MP3 Bitrate

gizmo

Right now I know this isn't a Rock/Metal issue in particular but most people around here seem to have a good ear for music so I'll try here first.

Basically I'm in the middle of converting my CD Collection into mp3 at the moment and so far I've been doing so at a bitrate of 192. However some of the music on my computer is currently in VBR. Now I havnt compared them ad nauseum yet but after a few casual tests I havnt really heard that much difference between the two formats.

So basically three questions...

What bitrate do you guys use?
Is there THAT much of a difference between the two?
Since most of my VBR files play between 192 and 320 does that mean if I converted them straight to 192 it would basically be the same as ripping them directly to 192 or would there be too much loss?

PiE

Don't transcode MP3's to different bitrates. Ever.

Get EAC and use the "alt preset standard" VBR setting. It's super.

gizmo

Hrm, I was told the same thing over in the Computers forum so I guess thats the thing to do.

Whats so bad about re-encoding music?

dimerocks

if you were to reencode an mp3 file to wma or something compressed like that it loses more again. the reason an mp3 is so small is because it cuts out sections which are supposed to be inaudible. if you convert compressed to compressed it cuts even more out.

child of bodom

He's rite all digital recordings and conversions only take what they need to make it as close to the same as possible. Sure most dvs only have bout a quarter of the whole film in them its how they're made so compact.

Civilian_Target

Yeah - don't transcode. Think of MP3'ing something as being the same as photocopying it. No matter how good a copier you have, when you photocopy something the copy is never as good as the original. What happens when you photocopy the photocopy?

Use VBR, its the way forward.