[S_Dedalus]

I've just recently bought a 30 gig Zen Xtra, and beyer DT770's. I'm really liking both, but this hobby seems to be the wallet killer.
I have to decide whether or not it would be better to convert all my music to mp3's or leave it uncompressed and get an 80gig usb drive, and swap it out with the drive in the Zen, thereby having an 80gig Zen and a 30gig external drive. If I do the latter I'll just stick with what I have, finish my Meta42, and build a really nice amp for home use. If I do the former, I'll probably get a pair of MS-2's, sell the Beyers and wait on building anything but the Meta.
My questions are:
Has anyone had extensive experience with both MS-2's and DT770's, and if so, how much better are the MS2's?
How much of a drop in quality is there when going from wav to 320kbps mp3?
How difficult is it to swap the drive in the Zen?

Thanks for any suggestions

 

[blessingx]

It's not a big drop to go from uncompressed to 320 kbps MP3 (or AAC or Ogg, etc.). In fact with mid-fi equipment (including most if not all portables) it's difficult to tell the difference.

It's easy enough to do a test with an album or two and see what you think.

 

[S_Dedalus]

Is there any way to really squeeze the most out when encoding to mp3? when I was using an av710, and a sony d321, the computer sounded better when playing cds than the d321, but worse when playing 500kb/s ogg files.
Or are compressed files always going to sound a bit flat and smoothed over?

 

[clemens]

Quote:

Originally Posted by S_Dedalus Is there any way to really squeeze the most out when encoding to mp3? when I was using an av710, and a sony d321, the computer sounded better when playing cds than the d321, but worse when playing 500kb/s ogg files. Or are compressed files always going to sound a bit flat and smoothed over?

Use LAME as an encoder and set the quality flag to its highest value (or rather, its lowest, since lower numbers mean better quality). It takes a bit longer to encode but is well worth it. A good compromise is a qval of 2.

 

[S_Dedalus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by clemens Use LAME as an encoder and set the quality flag to its highest value (or rather, its lowest, since lower numbers mean better quality). It takes a bit longer to encode but is well worth it. A good compromise is a qval of 2.

Thanks. all I really need is some compression, if I'm going to stick with the present drive, so I'll go with the highest settings on whatever I use.