Hi I am farly new at this Me and my girlfriend have diffrent dap's. she has ipod and i have an Iaudio U3 and were deciding what encoder to use to achive near cd quility. should we use the Itunes mp3 encoder or the Iaudio mp3 encoder wich uses fhg's encoder. We use a standerd cbr 192 for our files could someone help us with what to use.

Best thing would probably be using LAME -V 5.

What he said.

The LAME codec produces MP3's that have been shown to consistently be higher quality than most other enocders (see the "MP3" section of this forum for listening tests, how-to's, etc.). Using the quality level of "V5" will produce the file size/bitrate you mentioned and should be transparent ("near CD quality") for the majority of your songs.

Here's the HA list of recommended settings and following table of values in case the O.P. would like to see it:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...ncoder_settings

Thanks for youre help i have found a lame encoder for nero @ http://neroplugins.cd-rw.org

Pardon my ignorance, but why would you need a lame encoder for nero?

lets me configure the encoder with out needing to know command lines as it's easier for my girl to use a gui. And for me I Find that eac is accessible to me and have found it easy too use with the help of this forum again thanks

OK, I just wasn't aware that Nero is now a ripper as well. Haven't upgraded it in several years.