[OT] MP3 Bitrate

I was curious what bitrate do you import your CD's into iTunes? I'm currently using 192kbps VBR MP3 encoded by iTunes, and am considering going higher but am not sure if there's any audible difference. I've tried LAME before but like the convenience of iTune's interface, and I believe iTunes 8 has more MP3 encoding options than before. I'm about to encode a bunch of CD's so that's why I'm asking.

Thanks,
Alexander

If you're going to CD, it's 44.1khz, 16 bits.

If you're extracting music from CDs for video, I usually convert it to 48khz/16 or 24 bits.



www.strypesinpost.com

I meant importing songs from a CD into MP3 for general listening purposes.

192kbps. Don't have studio quality monitors, so quality isn't that important, but i usually get them in as aiffs anyway, so if i need to use them as scratch music in my edits, I'll just copy into the project folder in the finder, and pop them in.



www.strypesinpost.com

So after talking with my friends, doing research, and doing my own tests, I've decided to import most of my CD's with 256kbps with VBR at highest quality. While listening to various classical CD's, I can tell some difference in "fullness" between 192 and 256. 256 and 320 sounds practically the same to my ears. I also figure that if 256kbps is good enough for Amazon and iTunes Plus' millions of customers, it should be a good enough standard for me. I think iTunes MP3 encoding has come a really long way since earlier versions, and I'm happy that I don't have to deal with LAME import programs or other formats such as AAC or Ogg Vorbis that might eventually be incompatible with whatever future music player I may choose to use. Thank you for the info!

There's also AAC or Lossless encoder available to you in iTunes. I prefer 320 for MP3 I notice the quality difference during more complex audio. Takes up a bit more space- though nothing compared to AIF/Uncompressed CD Audio.

-Noah

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I know AAC is supposed to be better than MP3 but I just like MP3's convenience because it's universal. I might import some higher end stuff in 3220. Thanks for the info guys!