Greetings,
I found out about MJ recently and began ripping my CD collection. I read through the forum about various encoders. It seemed like WMA at 96k was the way to go for me, so off I went. After ripping most of my collection I went to try MediaServer, only to find out that WMA doesn't stream.
So this time I want to get it right. I have a couple of goals:
1. I want be able to use MediaServer. I have several computers networked (both 10/100 wired and 802.11b wireless) around the house and don't want to have to maintain multple libraries.
2. I'd like easy support for a Digital Audio Player yet (don't have one yet though). When synchronizing with a Digital Audio Player, does MJ auto-convert to the proper format or do I need multiple copies of each track? How do others on this board handle this?
3. Although I'm far from being an audiophile, I'd like to have good sound quality.
4. Storage space is not a huge issue for me (given the price of hard drives), but I don't want to go overboard. I have ripped about 150 CDs (most of my collection) and at WMA 96k it takes about 5 GB. It looks to be about a 10:1 compression, so I expect about 50 GB would be needed for WAV/APE.
- WMA and WAV are not and option, since they can't stream.
- APE looks good from a quality standpoint since it is lossless, but it doesn't compress very much. When it comes to streaming across my wireless network (which does not have a super-strong signal level), it may require too much bandwidth. I'm also not sure how well it would work with a Digital Audio Player...
- I know nothing about OGG other than the fact that it does support streaming.
- MP3 might be the best choice since it streams, is supported by virtually all Digital Audio Players, and at 192k should compress at 5:1 (just a guess) and has good sound.
Any advice?
Thanks,
Chris