by nohitter151 » Tue Mar 09, 2010 1:01 pm
It really depends. If you want the absolute best quality and want to ensure that you'll never have to re-rip your CDs again (because you miss the CD quality), you should go with FLAC. It is a lossless format (so the quality is as good as the sound on the CD) but it is compressed so you save space (probably about half of the equivalent uncompressed WAV files).
If you want to compromise quality for file size, it then depends on how you'll be using the music. Is it only for your PC? Will you be using it on a portable player (iPod, other mp3 player, etc.?) If so, you should probably go with VBR mp3 files, since mp3's are playable on just about everything and with VBR you get good file size vs sound quality (usually indistinguishable from CD at the correct bitrates, for most people. Using the Advanced settings options for encoding you would want to use the V0 setting).
If you're just going to be listening on your PC, and plan on doing nothing else with the files, it's hard to say. Probably OGG or WMA, I'm not sure which has better compression vs. sound quality. But you'll run into compatibility problems if you try to use these formats on other devices as many portable players (i.e. iPods) don't support either format (not to mention if you want to stream the files, play them through network devices, etc.)
It really depends. If you want the absolute best quality and want to ensure that you'll never have to re-rip your CDs again (because you miss the CD quality), you should go with FLAC. It is a lossless format (so the quality is as good as the sound on the CD) but it is compressed so you save space (probably about half of the equivalent uncompressed WAV files).
If you want to compromise quality for file size, it then depends on how you'll be using the music. Is it only for your PC? Will you be using it on a portable player (iPod, other mp3 player, etc.?) If so, you should probably go with VBR mp3 files, since mp3's are playable on just about everything and with VBR you get good file size vs sound quality (usually indistinguishable from CD at the correct bitrates, for most people. Using the Advanced settings options for encoding you would want to use the V0 setting).
If you're just going to be listening on your PC, and plan on doing nothing else with the files, it's hard to say. Probably OGG or WMA, I'm not sure which has better compression vs. sound quality. But you'll run into compatibility problems if you try to use these formats on other devices as many portable players (i.e. iPods) don't support either format (not to mention if you want to stream the files, play them through network devices, etc.)
