A little while back I got Pyro MP3 & CD Maker by Cakewalk so I could burn my MP3s back into regular audio CDs. I finally got a chance to play with it some today. Not a bad program at all, but a bit pricey compared to others out there.

At any rate, what turned out to be the really nice thing about this program is it let me rip songs off of my CDs at upto 320kbps. MS Media Player 7 and Creative's Playcenter only go up to 129 kbps. Out of morbid curiousity, I tried the higher setting to see the audio quality difference.

If you haven't tried it, you have to hear it to believe it... It literally doubles or triples the audio quality. It does make an MP3 file about double in size though. Almost 2megs per minute of recording. If you've got the space on your hard drive, and software that'll let you rip at that level, it's worth it though. At least with your favorite tunes http://discussanything.com/Ubb/cool.gif



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Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquest of it

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I recently was ripping my entire CD collection to MP3, for mix Cds and parties, and I chose to use 192 bit MP3s. It is a bit larger than the 128, but does have a noticeable sound quality difference. Anything higher though and I'd die. (10 gigs of MP3s)

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Manu Narayan

10 gigs? LMAO! Well, I'll probably end up in the same boat myself http://discussanything.com/Ubb/smile.gif I'm planning on putting in another hard drive just to hold my MP3s though. 20 gig ones are only about $100 for a good one right now. Maybe I better go for a 30 gig one though http://discussanything.com/Ubb/biggrin.gif

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Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquest of it

"There is no weapon deadlier than the will" Bruce Lee

http://www.boortz.com/gadsden.gif

I never DL anything less than 192... NEVER!

my Kenwood mp3 player in my truck plays them fine, even though it says it won't http://discussanything.com/Ubb/biggrin.gif

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etc.....

thanks 4 the tip, I was going to start going through my collection and put them on a cd or two.

I agree that 128 is below the minimum sound quality for acceptable mp3 audio, but I would argue that at least as important as bitrate is the method used in encoding the mp3s. If you use audiocatalyst, you could encode it in 128, 192, 320, whatever, and it'd still sound like crap. However, if you use LAME and the --r3mix tab with ABR of 192, it sounds like the sweet, sweet song of the sirens.