I'm beginning to rerip all of my cds to vbr and so far I've noticed a difference. In other words it sounds better than the cbr rips. The reason I'm posting is because I'm wondering if its normal to notice a difference. My cds were ripped at 320, now its v2. I used and am currently using eac and lame. This is the first time I'm ripping them at vbr.

Doesn't surprise me at all.

Well, are you setting up a blind ABX test or just playing the files? If you are just playing the files and switching back and forth (or have them in a playlist) then I imagine the difference that you are hearing is the placebo affect unless the mp3 encoder you used for the 320kbps CBR rips is extremely old.

Either way VBR should provide more than enough quality especially at the -V 2 setting.

I'm just ripping and deleting the old files. So I'm just playing the new files and relying on what I felt the old ones sounded like. I know thats unreliable but whatever.

lol

Actually I've done some comparing, either way I need to save some space.