Hi Simon

Happy New Year to you.

In short, 320 mp3 is the minimum bit rate you should use. Why spend all that money on a good sound system and beolab speakers to listen to compressed music!  Where i download my sites I will only download 320 as anything less sounds terrible on my beolab 9's. When ripping from a CD i use losssless. Yes it takes up much more storage but sounds so much better. I haven't yet ripped my entire collection (much of it I'll probably rarely listen to.... and if i do, can just put the CD on). Sure i may have the occasional urge to listen to 'our Cilla' or Boney M, but they can really stay in the cupboard for a longtime!!!  I'd however invest in more hard drive space on your computer so you can listen in a higher bit rate.

To my ear i can still tell the difference between 320 bit and lossless. Some people argue they can't! Between lossless and the actual CD itself i can be fooled either way, i.e no real difference. Technically there should be no difference, but i guess using the itunes platform with mac sound card then to beport, then to beocentre 2 socket box then to beolab 9's..perhaps there is some slight deterioration of the signal. I could of course be imagining that.

In short, I'd rip them once at the highest bit rate you can, and buy the extra space on your computer. Then you are guaranteed listening pleasure into the future.

Regards

David Coyne

Sydney, Australia 

post script..

My partner has suggested that as the signal is all digital from itunes right through to the speakers..there shouldn't be any deterioration of the signal at lossless...  (however Im thinking logically, that if you have a poor sound card on your computer that would effect the final result?)

There are various lossless formats about, however the problem i finding a suitabpe player, not all of them will support every format.

Look them up on Wiki where you will find infrmation on Encoding, and the all important decoding - ie playing.

Names of such formats FLAC, WavPac, Monkeys Audio(this is one of the better ones), and of course there is the ALAC - which is the Apple format.

It depends upon wehter your player can support the format, you mich have issues if it is Linux based but Windows based players will probably be ok.

You will probably also need to download the correct CODEC, for example Winamp

Opps, hit a wrong key,

.........You will probably need to donwload the correct CODEC, for example Winap, which is a very popular media file player, has loads and loads of add ons that were written by third parties, and in among them is the Monkey Audio plug in.

In my experience, you will find that the program that yuou use for ripping your files has a big influence on the sound, not all MP3 rippers are the same, despite having the same bitrates and settings. The best CD ripper I have come across is called CDex.

Personally, I love Windows Media Center (which you'll have if you're using Windows Vista), so I rip all my cds to the only lossless format that understands (WMA Lossless).  I also have an iPod, so lossless would not only be impractical, WMA is incompatible.

To this end, I essentially have two music collections:  WMA Lossless and MP3 192k.

A program like Ripstation Micro can rip to both at the same time, tag them, and put them into their respective folders.  e.g. S:\Music\Albums\Lossless\Artist\Album\01 - Track.wma and S:\Music\Albums\MP3\Artist\Album\01 - Track.mp3.

Very easy ripping - if you're using Windows I'd recommend it!

Lossless is certanily the way to go now, given the cost of bulk storage. Make sure your system is automatically backed up using whatever method you favour, you certainly wouldn't want to go through the whole paining of re-ripping everything more than once!

iPods are also now of a size (memory wise) where you could conceivably use the lossless format in you iPod too, preventing the need for a "portable" copy of your music collection however the problem remains of a lossless format that can be used by both your Apple and Win/B&O equipment without this need for conversion/duplication.

Puncher:

iPods are also now of a size (memory wise) where you could conceivably use the lossless format in you iPod too

Maybe this has changed, but I was always under the impression that you need to keep your audio tracks under 9MB for your iPod? Reason - the iPod can buffer the track from it's internal memory, whereas anything over 9MB in size is spooled from the internal hard drive. Result is that the drive is always spinning and battery lifespan is vastly reduced.

Of course, this applies to the iPod Classic, but then the Nano only ships with 16GB, which may not be enough to store all your lossless tracks.

I was indeed referring to the Classic however even the 16GB Nano, if you use it in the "change music when you want to" mode as was common when mp3 players had small memories, can carry ~40 albums worth of lossless music. 

Re. the 9MB limit, I didn't know this, you learn something new every day (or I could start a long and arduous thread disputing you claim😂). This of course will make a difference.

Is this true of movies too, I had always assumed the difference in run time between audio and movies was solely due to the screen being active all of the time, maybe this is the reason.

I believe the buffer size in the latest iPods is now 64 mb, or at least it was in my video iPod. It may now be even larger in the latest iPods.

I personally find 256 kbps AAC or 320 kbps MP3 to be perfectly good quality, and while I would prefer not to, I have listened to music at 192 kbps AAC. 128 is frankly awful but it's better to enjoy good music at low quality than bad music at good quality IMO!