What MP3 bit rate would you recommend?

[Guest yoos]

I would like to start ripping my CD's to MP3's and I would like to be able to rip them only once to a bit rate that sounds good, but doesn't take up a ton of space... and I can use the MP3's on more than just my Smartphone.

What bit rate do you recommend?

[Guest siu99spj]

Oohh, how much info are you going to need?? :)

Basically, if you're going for headphones then you'll need at least 128kbps, stereo, 44kHz really. That will make your songs about 1MB per minute. Much lower and you can begin to notice artifacts. If you're just playing straight out of your phone, then 64kbps, mono, 11kHz should be sufficient (Low quality speaker).

You could try VBR which might yield smaller results BUT it can also make the songs MUCH larger, so maybe not always a good idea.

Don't forget there's also OGG which might be able to make smaller files (Never tried), or even WMA's which claims to make files half the size of MP3's (IMHO this rarely happens, usually they're of a very similar size).

And on a final note, may I recommend the quite excellent CDex for ripping your CDs? Not only does it have CDDB support (Get CD artist and track listings off the internet), it can encode in all the aforementioned codecs and even has VBR encoding. Its also completely free.

[Guest yoos]

Thanks, I understand everything you said except VBR... Don't know what that is....

I guess I should have worded the question something like this...

I would like to rip my CD's to MP3's only once and want to play them on a high quality car stero system via a CD, headphones via a portable CD player, and my SPV via an SD that has about 300MB free. What bit rate would you suggest for obtaining a pretty good high quality sound in my car/headphones that won't use up all my SD in a small number of songs.

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

VBR = Variable bit rate, but its a bit of a waste of time imho (basically it raises and lowers the bitrate automatically based an how much is "happening" in the sample).

Basically CD quality is about 96kbps (i think), for the majority of people 128-192kbit is fine, for audiophiles (much) higher.

Your main problem is your phone, anything above 128kbit and it will struggle, anything below and it'll sound crap in your car.

My opinion: 128kbit :)

[Guest Simon Desser]

Don't forget there's also OGG which might be able to make smaller files (Never tried), or even WMA's which claims to make files half the size of MP3's (IMHO this rarely happens, usually they're of a very similar size)

WMA's (and OGGs) WILL be half the size of mp3's, if they're encoded at half the bitrate. The advantage being that both WMA's and OGGs claim to sound just as good at say 64kbps, as an mp3 at 128kbps.

I agree with Mono, on your phone, mp3 @ 128kbps is about right :)

(and Ogg/WMA sound fine at 64kbps, therefore you can fit on twice as many songs :D )

[Guest mike-oh]

VBR = Variable bit rate, but its a bit of a waste of time imho (basically it raises and lowers the bitrate automatically based an how much is "happening" in the sample).

Basically CD quality is about 96kbps (i think), for the majority of people 128-192kbit is fine, for audiophiles (much) higher.

Your main problem is your phone, anything above 128kbit and it will struggle, anything below and it'll sound crap in your car.

My opinion: 128kbit :)

How can you encode/what's the point of encoding at 128kbit from a 96kbit cd? I know that you physically can do it bit aren't you just wasting your time and storage space as you can't get the extra sound quality from nowhere?

[Guest Simon Desser]

CD quality is NOT 96kbps, although at 128kbps or certainly at 192kbps MOST people wouldn't be able to notice MUCH difference.

In reality, CD quality is 1.4 Megabits per second, as opposed to 128 Kilobits per second (an average mp3)

This is a rough guide:-

What is MP3?

MP3 (MPEG-1 Layer 3) is an advanced audio compression format that significantly reduces the amount of storage space required to store digital audio. MP3 uses various techniques such as transform coding, perceptual masking and huffman compression to reduce the amount of storage required for CD quality audio from approximately 1.4 megabits per second to 128 kilobits per second.

Are MP3 files really CD quality?

This question has been a source of debate for many years. While most people are happy to download and listen to 128kbps MP3 files, experts tend to agree that bitrates of 192kbps and higher are necessary for CD quality encoding. Put simply, most MP3 files of 128kbps or higher bitrate are quite listenable and considered to be near CD quality. The downside of encoding MP3 files at high bitrates is that they require more storage space as the bitrate goes up. Given the recent proliferation of broadband Internet connections, large file sizes are becoming less of an issue.

How do bitrates equate with quality?

The bitrate an MP3 file is encoded at is usually the best indicator of the fidelity of the sound. In general, the more bits that are allocated during the encoding process, the closer the MP3 file will sound to the original recording. You can use the following table as a rough indicator of the sound quality to be expected at various bitrates:

8-32kbps: Very low bitrates often used for streaming and encoding voice recordings. Not suitable for encoding music at high quality.

40-64kbps: Suitable for high quality streaming and low quality music encodings. Often used for poorly recorded live shows.

80-112kbps: Reasonable quality for encoding music content. FM radio quality.

128kbps: Good quality. Often considered to be close to CD quality.

160-256kbps: Excellent quality. 192kbps is often the choice for encodings indistinguishable from the source.

320kbps+: Considered 100% identical to the source. Very large file size is a trade-off.

Why is MP3 so popular? What about other formats?

There are a number of other audio formats that have appeared as possible successors to the MP3 format. They include MPEG-2 AAC, TwinVQ (VQF) and Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA). Each have their strengths, but MP3 has remained the format of choice for the vast majority of the Internet population. This is largely due to the huge amount of software and hardware now available that supports the MP3 format. All of the aforementioned formats are excellent particularly at low bitrates and use more advanced compression techniques such as vector quantisation. This has not proven enough for these formats to become widespread.

[Guest yoos]

Great stuff everyone! Thanks!

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

Oops sorry. It had confused me at times, guess i was just silly believing the WMP lies :)