hi all.
I'm about to spend a ton of time ripping my entire CD collection using MC9 and I'm having a bit of a challenge settling on the "best" options for encoding. :-/ Basically, I want high quality (who doesn't?), but I want to stick with MP3 for compatibility reasons. Also, I'd like to have somewhat "normal" MP3 file sizes, but I'm not overly concerned with file size as hard drive space is cheap, and always getting cheaper.
So, based on some reading, I've decided to go with VBR (via the MP3 Encoder VBR) for the extra quality and the possible savings in file size. Currently, I'm only using my MP3's with Media Center 9 so I'm fine in terms of compatibility there. And by the time I add additional software/hardware, I'm just going to assume they'll support VBR (hope I'm right).
For the "Quality", I'm using Normal/High. I tried setting it to "High" for a few CD's, and the file sizes seemed to be noticeably higher. I'm not overly concerned about file size, but I figured that an extra Meg (or so) on every track in my collection would add up. Plus, if/when I decide to get a portable player, size may become more of an issue. Also, I'm using "High Quality" over "High Speed" (in the Advanced window) since I only plan to go through this process once and don't care how long it takes.
I also just tried playing with the "Normalize before encoding" option... which, even after reading the description, is a bit of a mystery to me. I had it set to 100% and didn't notice any big difference (when compared to having it turned off). Since it does add extra processing and therefore some possible extra noise, I'm thinking about leaving that off. Am I missing something valuable here? ?
any and all opinions and comments are welcome!
thanks
-scott