[ChicagoPhil]

hi, i'm new here, but have been reading through many of the posts for the past few days. one thing on which i haven't seen a discussion is the various opinions on bit/sample rate and format for encoding music on portable players, namely an ipod. i realize everyone has a personal view on the tradeoffs between sound quality and file size, and would appreciate your sharing what works for you...

is there a reason the default sample rate is 44.1kHz vs. 48kHz? upping to 48 doesn't appear to increase the file size... is there a reason not to use 48kHz?

to the extent that you have compared MP3 to AAC at the same bit rate, do you prefer one to the other?

thanks for your input,
phil

 

[scottder]

I encode music for my ipod using LAME with "--preset standard" and it does the job for me.

Scott

 

[crazychimp132]

same here. preset standard with lame 3.96.1. i do 44.1 because lame is tweaked for that, it supposedly sounds better/is more efficient. if you want a lot of info on that, go to hydrogen audio. they obsess over that stuff.

 

[raisin]

I wish I could use lossless exclusively, but with a 20g capacity that would be either too much work or too limiting, so I have a melange of bitrates centered around 320.

 

[Mr.Radar]

The reason you should use 44100 Hz is because that's what CDs run at, and converting it )even when you're converting it up) reduces the sound quality.

 

[crazychimp132]

well, right in most cases, though it can be done losslessly if you upsample a lot from 44.1 and then downsample again to 48. you'd just have to find the lowest common multiple of the two...

 

[blessingx]

ALAC mostly on the desktop/256 AAC mostly on the iPod.

 

[buffpants24]

LAME VBR 128k-192k.

 

[ChickenScrtchBoy]

aps at 44.1khz here

 

[Stephonovich]

Varies widely. On the desktop, FLAC -5, since I have the room. When I have a need to encode lossy, usually LAME 3.90.3 @ --aps, unless I know the person can play Ogg, in which case I use it (Garf Tuned beta 2) at -q6. Pretty much identical in quality, but a little bit smaller in size, plus it encodes faster, IME.

 

[breez]

For portable Ogg Vorbis 1.1 -q5 --advanced-encode-option impulse_noisetune=-15

For desktop FLAC -8

 

[aeriyn]

AAC 224kbps for zee iPod Mini. Best quality/size/battery life compromise.

For stuff I haven't bought (yet), ranges from 192kbps to 320kbps MP3.

 

[MartinJ]

Mp3 VBR 192 Lame -rip from CD
When I buy online music Lame 320 Mp3

 

[Thisp]

Ogg Vorbis version aoTuv beta 3, -q6(192k VBR). The 'official' 1.1 version is aoTuv beta 2, so I updated it myself.

I don't worry much about transparency because it's hard for me to ABX a 192k MP3 of a song to a WAV, much less a Vorbis file.

 

[yeeyy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scottder I encode music for my ipod using LAME with "--preset standard" and it does the job for me. Scott

Same for me for MP3 encoding, LAME 3.90.3 is used.