Difference Between Bitrates!

[Mendel]

Yes most of us rip our cd's to our pc bit to what bitrates ?

I rip al of my cd's to 192 kb/s. (mp3)
Allot of people rip @ 320 kb/s.. is that neccesary ? Can you really hear the difference ?

Some people i know even rip their cd's to wav!

Is their any difference that we can detect by ear between 320 kb/s mp3 and wav ?

I just can't pick the difference up between 192 and 230.
I sure can at 128 and 192.

discuss!

 

[Andy Sneap]

I love the way you put the exclamation mark after Wav, like its shocking they may do that lol.

 

[MetalJonesy]

on general albums i tend to stick at 192 WMA's, however on albums i buy for the production, like alot of andys stuff, i tend to rip at higher quality VBR

 

[kev]

128-192 massive difference, 192-320 not so much. I still hear the difference between 320 and wavs though, and im sure there are people out there who are outraged at even the thought of lossy compression on audio lol.

 

[26]

For me from 320 to wav there is almost no difference.
All below is listenable - but for ripped cd´s you listen once in a while i`d consider file size as a factor.

 

[LSD-Studio]

I don't allow mp3 below 320 on my harddrive....and no lame encoded files either

 

[Ermz]

I used to rip them at 192kbps, but now that I can hear the difference and have the reproduction system that really highlights them, I wouldn't rip any lower than 320. Even so, I think I'd have trouble ripping into mp3 at all. I'd be more inclined to go LAME, or just buy a 1TB HDD and just do uncompressed wave.

 

[-Noodles-]

It's all personal taste, and where / how you listen to music.

If I'm at home, I'll put the CD on - if i'm on a noisy train, I don't listen to music loud enough to hear the difference between 128 and above. So I keep my hard drive / iPod space down and deal with it.

I guess if you listen to music at home in the quiet, then yeah - there's an argument to rip everything at 320, but if you travel a lot (and listen to music at a sensible volume) then I really don't see the point.

 

[abyssofdreams]

I don't allow mp3 below 320 on my harddrive....and no lame encoded files either

For a free encoder the lame encoder is pretty effin good, why wouldn't you have it?

 

[jesterroot4]

a while back i got well pissed off when comparing one of my wav mixes to a 320kbs mp3 because of the difference, but i cant seem to care anymore as theres not really much i can do about everyone wanting mp3's

At home i mix everything down at 320 but in the studio i use 192 purely so it all fits on disk, and i've never had any complaints about the quality.

 

[-Noodles-]

At home i mix everything down at 320 but in the studio i use 192 purely so it all fits on disk, and i've never had any complaints about the quality.

At the end it'll be a 128, 44.1 iPod mp3 anyway, right?

 

[LSD-Studio]

For a free encoder the lame encoder is pretty effin good, why wouldn't you have it?

compared to fraunhofer the lame stinks...get quite obvious on the cymbals

 

[AudioGeekZine]

I rip everything to FLAC, I prefer to download in FLAC

I would never pay $ for a lossy format or DRM

 

[LydonB]

I prefer lossless to mp3 as well.

 

[lilhermiejobo]

I can hear a noticable difference between 128 and 320.
Because of my shitty mixing skills I tend to prefer listening to and showing off my work at lower bitrate compression in attempt to mask my lack of skill with extra compression.
I've been curious as to studying the actual frequency differences between lower bitrate rips and higher bitrate rips for better understanding of what I'm hearing, why and how it relates to any given mix before the final compression is applied to the cd rip.

I'm always seeming to be amazed by people who make claims of being able to hear differences between codecs. Its hard not to wish my ears were that well trained to be able to pick apart the differences and actually know what I'm listening for and how to recognize it.

Aside from any of that, I always go with 320 or the next highest available bitrate for a more pure quality of listening.

 

[korpse pop]

FLAC FTW!

 

[wishtheend]

My music collection on my computer is almost all FLAC files, with a few exceptions of newer leaks that are in typical mp3 format. However, for my ipod, I've started using m4a more @ 320kbps. There seems to be less damage to the high end compared to mp3.

 

[egan.]

I use 256kbs AAC. I find that to be perfectly acceptable for any application trivial enough to not justify walking across the house to get the CD. I will use apple lossless for stuff I might want for a PA reference on my ipod. If I were only to have files of something (no hard copy) I would want them to be wav or at least lossless however in the current scheme of things portability is still the main advantage of files so I prefer more reasonable file sizes.

 

[PhilR]

I would prefer to rip to FLAC or at least Ogg Vorbis, but it seems like any portable players capable of playing these formats usually cost a hell of a lot more. So I stick with Mp3's.

 

[DecTV]

I love the way you put the exclamation mark after Wav, like its shocking they may do that lol.

indeed.

Since I, like most people, have such shitty ears that can't hear the difference between a cd and a lame ripped 192kbps cbr file, I ripped my whole cd collection with Lame. Though I did it with an average of 224kbps vbr just to feed my paranoia and watch the bitrate fluctuate.