MP3 or WMA?

amcluesent

If you intend to keep the CDs and the player is an Ipod, I'd go for AAC at about 224mbit/sec

Otherwise, rip using Exact Audio Copy (EAC) and the LAME encoder with one of the presets; try standard and extreme on the same music to see if you can tell the difference

This guide will explain how to use EAC and LAME to best effect.

nickmack

Another vote for LAME. I've been using it for years now and nothing else touches it. You can use the DLL as a plugin for Audiograbber.

Best of all, both LAME and Audiograbber are free!

Poppycat

It would depend on how sensitive you heraing is, I unfortunate haev sensitive hearing so I can tell the difference although its elss between 160kbps to 192kbps than 128kbps and 192kbps.

Variable bitrate often is the best way to go as it can vary i depending on whats playing, mp2's are normally files that have been ncoded to remove things you can hear and silence parts etc.

Generally the higher the bitrate the better, and as you got a 30gb player I would keep the bitrate high say 256kbps variable to 192kbps, files will be around 7-9 mb each on average song of 3 minutes.

heatherw_01 wrote:

Can you still tell the difference between 128 and 192 if you rip from a cd?

Need_More_Money_2

heatherw_01 wrote:

I have personal music player and wondered what bitrate and format to use?

Any recommendations?

Edit to say I am ripping from my cd's and I have a 30gb player

As mentioned by others MP3 is more widely supported than WMA, but if your player supports both (many do) then in theory WMA is supposed to give better compression than MP3. I think Microsoft claim that 64bit encoding with WMA is equivalent in sound quality to 128bit with MP3, although I think I remember reading a 'blinded' test suggesting that is was more like 96bit WMA being equivalent to 128bit MP3.
The higher the bit rate you choose, the better the quality, but the bigger the file.

Rev

Need_More_Money wrote:

think Microsoft claim that 64bit encoding with WMA is equivalent in sound quality to 128bit with MP3.

I have a creative and tried both 128bit MP3's and 64Bit WMA's, the WMA's are smaller and on the MP3 player I can't hear any loss of sound quality (god damn awful when burnt to a CD mind) so I use that for everything that goes on my MP3 player now. I use DBpowerAMP to convert everything. Saved me a lot of space.