Which Bitrate To Use?

Big Kev

Big Kev

Big Kev

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I have a 60G Vision:M, but will shortly be receiving my new set of Shure E500PTH phones, so my current set up of 128kbps WMA's won't be of a high enough standard to make good use of them.

Should I go the wave route, or would 320kbps MP3's be good enough or is WMA lossless any good?

Cheers.
 
It's mostly down to personal choice.

I use 256Kbit VBR myself (the VBR seems to average out around 170Kbps). I find that plenty, but if your hearing is particularly sensitive then with that much capacity there's no reason not to go higher.

WAV seems to be overkill to me, but again, personal choice.
 
There's really no point using WAV. Horrendously large files. Use FLAC instead for lossless. Storage space is too cheap now not to..
 
The problem is that the Vision:M won't take flac and I really want to get the best use of the phones, so would 256k vbr be good enough?
 
Unless you have super hearing, the difference between 256 and 320 shouldn't be noticeable. Some people say they can tell the difference, and fair enough to them, but I can't. :)

And yes, I was going to suggest FLAC until I did some research and found that the Vision:M doesn't support it. I don't know if it'll support lossless WMA either (isn't that a relatively new format?).
 
V1 would be more than enough. they easiet way to tell is to rip with a few different bitrates and listen yourself.


many people say they can tell the difference between 256k mp3 and lossless. many people fail when put to the test:)
 
Try it and see is the best way tbh but don't get too caught up trying to convince yourself that one sounds phenomenally better than another. Everyone's ears and h/w setups are slightly different and it all comes down to what sounds good to you and what you can put up with.

Just get a piece of music you know very well, rip it at different rates and then give them a listen on your h/w setup and preferably in the environment you'll most likely use it. Sat at home in a quiet room and you're going to notice the differences a lot more than say sat on a noisy bus.

The other thing is to work out how much music you need to fit in to how much storage. No point ripping at 96k if you have two tunes to fit into 60GB. Conversely, if you have 1000s of CDs to rip, anything to high and you'll run out of space.

edit: probably should add that personally I feel going to 160 or below is too low for me, VBR around the 192 or above range is where it starts to be good enough for me on my iPod a set of Shure's and getting me to work and back on the tube. But my main objective is to just cut out the noise of the tube in the morning and get me to work and back with out flipping out. It's more a background thing for me than a omg this music sounds awesome.
 
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For MP3's I've always used --alt-preset standard, but that's probably been replaced now? As I use FLAC -8 for ripping CD's now. If I used a portable player, I'd probably transcode all my music thats going onto it to preset standard mp3's.
I Use -8 as it makes no real difference compared to -6, and Both my Liteon and NEC drives are sooooo slow in secure mode. My old Samsung combi was really fast, but I give it away with an old computer :(
 
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LadFromWales85 said:
For MP3's I've always used --alt-preset standard, but that's probably been replaced now?
Click to expand...

Alt preset standard (APS) is essentially the same as V2 (under the new naming system). There are minor differences - i believe V2 is slightly more file size efficient but the quality is almost identical. Similarly APX is now known as V0.

For the purposes of the OP - V2 or V0 are more than adequate.
 
Settings I use when not using FLAC

32-320kbps
Joint Stereo
Quality 0
VBR Quality 0

I also never encode on the fly - I always rip to wav then encode the file from there. Force of habit really that one.

Simon/~Flibster
 
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