Daniel Reicher wrote:"I guess I don't want to waste all the time if Windows Media is equal to MP3, but I'm more interested in quality reproduction. Is 128KBit sufficient as well?"
If you are interested in quality, don't use WMA. It is generally only good if you are encoding at bitrates under 100. 128kbps MP3 is really not very good quality, either. MJ uses the LAME MP3 encoder which gives the best quality when you encode using VBR (variable bitrate) instead of CBR (constant bitrate). 128kbps is CBR. Here is a list of the
recommended settings to use with LAME. In Encoding settings, choose MP3 Encoder VBR, in Quality, choose Custom, click the Advance button and use either
--alt-preset standard or
--alt-preset extreme. The standard preset will give bitrates around 160-200 and extreme around 190-250.
"I'm going to be sending the audio through my receiver. Will I get a good quality RIP by ripping to Uncompressed Wave via Digital Secure Mode and then doing the overnight conversion to MP3?"
Yes, you will get good quality ripping to wav with Digital Secure Mode and encoding to MP3 overnight using one of the --alt-presets. There is really no reason to rip to APE as an intermediary step, especially since you're working with a 100GB hardrive. Also, if you are only going to be playing your music through your receiver, you might want to consider some of the other formats like OGG, MPC and APE. If you might want to play your music on a portable, then MP3 is the best choice since the other formats don't have hardware support yet. Both OGG and MPC will give better quality sound than MP3. MPC is generally considered to give the best quality of all the lossy encoders (ie., a 200kbps MPC would sound better than a 320kbps MP3). Also, MPC encodes faster than MP3 or OGG. Of course, the highest quality would be Monkey's Audio (APE) because it is a lossless encoder, but the level of compression is much less than that of MP3, OGG or MPC. For example, the bitrates on most of my APE files range around 600-800kbps. Other benefits of APE are that it encodes fast and it is easy to convert to any of the other formats without losing quality.
Sunil wrote:"I would LOVE to speed up the process-- it is fairly slow still for me. Any ideas other than the APE and bulk conversion scheme?"
Unfortunately, if you use Digital Secure Mode, ripping tends to be slower. The trade off is that your rips will be more accurate than using one of the faster modes, especially if you're trying to rip a scratched cd. As others suggested, the bulk conversion scheme is the way to go. MP3 encoding is a slow process, why wait for each cd to rip
and encode all at once when you can rip a bunch of cds fairly quickly and then do the conversions overnight or when you're not using the computer. Also, just rip to wav, there's really no need to rip to APE and then convert to MP3 unless you're working with limited hardrive space.
Hope that wasn't too long winded,
Rob