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Some mp3 apps requests and questions


englishmen

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I've decided to convert all my wma music to mp3 just because im always converting music to mp3 to burn so i can play on my boss system or to get on my old ipod.

 

I currently have easy cd-da extractor which convert rips and burns audio discs. Im going to use it to convert my music to mp3 then i want to get rid of it and replace it with free app's. I need to know what bitrate in mp3 format will give me the same audio quality as wma 96kbs bitrate? I think im going to use burrrn to burn audio cd's but as i said i want to burn mp3 audio discs as well anyone know a good app to do so?

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I need to know what bitrate in mp3 format will give me the same audio quality as wma 96kbs bitrate?

 

 

 

At 96kbps you're probably going to have to play around with a few settings to minimize quality loss since you're planing on using the low bitrate wma's to transcode into low bitrate mp3's. In order to achieve this you may have to encode the mp3's at a much higher bitrate than you might expect. Re-ripping the cd's to the mp3 format would be my best advice to minimize the quality loss, of course that is time consuming, however I think you'd have much better results -- quality-wise that is.

 

For mp3 encoding your best option would probably be to use LAME 3.97 (don't let it being a beta turn you off) with a average bitrate ("ABR") encoding setting.

 

References:

What is ABR?

What is Transcoding?

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Im going to use it to convert my music to mp3 then i want to get rid of it and replace it with free app's.

 

 

 

 

Freeware CD rippers (neither contain any adware or spyware):

 

Exact Audio Copy (EAC)

Make sure you configure it to use Secure Mode for accurate ripping without ton's of skips, etc. EAC can disable the cache feature of modern CD/DVD drives which will allow for more accurate audio extraction without undetected errors slipping by. It will allow you to auto-configure Secure Mode during the first program launch. Make sure you have an audio CD in each CD/DVD drive before you start it the first time for the auto-configuration. It also contains a built-in Wav Editor, and can write audio CD's if you download the package with CDRDAO.

 

CDex

Make sure you manually configure it to use the Paranoia Full ripping method. Note: The Paranoia Full ripping method is completely useless if your CD/DVD drive caches audio, however I often use CDex to rip a problem disc that EAC's Secure Mode would choke on.

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oli i tired that cheetah audio converter it messed with the audio file's tags tho, did you have the same problem? I currently have CdburnerXpPro but im going to get a backup drive and i only currently use CdburnerXpPro for that purpose so i was hoping to get rid of it and just use another free small app.

 

Andavari on the converting side of things as you seem to know what you are talking about can you explain something to me. I assuming when you convert a audio file to a lower bitrate the converter simply takes something away from the file to make it a lower btrate and there for lower quality. How is it tho that you can convert a song to a higher bitrate i mean if i get a song on a pc and convert it to a higher bitrate say 256kbs then rip the same song again from cd to 256kbs. They wont sound the same will they? I mean once the quality has gone how can it put it back in?

 

I will also try the apps you and agumon recommended ill get back to you both, cheers.

Anyone tried GX::Transcoder?

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I assuming when you convert a audio file to a lower bitrate the converter simply takes something away from the file to make it  a lower btrate and there for lower quality. How is it tho that you can convert a song to a higher bitrate i mean if i get a song on a pc and convert it to a higher bitrate say 256kbs then rip the same song again from cd to 256kbs. They wont sound the same will they? I mean once the quality has gone how can it put it back in?

 

 

 

When dealing with any lossy audio codec once the original source (cd) is ripped and encoded to say an .mp3, .wma, etc., the audio codec is throwing bits of information away to achieve a particular quality at a set bitrate.

 

Trancoding ("converting") a song 96kbps or any bitrate to a higher bitrate such as 256kbps won't achieve any better quality than the already encoded lossy source, and has the potential of loosing even more quality in the process. The reason the 256kbps encoding sounds better when directly encoded from an audio CD is because at 256kbps the encoder doesn't throw as much information away. Once encoded into a lossy audio format there is no way of introducing better quality -- you're stuck with whatever quality you choose to encode a song with.

 

Now lets say you had some higher quality .mp3's or whatever audio codec fits your needs encoded at a higher quality bitrate such as variable bitrate ("VBR") with a bitrate ranging from 180-220kbps; those higher quality already encoded files are more suitable for converting into lower quality bitrates such as 128 kbps or lower for portable usage. The only way to negate losing quality for converting purposes is to use a lossless audio codec.

 

Whatever you do I'd highly recommend keeping the original encoded files if you no longer have the original audio cd's!

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It's because of the chosen bitrate.

The encoder has no ideal that it isn't dealing with a file ripped from an audio CD, so it goes on about it's business of attempting to not throw as many bits of information away to try and retain some quality.

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