[Tim D]

Whatever you do, use LAME. Standard preset is fine by me. I can easily spot 192 kbs non-LAME sample and it is usually horrid. Honestly it is to the point that 128kbs VBR LAME is sometimes competitive or better than 192kbs non-LAME samples.

 

[lextek]

Quote:

Originally posted by Tim D Whatever you do, use LAME. Standard preset is fine by me. I can easily spot 192 kbs non-LAME sample and it is usually horrid. Honestly it is to the point that 128kbs VBR LAME is sometimes competitive or better than 192kbs non-LAME samples.

I use iTunes which is Non-LAME. I think it is near, very near CD quality. I admit I have never heard a LAME ripped MP3. I did try some higher bitrates and didn't think they were worth the extra room. Remember this is a portable enviorment. If you wanted to use this as home base source try a AIFF file. But this is large.

 

[Tim D]

iTunes I think is Fraunhofer, which isn't bad...BladeEnc and Xing and most others are just pure and utter crap.

However LAME is king...and especially gains the lead at medium bitrates and especially in VBR.

I'm sure there are ways to get LAME on Mac's.

I do realize that this is a portable environment...but also realize that if there's a better encoder that does better quality for size, that is more conductive to the portable environment anyways.

But I have a PC and there really isn't any reason for a PC user not to use it over others.

 

[Patchmaster]

Quote:

Originally posted by lextek I use iTunes which is Non-LAME. I think it is near, very near CD quality. I admit I have never heard a LAME ripped MP3.

Not to make too fine a point of it, but LAME is an encoder. It doesn't know beans about ripping. For the PC you want to use EAC or CDex to rip and LAME to encode. I can't help with rippers for the Mac.

I should also mention that the ripping process is actually very complicated and is just as important as the encoding. If you hear pops and clicks in your MP3s, it's probably due to bad rips. EAC and CDex go out of their way to be sure you get a perfect rip (or at least as close to perfect as possible).

I would concur with all those that recommended LAME with --alt-preset standard. VBR with Joint Stereo allows you to pack a lot of sound into a reasonably small file.

For the iPod you might also want to experiment with ABR. This is VBR with a target bit rate for the overall track. It's a bit of a compromise, but probably okay when encoding for a limited storage space like on a 5GB iPod.