Hi All,

I am having a party for my Birthday Sat May 24th. I am creating a playlist of tunes to play from my lap top using an iTunes library playlist through a hired DJ style AMP and Speakers.

I want to ensure that I get the music sound as best as is practable. It would appear my options for ripping are (lossless too big):

Windows media player: MP3 320
iTunes: ACC 256
CDex 1.70 beta 2 - Lame encoder 1.32: MPEG I 320, q=0, VBR Method=VBR-NEW, VBR quality=VBR-2

which would be best? if CDex could somebody point me to the best settings I am uncertain with varible bit rate.

Thanks

Bob.

I think that at bitrates that high, you are going to have a hard time distinguishing between all of those formats and encoders. I believe that Windows Media Player uses FhG for its mp3 encoding needs. Personally, I would stick with Lame mp3 at either -V 2 --vbr-new or -V 0 --vbr-new. That way you ensure that you aren't going to have any compatibility issues (the DJ might only let you use his equipment which may not be compatible with AAC). Not only that but you probably want to use a more secure/accurate ripper to rip your audio CDs. The last thing you want is to be playing a song and have an audible error occur in the form of a bleep or bloop.

Edit: Oh, happy birthday.

thanks for the reply.... I was n't sure what you meant by "Not only that but you probably want to use a more secure/accurate ripper to rip your audio CDs"..... where you refering to CDex?... if so is there a better ripper available that uses Lame?.... that is available on windows vista?

... thanks for the greetings

CDex should be fine. I don't personally use it, but I would trust it over WMP and iTunes. I don't know how well it works with Vista.

Yes, I was talking about you use CDex. I simply trust CDex more so than ripping with iTunes or Windows Media Player. I have always trusted dedicated ripping programs more so than all-in-one jukeboxes. I believe that CDex uses Lame for its mp3 encoding needs but I think you can also setup FhG with it as well.

You can also use EAC if you run into any issues. Once you get it setup, I think that EAC is just as easy to use as CDex and it too can work with Lame mp3. I am not sure how CDex runs on Windows Vista but I have used EAC a countless number of times on my Vista powered notebook without any problems.

I've found that CDex doesn't always set all of the parameters correctly when selecting a LAME preset, so you may want to try entering these values manually in the following order...

Encoder - Lame MP3 Encoder
Version - MPEG I
VBR Method - VBR-new
Bitrate Min - 32Kbps
Bitrate Max - 320Kbps
Mode - J-stereo
Quality - High (q=2)
VBR Quality - VBR 2
Output Samplerate - Auto

I use a VBR quality setting of VBR 3 for all of my MP3 encodings and I hear no difference between the CD source material and the encodings personally. It's obviously up to you what setting you go for.

If you have plenty of time to do the rips and want to reduce the chance of read errors then you can go to the CD Drive tab in Settings and select "Paranoia, Full" under the Ripping Method option, although "Standard" has always worked fine for me in over 150 rips.

Happy birthday for the 24th.

Cheers, Slipstreem.

You can either use iTunes to rip CDs to AAC (AAC sound quality is better than mp3) files or you can use foobar2000 to rip CDs (it has a secure-cd ripping feature) and convert to AAC directly using the free Nero encoder (if you're going to use the latter, keep in mind you'll need to change the the extension from .mp4 to .m4a).

You can setup foobar2000 to use Nero's AAC encoder with the extension of m4a. However, Nero should be coming out with an updated AAC encoder anytime now. We were given a quite of about a couple of months back in April so I would wait before using Nero's AAC encoder. The new encoder is supposed to fix compatibility with AAC devices other than iPods and the Xbox 360. It might also improve on encoding quality and efficiency, I am not sure about that though. Not only that but the OP is looking at using high bitrates (>192kbps). At bitrates that high, anyone is going to be hard pressed hearing a difference between iTunes/Nero AAC and Lame/FhG mp3.

Thanks very much for this reply...... I was wondering why you choose Quality - High (q=2) and not Very High Quality (q=0)?

Thanks

Bob

With vbr-new -q3~0 is identical. With these encoders anything above 190 k is utterly insane and defeats their purpose. @ 130 k (mp3 vbr quality V5) was already close to perfect for many in our last two listening tests.

My take : Don't give people too much credit - their hearing / artifact detection ability probably sucks. Make the files smaller and they will be easy on the ear and your disk space. So consider mp3 V4 because it will sound the same as 320k most of the time at half the bitrate less. Even if there was a difference it is probably slight & for a split second.

Shoot me.