What kbit should I rip my mp3's?

ifiMan · June 6, 2006

I have all of my songs ripped at 128 but now that I am using the iFi system I can hear the difference between my iPod and my cd's. I have a 40 gig iPod and I am wondering what kbit I should rip my cd's at?

At 128 an album is about 36 megs

At Cd Quality it's about 54 megs

At 320 it's about 90 megs

I have the space to re rip many of the songs to a higher bit rate but at what point is the point of no return as far as space vs improved sound?

June 6, 2006

I have all of my songs ripped at 128 but now that I am using the iFi system I can hear the difference between my iPod and my cd's. I have a 40 gig iPod and I am wondering what kbit I should rip my cd's at?

At 128 an album is about 36 megs

At Cd Quality it's about 54 megs

At 320 it's about 90 megs

I have the space to re rip many of the songs to a higher bit rate but at what point is the point of no return as far as space vs improved sound?

I started my ripping journey ripping at 128 when most folks were ripping at 64. As time went by, and the quaility of recorded music improved, I progressed to 192, 256, and now rip only at 320.

A few months ago I started to re-rip all me CD's at 320.

But if you are only using the MP3's on your IPOD, you may not be able to tell a difference between 192 and 320.

I made the decison to switch to 320, after hearing my MP3's on a high end media appliance that connects to a line level input. There was a dramatic difference between the recording settings.

June 6, 2006

I have all of my songs ripped at 128 but now that I am using the iFi system I can hear the difference between my iPod and my cd's. I have a 40 gig iPod and I am wondering what kbit I should rip my cd's at?

At 128 an album is about 36 megs

At Cd Quality it's about 54 megs

At 320 it's about 90 megs

I have the space to re rip many of the songs to a higher bit rate but at what point is the point of no return as far as space vs improved sound?

I started my ripping journey ripping at 128 when most folks were ripping at 64. As time went by, and the quaility of recorded music improved, I progressed to 192, 256, and now rip only at 320.

A few months ago I started to re-rip all me CD's at 320.

But if you are only using the MP3's on your IPOD, you may not be able to tell a difference between 192 and 320.

I made the decison to switch to 320, after hearing my MP3's on a high end media appliance that connects to a line level input. There was a dramatic difference between the recording settings.

Andy W · June 6, 2006

At 128 an album is about 36 megs

At Cd Quality it's about 54 megs

At 320 it's about 90 megs

CD Quality =54MB? That must be someones "interpretation" of CD quality.

We've had this dicussion before, but I can't find it. At 128 artifacts of compression are clearly audible. 320 is fairly decent quality though, and I will use it for non-critial music listening. Uncompressed CD's (what I call CD quality) will take ~0.7GB (sometimes less), and this is what I usually do.

June 6, 2006

At 128 an album is about 36 megs

At Cd Quality it's about 54 megs

At 320 it's about 90 megs

CD Quality =54MB? That must be someones "interpretation" of CD quality.

We've had this dicussion before, but I can't find it. At 128 artifacts of compression are clearly audible. 320 is fairly decent quality though, and I will use it for non-critial music listening. Uncompressed CD's (what I call CD quality) will take ~0.7GB (sometimes less), and this is what I usually do.

can you rip un-compressed with I-Tunes?

my media server can rip uncompressed, but the highest I found for ripping I-Tunes was 320. did I miss a checkmark or a setting?

ifiMan · June 6, 2006

Andy,

What I meant was when I ripped an album at CD Quality using Easy CD-DA Extractor software the total space was 54 megs on the hard drive. When I ripped it at 320 kbits it took up 90 megs of space. So it's almost twice the space which means I wont be able to hold all my songs on my iPod if I rip them all at 320. So I don't want to re rip over 8000 songs at 320 kbits if I won't even notice the difference using my iPod with the iFi system.

wdrazek · June 6, 2006

For the iFi all of my 450+ CD's are ripped at 320. If I were ripping them for a higher end setup (Klipsch Heritage or the bigger Reference line) I'd consider lossless.

An iFi probably won't sound very different between 320 and lossless but I'm very sure you could hear the difference between 128 and 320 on it. For the iFi 192 is probably a reasonable minimum to use. YMMV.

ifiMan · June 6, 2006

I think I am going to go with 224 kbits.

Jay481985 · June 6, 2006

Andy,

What I meant was when I ripped an album at CD Quality using Easy CD-DA Extractor software the total space was 54 megs on the hard drive. When I ripped it at 320 kbits it took up 90 megs of space. So it's almost twice the space which means I wont be able to hold all my songs on my iPod if I rip them all at 320. So I don't want to re rip over 8000 songs at 320 kbits if I won't even notice the difference using my iPod with the iFi system.

that's not cd quality that is 128 kbps. Real .wav are around 50 megabytes by alone. Rip at 192 min or 320 variably bitrate

Andy W · June 7, 2006

To rip uncompressed in iTunes go to

Edit/Preferences...

Advanced tab... Importing tab...

Import Using = WAV Encoder

Setting = Custom

44.1 kHz , 16 bit, Stereo, which turns out to be 1411 kbps

320kbps is very good, but we use uncompressed for everything critical (stuff we use for voicing and listening tests). If we couldn't do that, we would use CD's instead.

Jay481985 · June 7, 2006

320kbps is very good, but we use uncompressed for everything critical (stuff we use for voicing and listening tests). If we couldn't do that, we would use CD's instead.

really I would have thought every kind of format would be tested since not everyone listen to it as .wav. Sorta like sound engineers listening to different speakers to make the final version capatible with most systems.

Andy W · June 8, 2006

That's a fair question.

Long story short - so we don't go tracking down anomolies in sound that are merely artifacts of compression. i.e., was it the speakers, amplifier, the recording, or the compression that makes that sound bad? If we use familiar material, without compression, then we rule out the recording and the compression.

We have plenty of beta testers which will subject the system to different kind/taste/habits in listening that will fill the requirements you mentioned.

jlingo · June 15, 2006

Why not going Lossless since you all own an iPod? I own a 60GB iPod and have been using Lossless with high quatlity recording CDs such as Orchestra, Jazz,Classical. And AAC for pop music, Rock, R&Bs.

June 15, 2006

To rip uncompressed in iTunes go to

Edit/Preferences...

Advanced tab... Importing tab...

Import Using = WAV Encoder

Setting = Custom

44.1 kHz , 16 bit, Stereo, which turns out to be 1411 kbps

320kbps is very good, but we use uncompressed for everything critical (stuff we use for voicing and listening tests). If we couldn't do that, we would use CD's instead.