Ripping CDs - Rates

zom247

zom247

zom247

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When I rip a cd to my hard drive is it worth doing it at more than 192 kbps? I know this is cd quality but is it better to rip it at 320 kbps or just leaving it at 192 kbps?
 
If you've got a standard joe sound card then i'm sure 192kbps will suffice. But if you've got some pretty hardcore kit. Like a mofo sound card and some killer speakers, you'd hear a difference with >192 kbps.
 
How is 192kbps CD quality when standard CD's are 1,411 kbps? :)

What you compress to depends on the quality of your equipment, what you want to hear, and how fussy you are.
 
If your hard drive can take it, Id recommend going straight up to 320kbps. I ripped a load of CDs at 160 or something liek that, got some new speakers, realised they sounded poor so decided to rerip (8 hour nightmare). The way I see it, if you do 320 you're covered for future hardware upgrades :)
 
~224 is optimum. there is really no need to go higher than that, it just results in bigger filesizes and little to no improvement. @ 224k its already very difficult for people to abx against the original source material. peopel who tell you otherwise havent done a proper blind test.


What is probably more important is the method you use to encode it. use the latest version of the lame encoder, using these parameters
Code: 
-V 1 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d -k

thats just about spot on. if you want smaller files, change the beginning parameter to '-V 2'. if you want larger, change it to '-V 0'.

If you have plenty of space, think about using a lossless codec such as flac or monkies audio:)

hungryhungry123 said:
If your hard drive can take it, Id recommend going straight up to 320kbps. I ripped a load of CDs at 160 or something liek that, got some new speakers, realised they sounded poor so decided to rerip (8 hour nightmare). The way I see it, if you do 320 you're covered for future hardware upgrades :)
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Not really. if you want to be covered, use lossless. then you can convert it to any losses codec and you'll always be covered for the future.
 
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I can usually tell the difference between 320K and anything lower on my hi-fi (maybe some are poor rips or source thoug and some music seems to rip better than others at lower rates), but I don't really see the need to go any higher.

(Mind you some of the CDs I own *Cough Editors *Cough Cooper Temple Clause) sound like they were created at 128K anyway!! :rolleyes:
 
Bes said:
I can usually tell the difference between 320K and anything lower on my hi-fi (maybe some are poor rips or source thoug and some music seems to rip better than others at lower rates), but I don't really see the need to go any higher.

(Mind you some of the CDs I own *Cough Editors *Cough Cooper Temple Clause) sound like they were created at 128K anyway!! :rolleyes:
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i'm going to be frank here, all the music you rip should be ripped to the same standard. the lesson is - rip your own music, because its pretty obvious you'd only say what you just did if you were talking about music you have downloaded. To be honest, most of the stuff you can find on the net isnt ripped to any standard what so ever.
 
james.miller said:
i'm going to be frank here, all the music you rip should be ripped to the same standard. the lesson is - rip your own music, because its pretty obvious you'd only say what you just did if you were talking about music you have downloaded. To be honest, most of the stuff you can find on the net isnt ripped to any standard what so ever.
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Hey hang on a second... Don't you accuse me of piracy here- every piece of music ever played on my hi-fi has been bought. :rolleyes: :mad:

Now whether that is down to the software I use to rip, the quality of the original CD, the equipment I have enabling me to hear the difference, or a combination of all these things, I don't know, but I am telling you I can hear a difference in many instances.
 
james.miller said:
sure:)
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So are you saying 'sure' I can hear a difference or am I still pirating music in your eyes? Do you actually want to have a proper discussion about this? What are you basing your post about 224 being optimum on?
 
Bes said:
So are you saying 'sure' I can hear a difference or am I still pirating music in your eyes? Do you actually want to have a proper discussion about this? What are you basing your post about 224 being optimum on?
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There was another thread very similar to this one where dmpoole graphically compared the difference between various bitrate mp3s. The version encoded at 320 was almost identical to the 224 one which in turn was pretty similar to the original .wav

Personally i always encode at 320
 
im saying sure, say whatever you like. you dont have to convince me wether you do or dont. to be honest i dont care. in fact its quite amusing that you take offence by that and resort to rolling eyes at me. what was it you said about having a 'proper discussion'? as ive said before, people who say they can reliably tell the difference between bitrates that high are almost exclusively lying, or they 'believe' they can. many, MANy people fail blind abx's at those bitrates. hell many people fail at 160k, but thats because material in proper listening tests are encoded properly.

you mentioned your material possibly being sloppy due to the encoding methods. why? you encoded it - you play it on your 320k mp3s on your hifi so im guessing you take some care over the encoding - why would some rips be any poorer than others? what is your hifi by the way?


want a proper discussion? lead by example. dont throw a fit because i question your material. i wont give you the satisfaction of thrown a rolleyes back at you.
 
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Audiograbber set at a high variable bit rate for me, or Itry to a least rip my stuff at a minimum of 192.

I was led to believe that 128kb is "ok" quality, 56kb was "cd" quality and anything higher than 160/192kb is what you need.

I have some music here that I have ripped at 192kb it just didn't sound right so I thought I'd try 320kb and it just sound all wrong, so stuck in on the "high Variable" setting and it sounds fantastic.

I have to agree that it all depends on the playback equipment;).
 
james.miller said:
If you have plenty of space, think about using a lossless codec such as flac or monkies audio:)
[..]
Not really. if you want to be covered, use lossless. then you can convert it to any losses codec and you'll always be covered for the future.
Click to expand...
I think that's really the best advice, especially if one is thinking about ripping at 320kbps CBR. Hard disk space is so cheap now - like 20p/GB - that it seems to make so much more sense to go lossless. No need to have any concern about quality, and infinitely more flexible. Having said that, at ~400MB per disk, I can see why people who are interested in high quality audio might still not be convinced when 192VBR/LAME can have excellent results.
 
james.miller said:
does audiograbber still come with a very old version of lame? (3.5 i think).....its not a patch on 3.97!
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I'm not sure, I've been using Audiograbber for a few years now, but you can just download the Lame.Dll and place it in the Audiograbber install folder. ;)
 
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