What rate should I rip my music at?

cashback

Being new to this mp3 business I'm wondering what rate I should use for my mp3 player. Got a zen sleek (20gb) for christmas and want sound quality to be decent but yet fit a decent amount of songs on it. Anyone know should I use mp3 or wav and 64kps or 128kpsetc? I don't even know if that makes sense!

RobertFoster

MP3 @ 192kbps should be fine. Anything lower and you'll start to notice a difference from CD quality. Some people prefer 300kbps, or even OGG format, but 192kbps will do

Malafus

WAV is uncompressed, so not that.

I like my music at a decent bitrate.... 160 at the ABSOLUTE minimum.
I usually rip stuff at 192kbps, but sometimes (especially for pieces with orchestras) I'll go as high as 320kbps.

128kbps is not high enough, in my opinion. I can always hear the loss.... or should that be I can't hear what's lost....

I'd recommend you use 192kbps. If you want, you could rip the same piece at multiple bitrates and then compare them on some *good* speakers or headphones. Actually, the standard Creative earbuds are pretty good, so you could use those. The more range on the song, the more you'll notice the difference.

grimloch

Can also depend what you're using to rip them. Unless I was imagining things there was a definate difference between a 128kbps ripped using Windows Media Player and the same track ripped using LAME.

Personally I think 192 is grand.

cashback

Good stuff, Thanks for the replies! I'll mess around with it and see what I think. 192 seems to be the consensus.

techguy

I use 128 and it seems fine to me..though im no expert in sound, So...

BopNiblets

128 did me for years, but if I notice anything wrong with it, I BAM it up a notch to 192.
But you've LOOOADS of space with 20 gigs, 192 should do ya.

mp3guy

128 or 192. Theres always noticible difference, however small it is, as cds are at 1411kbps, but 128 is grand.

Shrimp

128 is as good as ur going to need it, u wouldn't notice it too much if it was 192. Also it depends how much u wanna put on the it, and the kind of music u wanna listen to.. but go for 128..

Third_Echelon

I use 192 or 256 depending on the type of music...

pwd

You will notice a big decrease in quality at 128 if you have a decent system to play them on.

White Rabbit

I can't believe nobody has mentioned VBR (variable bit rate).

When used it means that the easy to compress parts of the music are given 32/64/96 kb/s while the hard parts upto 320 kb/s is used.

This is done on a frame by frame basis so maximum quality is achieved with minimum file size.

Personally I'd throw 128/160 kb/s VBR at it - FOR USE IN A PORTABLE PLAYER.
My reasoning being that the player is being used in a noisy environment with crappy headphones. If I HAD to use CBR (constant bit rate) then 192 kb/s would also be my recommendation.

If I was ripping for HOME USE IN A PROPER SEPERATES HIFI or ARCHIVING then I'd rip as an uncompressed WAV. You can alwasy compress that to an MP3 later if you wish.

Capt'n Midnight

Bit rate is a trade off between quality and size. If you are listening to it mostly outdoors then you can skimp on the quality. If you are going to be using it in a library then you can't.

White Rabbit

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Bit rate is a trade off between quality and size. If you are listening to it mostly outdoors then you can skimp on the quality. If you are going to be using it in a library then you can't.

Pretty much what i said, but VBR is a way to squeee (sometimes dramatically) higher quality out of similarly sized files.

rubadub

Make a few different copies of the same song at different bit-rates and see if YOU can tell the difference. (try a blind test if possible)
Even if you can tell the difference you may prefer to have more songs on the player than small selection of quality ones.