Hi all,

I was just considering backing up some audiobooks I have on cassette which are unavailable anywhere either as digital downloads via amazon, or in cd format and had a couple of questions.

My mp3 player only allows line in recording quality in low (128), medium (256) or high (320) bitrates.

Obviously for an audiobook, most the time, 56-96kb/s is more than enough. So I was just wondering what is the best way to proceed, record using the line in recording at 128kb/s and then re-encode to the lower bitrate, or record at 320kb/s and then re-encode.

I will be using dbpoweramp (lame) to re-encode and sticking to mp3 the whole time.

Many thanks.

I did do a quick search but didn't see any posts covering this kind of area specifically.
The closest I found was http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=2912
Which is where I learnt the difference between transcoding and re-encoding

Ideally, if you plan to do a transcode of spoken word, its best to go with 320kbps first for the best quality initially. You might run into a space problem depending on how much memory the player has. If there's a space issue, go down to 256kbps.

That would be my call, then choose about 64kbps for spoken word when using dbpoweramp. If its just a voice without any background music, you shouldn't notice any quality loss. Transcodes will affect music far worse than a single voice in the center channel.

Don't you have a PC with a soundcard?


S**t! so I can't use the LAME CLI, or Winamp, or EAC, or LameDropXPd, or.... ?

Doesn't your computer have a line level audio input jack? Your best bet is to use this to record to wav, then encode as mp3. Some applications will input directly to mp3 as well.

Yes, my laptop does have a soundcard, but I can't be bothered to do without it for several hours while it records. In that, I am constantly listening to books, music etc (it's my equivalent of some other people watching tv/movies for recreation). As in, whenever it's on. When it's off, I'm either doing something which requires not having a laptop running in the background or I am not around.

I've already started recording using the mp3 player but perhaps I can sort something out to do as you suggest wrt recording using wav on the laptop and then transcode. Still, with an audiobook from a cassette source, I'm not sure if there would be that much quality difference compared to what I am doing now.

JAZ, let the guy use what he wants to if he likes dbpoweramp. Its not bad.