Re: New Thread: Preferred Formats

Having read all the replies...

I started (long ago) using EAC & LAME alt-preset-standard.  Then
alt-preset-extreme.  Then, well over a year ago, alt-preset-insane.

Hard drives are cheap enough.  If I were doing it all over again (15,000
MP3s), I would stick strictly to WAVE.  Unfortunately, I can't go with FLAC
since I am heart-set on my 2 trusty and beloved AudioTrons, and my older
20GB Archos Jukebox needs MP3s (I bought it when it first came out, and
still use it today.  It is great when travelling!)

Every MP3 I have was created with EAC & LAME, then I used MP3Gain
(http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/) to adjust the "standardized" volume to
89db.  Note, for those who don't know, MP3Gain is *NOT* "normalization".
That is a crude and ineffective sound-adjustment.  MP3Gain analyzes the song
to determine how loud "it sounds, on average", and adjusts accordingly -- in
a non-invasive way (so it can be done over and over, then un-done, and not
affect the encoded quality of the MP3).

All my tags are meticulously created using ID3-TAGit.de...

The result? I have spent so much time on my collection, that I keep an extra
100GB hard-drive in my closet with a periodic backup (and incremental
backups of my server on my workstation hard drive).

My next goal: A low-power, RAID-5 server with at least 500 GB of storage,
for all music and my increasingly-valuable digital photograph collection
(also cross-backed up on 2 drives).

Glen


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Jay" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, December 31, 2004 10:16 PM
Subject: [AT] New Thread: Preferred Formats


> All:
>
> 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.
>
> Just wondering...
>