Best Format to Rip Music CDs In????

[bibeaud]

I just upgrade Phatnoise media manager to the plus so I can rip into AAC (M4A) format.  What is the best format for the smallest size to use?

I currently have a 10 Gb DMS.

I have used MP3 Pro in the past on an old flash drive, yet I do not see MP3 Pro as an option other than MP3 at 96 bitrate.

Opinions are appreciated.

FYI -- My music keg is attached to my Honda OEM radio via the FM Modulator (so I will not get any benefits of a "super" high quality).

Thanks!
David

[todd1010]

Hell man, hard drive storage is so cheap now why not just rip them at the highest setting?

[Paul]

192kbps is (I think) the best trade off in sound for size.  It's almost as good as any of the higher AAC bitrates.  It's way better than 128.

[Carlton_Bale]

I agree about cheap hard drive space making small files unimportant.  I recommend preserving the original CD quality and ripping to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec).  This way, you'll never need to rip again if a new format comes out.  Just re-encode and you'll still have the original available.

If you really want to compress your files, AAC/M4A is the best.  128k aac is supposed to be equivalent to 168k or 192k mp3 (depending on what you read).  I say go for aac and crank the bit rate to something above 192k and you shouldn't have any complaints.

[S80_UK]

Agree entirely.

Applying the patch to the box to allow unsigned hard disk drives would allow not only an easy upgrade to higher capacity, but is also good insurance in case your current hard disk dies.  All you need to create a new DMS once the box is patched is a backup of the first megabyte from your current DMS.  See elsewhere on this forum.

I understand the comment about not being super-critcal about quality due to the use of the FM modlator, but rates above 128k will often be noticably better, even through FM.  

I would also endorse the use of FLAC.  Not only does it sound good, but it also rips the audio very much faster than the other formats (can be CD drive and PC processor dependent).  I have an 80 gig drive (now quite cheap) with 200 CDs loaded, all in this format.

[SteveC]

If you encode to MP3, do yourself a favor and rip/encode using something OTHER THAN PMM. I recommend EAC (Exact Audio Copy) and LAME. Since you have already ripped the music, you don't really have to worry about this issue. However, I don't recommnd using PMM to re-encode the files. There are plenty of good utilities available.

As to bitrate, using LAME's VBR (Variable Bit Rate) modes with Joint Stereo encoding is your best option. Fixed bitrate files (i.e. 192K) waste bandwidth on simple portions of the music, and can't properly encode the more complex portions. All songs have simple and complex portions - allowing the encoder to adaptively choose the bitrate allows for the best quality at a given size.

LAME's --alt-preset standard setting is the one most frequently used, although I prefer to give up a bit more disk space for --alt-preset extreme (produces file sizes equivalent to a fixed bitrate encoding at 230K).

Lots of people will advocate other formats (AAC, OGG, etc.), but in my mind MP3 is the universal format - it works on just about everything, so you never have to worry about it again.

[gallagher419]

Well if I were you the first thing I would do is to ditch that 10GB DMS and buy a 120 HDD and perform the hack that way you can encode to FLAC which is the best format to use. FLAC is Lossless and  when you encode to it you do not lose any frequencies like you do when you encode with mp3 or aac. IMHO lossy stinks! There are alot of sites that sell HDD's cheap just do a search. Good luck!