[cyberhazard]

Bare with me on this, I am new to portable MP3 players and to these forums.

I have a basic understanding of the MP3 format and I think the higher the Kbps the better the sound. I also suspect Audible(6) is not for music.
My portable MP3 player supports these formats. ACC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible(6), AIFF, and WAV.

My question is this. Of these formats, which is the best in High-Fi? How do these formats rate, best to worst as far as sound quality. Right now
my music library is all 128 or 196 Kbps MP3's. If I want to increase the audio quality of my library, can I just change Kbps to 320 or should I
re-rip them from the CD's?

I am thinking of getting a set of Ety ER-4p's and I would rather have 1,000 extra crispy sounding tunes compared to 3,000 tunes that sound
like 8-track tapes.


Thanks

 

[Hirsch]

You're not going to be able to re-rip a recording at a lower bit rate into a higher bit rate. Information once lost isn't coming back. To increase the sampling bitrate, you're going to have to re-rip from the original CD's.

The.wav format is best, purely in terms of sound quality, as it's a lossless conversion from CD Audio. There are a few lossless compression schemes in the works, include .ape, .shn, and Ogg Vorbis (IIRC). These occupy a lot more space than a lossy compression file, and no portable players support them AFAIK.

To avoid reripping, you might want to rip to wave. Use a lossless scheme to store the file on pc, and play there if there's a player plugin that supports it. Convert wave to the highest quality lossy format you can find. When better formats appear, you can always reconvert the lossless compressed file back to wave and resample in the format du jour, without having to rerip.

 

[skagen]

Right on the money Hirsh - ripping to wav is a they way to save time and be able to reformate at at will. Besides if Hard Drive techonology keeps improving, we might soon get audiophile quality portable HD players that just dispense with the whole compression crap and just play WAV files.

 

[grinch]

in my opinion, for best quality/size ratio i'd go with a ~192kbps aac file. it's tough to beat the sound, especially when you're out and around with an mp3 player. in my opinion, in this situation using the full wave file just isn't worth it. it's like one album instead of six at a high bitrate, and unamped from an mp3 player, you probably aren't going to be able to tell much of a difference (this doesn't mean there isn't one).

ogg vorbis is a lossy codec, but hirsch is right that shn and ape are lossless. he is also right in that you cannot increase quality with a higher bitrate by reencoding from a lossy file. re-rip from the cd.

if i were you, i'd rip one track that you really like from a cd and encode it with the following: aac (try 128kbps, 160kbps, and 192kbps), mp3 (--alt-preset extreme). upload these files along with the original wav to your mp3 player and see which one you like best. this would act as both the final word for your ears/setup AND you'd get to learn how to use codecs more.

 

[blessingx]

A couple other things-

Wav (PC) and aiff (mac) are the same thing, uncompressed copies, or in some cases extractions, from the CD.

Audible is a secure/copy protection wrapper for other formats, the best of which is simply a 32kps mono mp3 (so it's definitely not about music). Also I'd highly recommend the Audible.com service.

 

[blessingx]

And as always, visit Hydrogen Audio, the Head-Fi of the compression world.

 

[Spad]

Quote:

Originally posted by blessingx Also I'd highly recommend the Audible.com service.

Ahh, another audiobook lover I take it. My old iPod 5 is filled with little else. I just wish Audible had more unabridged volumes.

Any interest in ebooks?

 

[blessingx]

Agree with you about unabridged. I would also add- some of the old classics needs to be encoded at higher bitrates.

By ebooks, do you mean like want I used to try to read on my Palm?

Actually browse Project Gutenberg every once in a while. They were suppose to be releasing audio books soon too, but I haven't heard anything recently. Have any other good audio book sources (don't mean to threadnap)?

 

[Spad]

Amen to the higher bit rates. As you may know, when they began iPod support some of the lower rate .aa files would clip the ending from the book.

I have a RocketBook ebook reader that I've been using for years. I dread the day when it dies, since there is no equivalent available at the moment. A PDA is a poor substitute, and one I'd like to avoid.

 

[Lando]

Cyberhazard: Try re-ripping and encoding with Lame's --alt-preset standard. It's probably more than transparent enough for portable use, and averages around 192kbps for most music (it's vbr). If you're going for lower bitrates, aac is probably better. I've done some tests* and a 128kbps cbr aac has virtually no pre echo while a 128kbps cbr mp3 has very obvious pre echo. Of course, those are very low bitrates and it's damned near impossible for me to hear a difference between an --aps mp3 and an aac of similar bitrate.

Of course, ogg kicks both their asses with lower average bitrates to boot!

*For those of you who are interested, I used castanets.wav to test pre echo.

 

[cyberhazard]

Signed up on Audible.com. Very cool, thanks for the tip.

Checked out Hydrogen also. Lots of info. Those folks over there seem to love the Ogg Vorbis format, among others.

I want to stick with native iTunes/iPod formats so for now 320 Kbps ACC files are sounding pretty good.

Thanks everyone for your input, it is very helpful.