(fax) Somewhat offtopic...mp3 and software and quality

[Alexander S.Kunz]

Hello Mike & everyone else

06-Jan-2006 05:52, you wrote:

> have Itunes and an Ipod, but it is the small one, and I am not married to
> it. I am in no way an Apple devotee. Second, what encoder and compression
> rate is best? I don't want to maximize the hard drive space at the
> expense of quality, but would like to get more than 100 minutes of music
> per gig...

If you want to play it on your iPod *some* day, there's no choice but MP3
or AAC.

Since you're using MS Outlook to post to the list, I assume you're using
Windows, correct? :-)

The best MP3 encoder is probably the "LAME" commandline utility. You can
combine it with the probably best CD Ripper "Exact Audio Copy" and don't
have to worry about the commandline stuff more than once (to initially set
it up).

LAME comes with a preset-system that has been tested & approved by many
people. For everyday usage, the commandline switch "--preset standard" is
enough. If you're picky, "--preset extreme" will do.

If you don't care about the iPod compatibility, I recommend the Ogg Vorbis
audio encoder instead. It will produce smaller files while the quality is
the same as the comparable (bigger) MP3 file. Ogg Vorbis is easier to use
(simply use -Q 5 for good quality, or -Q 7 for very very good quality, but
larger files), its tagging system is more consistent than MP3's, and its a
completely free algo (compared to MP3, where royalties for the hardware
devices have to be paid to Thompson Multimedia).

http://www.rarewares.org/ogg.html
http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html (use v3.96.1)
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

-- 
Best regards,
 Alexander (http://www.neurowerx.de - ICQ 238153981)

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