Re: New Thread: Preferred Formats

Mark-

I too debated over this.  In the end, I chose MP3s encoded at 192.  Like you
said, it's a middle of the road approach -- and in my mind -- you can't tell
the difference.  I've read thread after thread talking about this issue and
frankly, unless you've got super-sensitive hearing, one trully can't tell
the difference between the WAV and MP3 formats -- that's the naked-ear
bottom line.

Storgae will always be a problem -- no matter how cheap the storage becomes.
  I have a collection of over 40K songs -- imagine the tax on storage I
would have to pay if I encoded all of them on to WAV format!

Hope this helps.

Regards

Lester


>From: Stan Abeln <[email protected]>
>Reply-To: [email protected]
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Re: [AT] New Thread: Preferred Formats
>Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2005 16:57:16 +0100
>
>Mark Jay wrote:
>>
>>I was just wondering ... of those who read this list, what format / sample
>>rate etc do you use and why? Speaking for myself, I elected to rip
>>everything to WAV as I use the ATs in fairly good home audio systems; I
>>have a separate drive to which I rip the content to MP3 at 192 (which I
>>find to be a reasonable compromise between fidelity and file size as well
>>as manageable for portable devices). I elected WAV as ny de-facto standard
>>as I figured if I was going to archive my collection, given the
>>affordability of drives (and getting more so every year) I should stick
>>with the best fidelity possible.
>>I only ask the question because I have read with some interest comments
>>about the quality of the DACs in the AT and I wonder how much of the
>>grousing about them comes from playing back (heavily) compressed files and
>>expecting uncompressed results. I don't want to start a flame war...but to
>>my ears...playing WAV files using the on-board DACs is actually very good
>>overall.
>
>format: MP3 for use with AudioTron,
>         FLAC for backups.
>sample rate: 44.1 KHz ;-)
>
>Created using EAC and LAME --alt-preset standard (+/- 200 kbps).  Don't
>use anything but EAC; if the rip isn't perfect, then bitrate doesn't
>mean anything.
>
>Also check out http://www.bestmp3guide.com/ and
>http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=28124.
>
>Stan