I just wanted to thank everyone (particularly Dibrom) for all the great advice I've gathered here in the last few weeks.

2 weeks ago I was still ripping and encoding with WMP8/9 and the Cybermedia PowerEncoder plugin (whatever the heck codec that is... never could find out).

I decided to re-rip my cd collection (well over 300 discs) properly this time for my new nomad jukebox 3, so of course I knew LAME mp3 was the way to go. I stumbled on EAC somehow by myself, and compiled my own LAME 3.93.1 for linux. For a while there I was encoding using "-vbr-new -V3 --lowpass 19.7 -q0" on my linux machine after ripping on the Windows box. Then, browsing around the LAME site, i found a link here, and discovered (to my dismay) that I was doing it all wrong . Oh well, this time I've downloaded dibrom's 3.90.2, figured out how to use --alt-preset standard in EAC, and learned how to normalize properly and remove clipping using mp3gain. The tracks sound a little better than the custom ones, and a whole lot better than those old 192 cbr ones i was making before.

Oh, and I replaced my old Sony 868 earbuds with some mx-500s on the cheap, which sound much nicer.

So in short, my portable listening experience is now very much improved, with $20 worth of equipment and no extra hard disc usage. Many thanks, and keep up the good work!

Jeremy

p.s. I still listen to my mp3s in media player when at home, cause frankly I quite like the interface. I AM wondering however if there is an audio quality difference between say Fubar 2000 and WMP though, cause that would make me switch!

Glad to see that you like this forum.

One thing though, you can skip the normalizing process, especially if you use MP3Gain.

I meant that I use mp3gain to normalize, album style to 89db. I don't do any wave normalizing or stuff like that.

I've learned a lot here too. Before this I wasn't a complete moron(I used dBpowerAMP and ripped with it slow and accurate to 320k CBR stereo MP3s and -q7 Ogg Vorbis), I only used MusicMatch, for the first month I used a computer at worst and used 128k for a week, then 320k and used that(with a later version, I was smart enough to figure out that the stupid 16 KHz lowpass was screwing up earlier versions at 320k), but I did do my share of stupid things when I came here while screwing with the presets and trying to make my own(BIG mistake).

I still have to say, outside clips, it's rare a 128k MP3 will be distinguishable from the WAV for me, that happened only once, but as of this morning(by what the doctor says), I have my hearing back(fluid gone), so I should try that ff123 training site now...

Anyway glad to see you learned something here

Although, ya can't blame the normal person for not knowing about a lot of this stuff. Outside knowing 128k isn't CD if you have good hearing, it is hard to stumble across all this stuff. EAC isn't advertized as much as musicmatch, and if it wasn't for a hardware reviewer at DMusic.com I wouldn't even know dBpowerAMP existed until I saw the news here about it. Ogg Vorbis, people know of faintly, and when people see MPC, they have no idea what it was and would just think the person made a typo to MP3.

Well if you use the equalizer Foobar gives a lot better quality sound.

The big annoying thing with Foobar is the missing scrollbar.
The song can't be scrolled to my knowledge.
Otherwise Foobar is better in all aspects for me.

I don't use winamp any more. Uninstalled it.

Although the GPRS mobile phone remote plugin was fun to try but not really a must have.

With that I can start and stop Winamp from the mobile Phone (the computer must be internet connected and you must have a GPRS capable GSM phone). Also the song name is displayed on the phone display. COOL B)
All this is free of extra charge to do for me in Sweden even with a prepaid phone card in the cell phone!!

It's fun to play with once.

But I can still not recommend Winamp over Foobar at all if sound quality is important for you.

/ Alexander