Now that I got the CD deck one question about MP3 vs WMA

[Elie]

I got the Panasonic 5310U which also plays MP3 and WMA, I am wondering from your experience, if I burn MP3's what data rate should I burn?

Windows media player 10 allows to rip into WMA lossless and WMA up to 192Kb as well as VBR, but VBR is not recommended by Panasonic.

media player 10 also rip to MP3 up to 320Kbps which is what I am doing right now, remember I like quality audio, and would suspect that riping at 320Kbps MP3 should provide me with the best possible reproduction which is close to what a CD is.

The only problem is aprox 6 albums later and an 800MB CD is full.

what are you guys doing?

thanks,
Elie

[RhinoZ]

Hey Elie,
I do what you do. Almost. I have 2 little girls so all their music got encoded at 128 CBR. I think I get about 200 - 300 songs on a cd for them, which is way more than enough as they are asleep after 10 songs. The only problem with having kids and this many songs on a cd is that they will want a particular song one day, and they want it NOW. Cute little buggers eh
Anyways most of my stuff gets encoded at 320 CBR ( because my car player acts funny with VBR ) and I can listen to it on my home stereo too. I have about 30 cds of my mp3s that I rotate in my car, I usually have 2 or 3 in the car and switch them after I'm bored. It may be overkill ( for me ), but I still have room on my HD. I like the idea of having a great sounding mp3, rather than worry about how many songs I can put on a cd. Remember the good old days of the cassette tapes. How many did you keep in your car?

[Jammrock]

Unless you have a super-quiet interior, a 192 KHz MP3 is by far sufficient for car travel and sonic reproduction. You lose so much frequency from road noise that it doesn't really matter ... unless you drive a Lexus or something like that.

[Elie]

I drive a similair car to the Lexus, it's a 1995 Acura integra LOL

ok joking asside, what I think is the more the compression, the more highs and lows you end up loosing, so I went ahead and created 5 CD full of MP3's from 18 CD's of mine which is great, all sound pretty good.

Thanks!!

Cheers,
Elie

[Wombat]

I'd use something besides WMP to encode. EAC or CDex w/ the latest LAME.

[az]

Take the MURC audio compression blind test and send me your results, I will tell you what file was what bitrate afterwards. I guarantee that if you don't have hearing damage, 256k will be more than enough, even at home on your High End rig.

If you don't believe me, take the challenge

AZ

[Umfriend]

Shit, I stil need to do that. I believe I can hear the difference between a CD and a SACD disc, so I _have_ to get it right. Can I still DL the files and stuff? Need to find some time.

[VJ]

Same here...

FWIW, I have encoded my CDs to MP3s for use in my car (VW Polo, with the Blaupunkt CompactDrive MP3), using EAC and Lame. I encoded at a variable bitrate between 192 and 320 (-> 320 is the highest bitrate supported by the player).
It sounds great, and with 1 GB of storage (IBM Microdrive) it allows me to take sufficiant music (slightly under 10 CDs), but I'm quite sure it is overkill. I just haven't gotten round to re-encoding my CDs at a lower bitrate; initially to test, perhaps to use later on .

I'll probabely buy some harddiskspace first (currently, I have about 6 GB of free diskspace, all drives in total ), and then re-encode with different settings. While I'm at it, I could re-encode them also in mono for use in my mobile (it doubles as a mono MP3 player, quality is ok, but I don't have much memory for it).



Jörg