Just wondering what format you all use & why. I’m new at this, and I’ve already screwed up my library once not knowing the difference between WMA & WMApro, so I figured I’d ask for some advice. I heard that WMA is “better” than MP3 for quality & compression, but that they both become “transparent” at 128kb anyways. What format/bitrate do you use? Does the Fuze work better with one particular format over another? I have an 8gb Fuze and about 200 cds (I don’t mind getting a microSD card if needed). Also, I’d like to use the ReplayGain to even out the sound for shuffle play. Thanks guys!
VBR MP3s compressed with the latest LAME (parameters -q0 -v2) when packing music that I might give off to friends (that rarely have Vorbis compliant MP3 players).
Vorbis at quality 6.3 for myself - for those tracks that I estimate nobody but me wants to hear.
I’m a habitual Vorbis user. Started using it 'round the early part of the last decade.
FLAC for archival and for playback on my desktop machine (they just eat up too much space and battery life on portables).
Music MP3s at 256K VBR and NOT joint-stereo for portable devices, ~30GB total space for my ~500 CD music collection.
Oh, I do have a rare track or two at 320Kbps CBR because even at 256K vbr the encoder was having issues. However that was for my old portable that didn’t support FLAC. With the Fuze I’ll just use the FLAC file for those rare cases.
Audiobooks MP3s at 32Kbps mono with an 16KHz filter. They sound like a mediocre telephone connection but they’re still easily understood and take a hell of a lot less space and battery.
Podcasts I just leave at whatever encoding rate they came at since they get deleted as soon as I’ve finished listening to them.
Message Edited by knifethemac on 02-24-2010 02:42 PM
Regardless of what codec/bitrate you choose for you portable devices, you should absolutly rip to FLAC. Ripping a big CD collection is a giant PITA and you’ll never want to do it more than once. If you rip to a lossless format like FLAC you can always trancode to any lossy codec/bitrate you want for portable use. And you can change your mind as many times as you want without ever having to rerip. If you rip straight to a lossy format and then change your mind, you’re SOL. You can never get back quality that was lost and if you want to go to a lower bitrate, you’ve now applied two lossy conversions decreasing quality even more.
For accurate ripping, there are really only two choices: EAC and dbPoweramp. Use EAC with the REACT add-on if you are technically inclined and are interested in seriously customizing the ripping process with scripts (very powerful, but steep learning curve). Also, it’s free. Otherwise, dbPoweramp is much easier to use and is still fairly customizable, but it’s not free. Both are great and both will do an excellent job of ripping to FLAC, tagging, downloading album art, applying ReplayGain, etc.
For managing your media use something like MediaMonkey or Winamp. Both can handle transcoding from FLAC to MP3 (or anything else) on the fly while syncing your portable devices. Or you can batch convert your entire library at once and then manually drag/drop MP3s instead of syncing.
Also, keep in mind that it’s only going to be a few more years before 64 & 128GB flash players are common place. When that time comes, just stop transcoding and use your FLACs directly on your portable devices.
Also, keep in mind that it’s only going to be a few more years before 64 & 128GB flash players are common place. When that time comes, just stop transcoding and use your FLACs directly on your portable devices.
Sorry, but IIRC, my FLAC archive is already at 160GB (I’m not home right now so I can’t verify it).
Anyway, i actually agreed with all of that post. Although, I’ll probably still use MP3 on portables even if all my FLACs will fit because FLAC playback will always use more battery power than MP3s (more reads due to the higher bit rate means more power used) and I suspect that battery life will never be long enough to satisfy me.
[ed. If battery life every hits a full month continuous play of FLAC files per charge then I’ll use FLAC exclusively. ;-)]
Message Edited by knifethemac on 02-24-2010 03:50 PM
I agree with ripping initially to the best format available… then re-encode for smaller lossy format. This assumes you have the space to store it
This reminds me of my early days of “stereo systems” (mid 70’s) when we would initially copy albums (vinyl) to the best media available, which back then meant reel-to-reel, using the best tape available, and the highest speed for the deck, with no equalization applied (not counting dolby). Then only after that would we copy to cassette or the like usually from the album again or from the reel-to-reel copy.
Of course the analogy isn’t quite fair since the quality of a tape recording or album degrades slightly with each play and for tape over time as opposed to a digital copy where that should not happen.
I use MP3 for all music, period. No, it isnt the best format, but it is the defacto standard and (most of all) is it impossible to lock it. So I never have to mess with DRM ■■■■. I can copy it endlessly.
When I buy music on iTunes or anywhere else the first thing I do is convert it to MP3 format.
Also, keep in mind that it’s only going to be a few more years before 64 & 128GB flash players are common place. When that time comes, just stop transcoding and use your FLACs directly on your portable devices.
Sorry, but IIRC, my FLAC archive is already at 160GB (I’m not home right now so I can’t verify it).
I’m not sure he/she meant you could put your whole collection on devices in a few years, just that you could put more on so people would be less inclined to convert from lossless first. I have no problem with space and flacs, but I’m of the generation that grew up with Walkmans playing cassettes so I didn’t grow up thinking of portable players as something to store my whole collection on, and am not interested in doing that anyway, though I realize other people want to. I would have to have a 3TB unit (!) just to do that with what I have now, and by the time it was available my collection would have grown again anyway.
Also, keep in mind that it’s only going to be a few more years before 64 & 128GB flash players are common place. When that time comes, just stop transcoding and use your FLACs directly on your portable devices.
Sorry, but IIRC, my FLAC archive is already at 160GB (I’m not home right now so I can’t verify it).
I’m not sure he/she meant you could put your whole collection on devices in a few years, just that you could put more on so people would be less inclined to convert from lossless first. I have no problem with space and flacs, but I’m of the generation that grew up with Walkmans playing cassettes so I didn’t grow up thinking of portable players as something to store my whole collection on, and am not interested in doing that anyway, though I realize other people want to. I would have to have a 3TB unit (!) just to do that with what I have now, and by the time it was available my collection would have grown again anyway.
Yeah, I just meant that the same amount of mid-rate mp3’s that you can fit in 16GB can probably take around 64GB with FLAC. My whole FLAC collection is around 1TB (about 3000 CDs). I don’t think I’m ever going to be carrying that around on a flash player.
