to DVDR's. Once you have done this you won't have to worry about anything else, because that's safe and would save you a bunch of time from re-ripping. Besides being the safest way to store your music collection, you could also say it doesn't wear out your ripping drive so much, as you would probably rip the same CD only once, and that means a lot.

That has been my plan since a while and it has worked pretty well so far.

Way to go! I found that v5 is my safe area, I can't stand v6 and below. Now you can fit more songs

I'd say you should feel elated, especially since you're ripping to lossless anyway. But since you're ripping to lossless and also using an ipod, why not load it with AAC? Then you can use a lower bitrate and also eliminate more artifacts at the same time



For 30,000 songs, that would be a *ballpark* equivalent of burning 300 DVDs, right? I don't see that as saving a bunch of time. And I'd think you most probably will run into space issues with 30,000 lossless tracks vs 750 GB disk. The approach I'm taking with my collection (I have almost as many tracks as you) is use Wavpack lossy at -b384x as transcoding-safe backup format, then transcoding to AAC ~128 kpbs for listening/ipod (I also fail to abx most things @ 128 kbps).

FWIW, I use V4 for most of my portable use. More music == more better.

I know where you're coming from!

When I was deciding what format to use on my new iAudio, I did some tests and found I couldn't ABX OGG at q3. Getting used to the fact that I was listening to great sounding music with an average bitrate of 112kbps took a while I can tell you.

One of the things I am doing that might help (although I am not sure how much) is to eliminate redundant tracks. When I was ripping to MP3, I was ripping every track from every CD. Now that I am ripping to lossless, I reason that there is no point in ripping every track from "The Greatest Hits of . . . whoever" if I already have those songs from the original albums. It would just be wasting hard drive real estate; just rip those previously unreleased tracks, or tracks not available anywhere else.

Addendum... And if worse comes to shove, I could always invest in a second hard disk.

I don't really see a point in buying Greatest Hits discs in the first place...especially if you have those original albums

I usually don't buy greatest hits packages unless they contain previously unreleased tracks . . . which seems to be more commonplace these days. I suppose some would be happy just downloading the newer songs from iTunes. But I generally do not like to purchase songs from iTunes because (1) they're protected and (2) they're compressed. I would prefer that I be the one that dictates how my music is compressed, not a third-party. So, I buy the compilation.

In fact, I am so anal about being a completest that I have actually bought different store's exclusive versions. I once bought the same disc from Best Buy, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Target because they each contained an exclusive bonus track.

Another thumbs up for the use of -V5 for portable use. I've got all my CD's ripped/archived in lossless format (ape) and encode to Lame -V5 (3.98 beta3) mp3 for my portable. For the typical listening environment that my portable is used this is already an overkill. I'm very happy with the quailty of -V5 for this purpose.

You are the record industry's wet dream!

-V 4 for my portable lossy.

Yeah, no kidding. I buy the CDs that I like and then download all the bonus tracks.

Lol! I'm in you're group too. I stuck to Q4. I've only found one song that I can ABX at that level. And I had to try pretty hard I can tell you.

Question regarding all of this:

Is it possible that equipment may play a role in how well one can ABX something? Could things that I don't notice now with my current equipment become apparent if I had a better stereo, or headphones, or speakers?

Very interesting question.

Here you will often hear that equipment makes loads of difference. I say it doesn't.

If you know what to listen for, you can hear artifacts regardless of player or headphones or speakers. Obviously though, it's easier to concentrate on the sound if you're wearing headphones rather than using speakers.

Cheap wires or headphones will put the artifacts across just as well as expensive equipment.

Actually, the consensus among the veterans here appears to be that equipment is less important. Certain defects in equipment (i.e. extreme sound-coloring) may even amplify artifacts - though, this is often not noticed, because people with ultra-cheap equipment dont invest much into sound for a reason :) (though, the argument doesnt work the other way around.... cough, audiophiles, cough....)

- Lyx

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Aaaak! Can you folks please point me to a site where I can learn what the heck 'V5', 'V6', V7' etc means? As far as I know, a 'V8' is the thing under the hood of my neighbor’s gas-guzzler!

Appreciate it.

Andrew D.
www.cdnav.com


.

Here: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...ate.29_settings

It sort of makes me wonder if you were just bored or what.
You've been here at hydrogenaudio since almost one year, you've posted in several threads about encodings, you do encode with MP3, and seem not to know one of the options (the recommended ones even!) of the LAME (mp3) encoder.

Guess this can happen to all of us, and probably it doesn't help that you cannot seach for such short terms.

Yeah, I've ripped my CD collection to -q4 in OGG, and I probably don't need it that high. I haven't really tested myself to see, though. Maybe I'll finally do that tonight after work

Jaz,

Dude, cut me some slack... When I convert my CDs to MP3, which I do a fair bit, I simply pick a bitrate from an option slider within WMP. It’s always been shown as simply 320, 256, 192 etc. on a simple sliding scale. I have never seen any options showing V0 through V9. You are making the common mistake of assuming that everyone knows as much as you do about a topic, just like most computer instructors do when teaching a student or class.

Thank you Echo for your excellent, perfectly informative response.

Andrew D.
www.cdnav.com

And you are making the mistake of asking for help, without having read the pinned topics for over a year. You deserved the response - especially since you ignored your own error even when it was pointed out to you, which i consider even more annoying than asking "stupid questions" (stupid questions are those, which are unnecessary since an answer is easily available).

- Lyx

Ok, I get it... kindness sucks, forget it, you win...

Andrew D.
www.cdnav.com

With "kindness" you mean "blind altruism", and yes, it does suck. Abusing the time of resourceful people, just because the member is too lazy, means less time spent answering reasonable questions. Also, possibly you would be able to evolve a bit faster, if you would think less about "winning and losing" in a discussion, and more about mutualistic gain of understanding and knowledge.

"How to ask questions the smart way"

- Lyx

He knows a lot of things but kindness doesn't seem to be one of those things.

Here you go:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=28124

That's something like 178 DVDs though....

2.0 TB fw800 hard drive.
your problems have been solved...?

2.0 TB drives will be 120 bucks or so in about 3 years, too...

......... but unfortunately you will either need to buy 2 or make your additional backup using DVD / (BD / HD-DVD - whichever "wins") to ensure that you shouldn't lose everything.