Is 320kbps going overboard

[crashwg]

Ok, I'm ripping my CD colection to MP3... I'm trying to decide if I should go with 320kbps as a bitrate.  I want my ripped collection to sound as "cd perfect" as posible so I figure 320 is as high as it goes let's try that.

So here's what I've come up with:
The average cd, ripped at 320kbps comes out to about 150mb (give or take let's say 20mb) that equals out to 6.66 cds per gig of HD space.  With a 20 gig HD that's 133 CDs!  I'm probably even going to have a larger HD to contain them all so I could even list a 60gig as being able to hold 400 CDs and a 120 at 800 CDs.  To me that just doesn't sound too bad for space vs. sound quality.

So basically, I'm looking for someone to talk me out of it.  Tell me what your argument is as to why I shouldn't do it.  And don't say "because your GF will be mad that you're taking up all the HD space until you can afford a firewire/usb2 HD"  because that's the only downfall that I can see.

[Tilzs]

Encode at a few different bit rates.. Same tracks. Have your someone  play you the rates in random order and see if you can tell the difference. Likely you'll determine that a lower rate will do.

[TalkingOctopus]

For my favorite CDs that I listen to often, I can tell the difference between 128 and 320.  I'd say go for the 320.  I know some peope that even keep their digital music in WAV format!  That may be a little extreme, but diskspace is cheap.  I think that if I had a really nice sound system, I'd want my music to be CD quality.

[DrewKaree]

Talking Octopus, your comparison is kinda unfair.  "CD quality" is usually listed at 160.  I'm betting 192 is a reasonable bitrate and you'll be hard pressed to distinguish between the two rates.  

That being said, the only reason you SHOULD encode at a lower bitrate is if you foresee adding more albums and don't want to hassle with switching 'em all to another HD.

[Oldskool]

Try different bitrates, and see if your ears can tell.

At 192 and over, I'd bet that you can't.

320 is overkill.

[DaveJ-UK]

I understood 128 was CD quality.

320 is way over the top imo.

[crashwg]

After ripping 25 or so CDs at 320, I can honestly reccomend it.

I'm not sure if it's just me and my supersonic hearing, but going back and listening to 128 or even 192 it sounds as though the speakers are under water or at the end of a long hallway.

Thanks for everyone's feedback.  Sorry I didn't realy listen to ya though...  

[Minwah]

I rip my CD's at the highest quality WMA variable bit-rate that Windows Media Player allows.  I don't understand variable bit rates, but the quality is superb...

I have a 60GB HDD player and <150 CD's so I can afford the relatively large size.  WMA's are smaller than MP3's for the same quality tho so I'd go for WMA's...

[mr.Curmudgeon]

I've ripped 200+ CD's at 192kbps and they all sound absolutely perfect on every system I've played them on. If you are hard pressed for space, I'd say 160kbps is fine as well. Not much difference, IMHO.

320kbps is WAY overboard.

[Zathras]

For my jukebox project I'm planning on ripping them to WMAs at 192bps (if I can only track down a smaller drive maybe even 160).

I am going to be using it for background music when playing games etc so it doesn't have to be audiophile quality.


Just out of curiosity CrashWG what kind of soundcard are you using? - it could be that you have a better quality one so you can hear the difference at 320 whereas the rest of us just have cheapie ones that there is no sound difference on our hardware

[Santoro]

128 sounds awful to me, 192 sounds great.  Never compared 192 to 320.

[crashwg]

I'm comparing the sound of the bitrates on my onboard sound of my eMachine, so I don't think that has anything to do with the sound...

Perhaps it's all in my head and it doesn't really sound better.  

I don't know, but I'd say if you've got the space for what you want to rip go ahead and do it at the highest quality posible, you never know what type of stereo you'll be having it hooked up to in the future!

[RetroBorg]

I ripped all mine at 160 after reading information on the MusicMatch site, I'm certainly happy with the sound I get. I'd go with 160 or 192 anything over that would be a waste of space.

[Generic Eric]

I don't know, but I'd say if you've got the space for what you want to rip go ahead and do it at the highest quality posible, you never know what type of stereo you'll be having it hooked up to in the future!

Thats pretty much how I feel too

[Paul Olson]

Usually, 192 is good enough, but with hard drives costing less than $1/GB, I don't think 320 is overkill.

Paul

[SirPoonga]

I do VBR around 192 and on my denon receiver with Paradigm Phantoms and Parts Express 10" Titanic Subwoofer isn't that bad.

[rchadd]

192

[MonitorGuru]

Nothing less than 192, but it depends on the compressor, options and music source.

Honestly I can tell lots of difference between 192 and 128.  It is hard to tell difference between 192 and 256 or 320, HOWEVER, given source media diffrences, it is very easy to find stuff that encodes crappy under 192, and marginal under 256 and close enough under 320.

Here are some ideas of music to get to see if you're encoding high enough.

Things with lots of symbols.  These tend to get REALLY "swooshy" on lower bit rate encodes.

Things with interesting electronic keyboard synthesized effects.  Not talking regular electronic keyboard/regular sounds, but those that purposely play with the ADSR (Attack, Decay, sustain, release) effects of a normal note.  Encoders are meant to handle normal ADSR situations, but electronic synths can change the levels of each drastically giving good sounds, but very very tough to encode properly.


One of the best examples of music I use to test encoders is Lenny Kravitz's "Are you gonna go my way?"  

A few local radio stations have converted their entire CD libary to 128 kbps MP3 encodings, and whenever this song comes on, I actually HAVE to turn the channel because it sounds so absolute crappy You'd think that even with FM's ~96kbps maximum quality that 128 would be more than enough, but the amount of artifacts that are added to the song are horrendous, and unlistenable, at least to my ear.  

Basically, it ends up making the guitar chords choppy and the background cymbols? sound like a rasp on wood, or a hair dryer on low spinning around in a circle


Another good disc to use is Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax (the single mix disc--6 long edits all different).  I can use that because it uses very discrete sounds at the beginning of the sound and I use it to listen to echo's or raspyness.

To archive my CD collection, I actually used Monkey's Audio to make the master rip (lossless encoder) then I never have to rerip if I want to make comp discs or whatever, but if I was to archive direct to MP3, I'd choose 320 VBR with all the optimizations for quality.  Computers are fast enough now that it doesn't matter that it takes longer to encode at these rates, and CDRs are free after rebate and DVDR's are < 30 cents afer rebate or < 45 cents directly.

[krick]

Things with lots of symbols.  These tend to get REALLY "swooshy" on lower bit rate encodes.

Just how "swooshy" they are also depends heavily on the quality of the encoder you use.  I've had good low bitrate (128 and lower) results with both LAME and the Fraunhoffer MP3 encoder.

Oh, and it's "cymbals" when you are referring  to musical equipment.
Sorry, that's just a pet peeve of mine.