MediaMonkey forum

Hi,
I'm new to this forum.I just discovered Media Monkey and I like it very much so far.
I have a very large CD collection and I want to have part of it on a harddrive partition on my computer.The partition is 34G and I'm trying to decide which setting would be best for ripping.I am a musician and have a great stereo hooked up to my computer so soundquality is important.I guess I would not want to use anything less than Extreme fast?
What I would like to know is exactly how much space would a 70 min CD take if compressed to Insane vs Extreme+ vs Extreme.What is the difference in size and quality between Insane,Extreme and Extreme fast?
How many CDs can I squeeze onto my harddrive and still have near cd quality?
Thanks
Roxy

The recommendation of the experts at hydrogen audio is that in most cases, the 'Standard' setting will be more than sufficient, and that Extreme is recommended over Extreme (fast). Insane is often considered overkill.

As far as space considerations, on average, the ratios are 192 (standard) : 256 (extreme) : 320 (insane), which means that with 'insane', you'd fit only ~60% of what you would with 'standard'. My recommendation would be to encode a couple of samples at each of these quality levels and try to determine whether you notice a difference between them (you have to do a blind test for this to be valid--e.g. play them randomly so you don't know which sample is which). I for one, cannot tell the difference between 'standard' and either of the others.

p.s. In case you haven't already, I'd recommend checking out the online help--there's a useful summary of all of the various settings there.

-Rusty