MP3 Question

[Moki]

I have several mp3 players (mostly rios) and a few sony players that play mp3 and atrac -- No ipods. My first question is at what bit rate do you guys create your MP3 songs at when ripping from a CD. It appears that most songs are at 128 kbps. I have played around with 128, 192, and 320. It seems for small head phones that 128 would be sufficient but for tower speakers is a higher bit rate required for better sounding music? Also, for any of you Sony users, do you prefer atrac over MP3?

[Gschmidt1]

192 is prime for space & quality. Use Mp3.

[hoopykat]

I have not really noticed a huge increase in sound quality using 128 vs 192, so I use 128 encoding for the smaller filesize. I would definitely recommend mp3 vs any other encoding format. I don't particularly like the AAC Mac encoding. Stick with the mp3.

Mike

[bschmaus]

MP3 quality stands out. I have'nt found one to beat it yet.

[Gschmidt1]

I'm not going to get into an argument about this, because I don't really have the time today, but use 192. It is pretty much the standard for Mp3 now, and you will notice a difference in the highs and lows on a nice system. Plus, by using 192, you are creating a more "perfect" digital copy, in the case that you lose your CDs, you will be able to burn them to near perfect quality.

[Moki]

Thanks guys for your input. I have been ripping them at 192 and am happy with those results. I am going to stay with MP3. There is a report on the internet that says at lower bit rates, ATRAC sounds better, but at a 192 bit rate, listeners couldn't tell the difference between MP3 ant ATRAC. Since I have so many diverse players and need a common format, I am staying with MP3.

[Moki]

Since storage space is so cheap. I have decided to go with lossless codec such as FLAC for my Rio and ATRAC for my sony. They take up more space, but they are at CD quality. I have a 100 GB and two 20 GB, so space should not be an issue.