Best way to encode music these days?

[JayMan]

Howdy all,

I havent updated the way I encode all my music collection for quite a while now...

I'm still using MP3 rather than the newer formats...

I currently use EAC to rip my CD's, then use LAME with the '--r3mix' settings string to encode to an 'archive quality' VBR mp3 file. This use to be rated one of the best quality mp3 encoding settings, while still keeping the file sizes reasonable.

I find the quality of these files to be excellent, which is why i havent changed for years... But i figure there are alot of new formats out there, and just curious on other peoples prefered way of encoding their music.

Basically, I'm after:
-excellent/near perfect sound quality (i.e. so i'm not able to tell difference from the CD)
-good compression rates (don't want massive files)
-format to support ID Tags of some sort (like the ID3 tags from MP3)
-Easy to convert to MP3 if needed (e.g. for car stereo, portable MP3 player, mobile phone etc...)
-Able to use as an external codec for EAC.

So... anyone wanna tell me there way of encoding or point me to some good guides for producing high quality files?

Cheers!

JayMan

[crazyray]

I've chosen to stay with MP3's as well because they can be used in my car and on my portable music players. I also use EAC but I prefer LAME VBR extreme settings. Many folks I know are using EAC and FLAC. Sound quality is supposedly identical to wav but the reduction in file size is just ~50%. Hard drive space is cheap these days.


Regardless of the codec, the smaller the file size, the larger the drop in fidelity. Whether you can hear it (or care) is up to you.

[JayMan]

Just found www.hydrogenaudio.org , seems to be a nice forum regarding audio stuff...

Had a quick dig around and it seems '-Vx --vbr-new' is the new way to go with LAME... Where x=quality (lower number = better quality)... might try V2 or V1 & see how that turns out...

Might also checkout some of the lossless compressions... As ya say, harddisk space is cheap... (but then i look at my 3000+ songs @ ~6-8mb each, and think of them @ 20-30MB each... Thats a big difference)

JayMan

[crazyray]

The Foobar player offered at HydrogenAudio is recommended for playback of MP3's and FLAC files. I haven't spent any time there in quite a while but I know there are people who are up on the latest hanging at that site. I'm still using LAME 3.90 as it provides seamless playback on Foobar. I recommend the high quality VBR's you mentioned; LAME VBR extreme is the terminology for similar files with 3.90. Good luck and good listening.