So, ever since I've started building my digital music collection about 3 years ago, I'd ripped all my CD's to my PC at 128 kps. I'd pretty much exclusively listen to it all through mediocre computer speakers, so it never bothered me. However, when I moved to college this year, I started using my good stereo as the source through which I play all my music on my laptop. then I started to notice a difference. Ever since I've been slowly replacing all my 128 files with 192+ (preferably V0 or VBR). Yeah, it's extra space, but it's probably worth it.

anyone else have a revelation of sorts similar to this.

alright well fuck somebody move this to music.

Maybe back when Napster was around. These days if I like an album I want to be able to crank that album. Shit aint happening at 128.

That's not exactly audio naziism. There are people that take that shit much more seriously.

I tend to rip any CDs I have at 256 just for good measure, although I really don't hear much of a difference at all between that and 192. If I'm downloading I really don't pay attention to the bit rate.

i used to get everything through soulseek at 192 or 160 if it was the only available source. now i try to get and upgrade everything to v0 or v2 at the least.

I'm sayin.

I went through this phase a year or two ago...right around the time i got myself a set of Sennheiser headphones. I was always a bit of a stickler for quality but was never anal about it. I still had a lot of old files from the napster days that were 96 abnd 128k. So i took it upon myself to re-rip my entire collection (even the high bitrate rips) and encode them all with LAME V0. Then i manually added all the album art through itunes.

My collection is an anal retentive ipod user's wet dream.

I really can't tell much of a difference between 192 and the higher bit rates. I'm really not too picky unless there's something extremely noticeable going on that I don't like.

I've got good ears, but I've never really noticed any difference as long as the file is properly encoded at 192 or above.

Of course, I do aim for LAME encodes (V0 especially). But I have some older LAME encodes (i.e. v. 3.88, that era) that sound A-OK.

I'm like MF when it comes to having everything organized EXACTLY - song titles, artwork etc. I guess OCD and 150+ GB of music all in one place don't really mix.

It's FLAC or I throw an indiefit

v0

what i've found with a lot of cbr's as well is that 50% of the time they're transcodes from a lower bitrate gen that someone downloaded during the napster era.

Recently I've been really hating how mp3s sound, event at high bitrates. 192 sounds like shit if you're cranking something like a pink floyd album or anything with a lot of dynamic sound.

Yep, 192 is pretty awful. I can hear the difference.

I encode everything at V0 as a rule but I really can't wait for the day that iPod's have the sort of storage ability that it's feasible to have everything lossless.

How much more space does lossless FLAC take up vs normal mp3s?

I'd guess about 5-6x more space, depending how the MP3 was encoded.

Hmm, that's not nearly as bad as I thought.

Album = Untrue
Artist = Burial

FLAC = 276mb
320k = 117
V0 = 85
V2 = 68

What the fuck is this V0 everyone speaks of?

All I know is that it's supposed to be better than 192.