My apologies upfront for asking questions which have likely been raised by others already. If the answers fall in a specific thread, would appreciate directions there!

I have no MP3 player currently, but I will be buying one in the next year. What I'm looking to do right now is rip some of my CD collection into MP3 format and then burn some high quality MP3 mix CD's for car and home stereo. LAME sounds great but I'm not very tech saavy and would prefer using one of the "child-proof" encoders. :-)

1. Does anyone know of any sound quality differences (subjective, I know, but would still appreciate any advice) between WMP 11 MP3 encoder and Itunes MP3 encoder at bitrates 192 kbps and above? Are all encoders equal once you get to a high enough bitrate?

2. If you wanted to rip an MP3 at a high bitrate, say, 256 kps, would you get just as good audio quality from Itunes MP3 VBR 192 kbps as WMP 11 MP3 256 kbps?

3. Is there any way to get WMP 11 to rip MP3 at VBR without resorting to WMA?

Thanks in advance and sorry for asking stuff that I'm sure has been covered before - I just couldn't find it!

Cheers, Alan

I don't understand, why not just use some app that can encode with LAME?

you obviously just have not bothered to even look.

EAC isn't hard to set up, and it's easy to use (insert CD, press a button, wait, repeat), and doesn't have all the what-if's. And it interfaces easily with LAME.

When bothering to rip ones entire collection, it pays to research a little bit to be able to do it right the first time.

I would certainly recommend to use a program with LAME encoder, right from the start, if you can. For example, you could try MediaMonkey.
There are many other "all-in-one" programs that support LAME encoding.



It's a very tough question, because listening tests are very hard to perform at high bitrate (you are right -- the higher bitrate the harder it is to tell different encoders apart.).
If you have to choose between WMP and iTunes only -- take WMP. AFAIK WMP 11 is using FhG encoder - it's a good encoder.
iTunes encoder was judged to be of lesser quality in a listening test not so long ago (but the test was 128 kbps range of bitrate).
Edit: It is only iTunes mp3 encoder we are talking about here. iTunes AAC/m4a is totally different story.

To set the record straight, which test was this and if the encoders were actually using VBR, what were the actual settings used to create "128 kbps" tracks and then what did the actual bitrates end up being?

Hi Mike,

I should have stressed just how new I am at all of this - Up until a few days ago, "rip", "VBR", "bitrate", "transparent" and "codec" were not even in my vocabulary! I've had a steep learning curve in the last few days and this site has been a godsend to bring me up to speed.

After learning about LAME here and elsewhere, I did some research and thought that LAME was open source and therefore did not have a more user-friendly interface? I even downloaded the LAME codec but realized quickly I was out of my depth.

Are you saying that I can get the encoding benefits of LAME from an application with the ease of use of WMP or Itunes? That would be cool :-)

Although, again, at 192 kbps and higher (more new knowledge! ha ha!) will an app using LAME provide me with much better quality?

Thanks Mike.



Hey Jim - I can understand why a post like mine would be frustrating for someone with more experience with this stuff. I'm very new to the whole digital audio scene (like, days) and trust me, I have been looking, but to be honest, I wasn't sure what to look for. There is so much info on encoding, codecs, sound quality comparisons, varying opinions, etc that it's been a bit overwhelming.

I guess that's why I'm here - to cut through the crap and get the real goods!

Cheers, Alan



Amen!

Excuse my ignorance, but why take the extra step to encode with EAC and then re-encode with LAME when a single appy can give you near-transparency and you only have to do one rip and you're done (eg., WMP 11 at 256 kbps?)

Newbie alert! I warned you :-)

A

Same old - one of Roberto's tests.
You are right, I just checked the web page: there was this CBR-VBR issue with iTunes.

Hi Alan, welcome. EAC is a ripping program, not an encoder. One of the key reasons why people use it over WMP, iTunes, and so many other programs for that matter, is that it makes an attempt to let you know if there was a problem with your rip and in some cases will end up giving you the correct data once it has finished. Other programs worth looking into besides EAC include CDex and especially dBpowerAMP if you don't mind paying a little for a really excellent program.

@alan

dude seriously setting up EAC is easy. you do have to download LAME seperately. at least give it a try. if you can't get it, use wmp or itunes.

once you install it, it has this very user friendly setup wizard. if you have LAME already unzipped in the EAC folder in c:\program files, you just have to click next all the way through without even reading anything.

if that's still too diifficult, you can also use foobar2000. again you do have to tell the program where LAME is but after that you just need to select standard security before you rip.

trust me the worst thing to hear in an mp3 is not an artifact but clicks and pops due to unsecure rips.

By the way, only to make a mix CD you don't even need mp3 at all. It's unnecessary extra step. Just rip and burn uncompressed WAV files.

Although I'm a LAME user, I'll admit that unfortunately there is no free program out there that offers LAME functionality with the ease of use of either iTunes or WMP. The easiest secure option would be dbpoweramp R13, but you'll have to pay for it.

I'd suggest you take a bit of extra time to learn how to setup EAC which, I also admit, can be scary for a first-timer. Here's an easy one page guide that will do the trick for you:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=EAC_and_Lame

However, if you insist on using either WMP11 or iTunes, I'd suggest using WMP - it automatically embeds album art and CD TOC (Table of Contents), as well as extensive metadata which can make library management a lot easier in the future.

I dunno, foobar2000 is pretty easy.


...and hey, whatever happened to WinDuck?

Does foobar2000 require that you have Nero installed?

In my humble opinion, EAC is not suitable for newbies.

First, EAC is not all-in-one: it doesn't have a library functionality.

And the killer: user interface for burning is hopeless.
So, a newbie clicks Menu, Write CD and what does he see?
Cue-sheets and various options like "Append new track as index 0 or 1". What does a newbie do? He wants to drag-n-drop some mp3 files, you say?
Let's try drag-n-drop mp3 into EAC: guess what, it is "checking" something for several minutes before it gets ready to burn anything.


I still insist, a program like MediaMonkey and alike would be much more suitable for a newbie: complete "out of the box" including LAME, + easy library managing (not perfect but good). Even then some complain that the interface is confusing.


The last time I tried dBpowerAmp it was also very smooth and simple, I think.
The only drawback it doesn't have library function.

Ah yes, but then there are all the headaches of being able to play the AAC format on non-apple HW, right? B*stards. I tried an AAC rip and was ticked when I could not play it on WMP!

Thanks for the suggestion - so WMP 11 has a good encoder. Good to know! Is FhG the Fraunhofer (sp?) encoder? Does the FhG encoder come close to LAME quality at bitrates of 256 and above?

This was very helpful. Thanks!

A



This sounds very useful - especially if I ever get to the point of ripping my whole CD library (God, I shudder at the time committment there!).



So, I guess what I'm hearing is that if you use a more generic encoder (eg WMP11) you risk insecure rip problems as grenol noted earlier?

Maybe I'll give it another shot. Clicks and pops do not appeal to me, which is why I banned Rice Crispies years ago. Will look into foobar2000 as well. Appreciate the tips.



Very true, but I will be getting an MP3 player in the next year, so if I'm going to go to the trouble of ripping a bushel of CD's I'd like to be able to use the final product once the player arrives on the scene. Also, I burned my first audio CD the other day and was disappointed to learn that you can only fit on 13 or 14 songs. Bummer. My old cassette tapes held more music! (Age alert, age alert).




Awesome - very helpful. It looks like the time needed to learn and master EAC long-term will be worthwhile and I'll try the page you listed. Meanwhile, it seems WMP11 is getting the nod...

Short answer: No.


Is FhG the Fraunhofer (sp?) encoder?

YES, exactly.


Very much likely so, although there was not any recent public listening test to confirm or disproof this.
In any case, for most people such quality difference becomes purely theoretical at bitrates >= 192 kbps, and for very many people at bitrates >= 128 kbps (hint: "transparency")





Yes (only not "generic encoder" but a generic ripper, or ordinary/normal/standard ripper).

Then I have to warn: MediaMonkey offers only such generic ripping.

Ordinary ripping is fast and most of the time there will be no problems (especially when CDs are in good condition), but once in a while you will notice these pops/clicks here and there, not too often. If that is annoying, then you need a "secure ripper" such as EAC or dBpowerAmp.

One last thing: if you finally decide to go for a secure ripper, then it could make sense to encode to some lossless format instead of lossy mp3 - to build a so called "lossless archive" (or "backup").

Ooops... Almost let this one go...

It's in fact Microsoft who are the bastards here: they are pushing their own WMA format. AAC is an international standard format, just like mp3.

And AAC is not tied to Apple -- There are car units which can play all AAC/WMA/mp3. (I've got one of those. Didn't try to actually play AAC yet, though...)

kdo - I appreciate you taking the time. I think my main questions have been answered from this thread:

1. WMP 11 MP3 encoder is decent quality, good for organizing a library, and at 192 kbps and above should be fairly transparent.

2. EAC or dbpoweramp is a good way to go to archive my CD's and get near-perfect reproduction - especially if any of my CD's have flaws.

3. LAME is the way to go at lower bitrates. I can get it built-in to ready made appys like MediaMonkey, etc.

Only a few details I am still unclear on:

1. Does the tranparency of 192 kbps extend to home stereo system/high quality headphones, or just to how it sounds on an MP3 player?

2. Is there any way to get WMP 11 to encode MP3 at VBR to maintain quality but reduce size?

Thanks to all!

Alan



Ah ha! I guess it's just my own stuff - my cd player and car player only take MP3...

However, I did try to burn an MP3 CD from some downloaded Itunes with no success. Proprietary issue?

Cheers, A

1 - That varies from person to person. Transparency is subjective

2 - No, WMA does not support VBR MP3 ripping

Nothing wrong with pushing your own format as long as there's a support ecosystem for it, which WMA has. Apple products are quite nearly the only ones that don't support it out of the box.

If you're familiar with the iTunes AAC vs. Nero AAC vs. FAAC inconsistencies then you know that this is both a good and a bad thing. Same for WMA - while it's closed (bad), there are pretty much zero inconsistencies/incompatibilities within the format (good).