What is an appropriate Bit Rate for Exact Audio Copy?

[WAD62]

320kbps or 256kbps for portable audio, and lossless for HiFi. Any decent system will benefit from that last touch of refinement and 'air' in the top end that lossless gives, but no way can I notice it on my phone or in-car...

When I did listening tests differences became more apparent at 192 and below, so IME staying at 256 and above does make the files very close to lossless.

The 'Lame' encoder in dbpoweramp advises VBR...which will utilise 320 for complex passages, a lesser rate for less complex. The 'quoted' VBR of 190 is just an estimate...

https://www.dbpoweramp.com/Help/dMC/mp3lame.html

...as you say it's perfectly good for my car, whilst I use the original FLAC versions in my Hi-Fi, and phone...

[StanleyB]

I have tried MP3 in the car, but my bass units just did not perform anywhere as good as when I play WAV or FLAC. So my suggestion would be to record a range of audio files in several formats, and then play each format to see which one is a reasonably good trade off between quality and size.

[Yomanze]

The 'Lame' encoder in dbpoweramp advises VBR...which will utilise 320 for complex passages, a lesser rate for less complex. The 'quoted' VBR of 190 is just an estimate...

https://www.dbpoweramp.com/Help/dMC/mp3lame.html

...as you say it's perfectly good for my car, whilst I use the original FLAC versions in my Hi-Fi, and phone...

Yes big fan of LAME too, VBR does work. To clarify I mean 192kbps constant bit rate isn't good enough.

Stan those bass issues are also felt by many a DJ, playing lower bitrate mp3s and then feeling the bass come back with vinyl.

[surv1v0r]

I have just done some testing based on ripping Nigel Kennedy's 1989 performance of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons with the English Chamber Orchestra. Results are as follows:
Variable 192 - 58,257,408 bytes (reduced by about 1% from the 192 .MP3)
192 - 58,920,960 bytes
256 - 78,475,264 bytes (about 33% larger than the 192 .MP3)
320 - 98,021,376 bytes (about 66% larger than the 192 .MP3)
FLAC - 189,210,624 bytes (about 220% larger than the 192 .MP3)
WAV - 431,013,888 bytes (about 630% larger than the 192 .MP3)

The upshot of this is that I will almost certainly stick to 320 kBit/s, simply because my car memory stick player can't handle FLAC and even if it could, I am not certain that I would notice the difference.

I will have a go at ripping Musica Nuda to see if very low bass notes change any compression ratios.

Incidentally, other than that you can batch convert from .FLAC to .MP3, in what way is £41 dBpoweramp superior to free EAC?

[Yomanze]

If you are good using EAC then no paid software offers better results. Paid might be easier to use though, some extra features, and a bit faster in ripping.

[Yomanze]

Personally if you want to go paid then JRiver offers it all. Not just for processing files, but a full media centre too.

[surv1v0r]

The 'Lame' encoder in dbpoweramp advises VBR...which will utilise 320 for complex passages, a lesser rate for less complex. The 'quoted' VBR of 190 is just an estimate...

https://www.dbpoweramp.com/Help/dMC/mp3lame.html

...as you say it's perfectly good for my car, whilst I use the original FLAC versions in my Hi-Fi, and phone...

All of my CDs are saved in FLAC format on a HDD with a structure consisting of Artist name (or "various") as folders and album names as sub-folders - e.g. Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band > Doc at the radar station, Safe as milk, Shiny beast, Spotlight kid, Trout mask replica.

dBpoweramp claims to be able to do a batch conversion from .FLAC to .MP3. Will this automatically work its way across and down multiple folders and sub-folders, where does it place the .MP3s and what does it do about Tags & Cover images?

[WAD62]

All of my CDs are saved in FLAC format on a HDD with a structure consisting of Artist name (or "various") as folders and album names as sub-folders - e.g. Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band > Doc at the radar station, Safe as milk, Shiny beast, Spotlight kid, Trout mask replica.

dBpoweramp claims to be able to do a batch conversion from .FLAC to .MP3. Will this automatically work its way across and down multiple folders and sub-folders, where does it place the .MP3s and what does it do about Tags & Cover images?

In short yes, that's the structure of my FLAC library too...

One can change the destination folder structure if you want, and also apply DSP (eg ReplayGain etc.) at conversion time.

It's also clever enough to check for overwrites, so you can do it in batches without having to note where you'd got to..

[surv1v0r]

Thanks for that, I'll give dBpoweramp a go then.

Next challenge is to convert hundreds of LPs to MP3s, splitting up the tracks. In the past I have used Audacity to migrate some LPs where there are no individual tracks but I believe that there are packages which can automatically distinguish the beginning and end of tracks (sometimes with manual assistance) and can also "clean up" the Snaps, Crackles and Pops without totally destroying the recording?

[WAD62]

Thanks for that, I'll give dBpoweramp a go then.

Next challenge is to convert hundreds of LPs to MP3s, splitting up the tracks. In the past I have used Audacity to migrate some LPs where there are no individual tracks but I believe that there are packages which can automatically distinguish the beginning and end of tracks (sometimes with manual assistance) and can also "clean up" the Snaps, Crackles and Pops without totally destroying the recording?

Hi Aaron, I had enough patience to rip 3k CDs to FLAC, however the time and patience required to rip my 1k Vinyl is beyond me...

I've only bothered with some of my more obscure 12", but for other stuff I've re-bought it on CD, via a mixture of new or second hand, it'll take you a couple of hours minimum per album...that's not a good hourly rate

Anyway if you're going to go to the trouble you might as well rip to FLAC again, and convert to mp3 as necessary (given you'll have a copy of dBpoweramp's batch converter by then)...perhaps even 24/96, at the risk of starting a resolution war...