I have read many of the posts and eitehr the issue is so simple I cannot beleive it, or I am taking false paths. Here goes: I have around 160GB of WAV lossless on hard disc E. I have bought a seperate ext HD for back up of all files. I have transfered all of the lossless files to the new disc F. I want to keep the lossless on F, and the MP3 files on both E & F. I want to mass convert to MP3 320kb all of the WMA lossless files from F to E. I want to do this at the best possible quality. My questions are: 1) Should I just throw in the towel and re-rip every one of them? 2) If no, how should I do this?
Conversion often has many pesky details if you want perfection. However, lossless to anything is clean. Many audio extremists back up in lossless but listen to lossy. That way they never have to convert lossy to lossy which is problematic, if you are a perfectionist. You may opt to keep the lossless as an archive. Conversion from lossless to lossy is always a no-brainer. The next thing to consider is the encoder. Extremists mostly use one of 2 encoders Lame or Helix. The encoders are the actual converting device. These are used by the converters. Most converters allow you to use different encoders. Lame is the best encoder. Helix is as much as 20 times faster if you have a dual core computer. Even without a dual processor it is way faster. Helix does have some small artifacts in the edge of most person's hearing (16+KHz). I belong to an audio extremist board. No one on that board has actually heard any of the artifacts. They can be identified graphically but may only be heard by children. I rip with LAME and batch convert with Helix. I have stopped ripping in lossless. I listen to VBR mp3s at the extreme setting. VBRs provide the greatest size to quality ratio. A lame VBR at the extreme setting captures the sound perfectly within the theoretical range of human hearing. I would only trust LAME and Helix VBRs otherwise stick to 320s. Please note this is extreme over kill. The normal audiophile can't hear the difference between 320s and 190s. However, audiophiles believe in overkill especially if it doesn't 'cost' much. I use the batch converter by PowerAmp. It will allow you to do large batch conversions easily. It is $25/year but you can try it out for 30 days for free. It has a huge array of encoders you can use. All best of breed for even rare audio formats.
Thanks. That is exactly what I am doing. I use WMP to rip the lossless files. Then I back up a Lossless and a 320 on one disc, and a 320 on another. Maybe I will try using 192 or VBR as you suggested. The reasoning behind the 320 is that I use my player more often on larger speakers like my car and home. Do you think the difference matters in that scenario? Thanks again for your help. I have read in many places that the best way to get great sound is to rip all of the CD's again. I will do it to gain quality copy but it is a lot of work. It would be much easier to batch convert.
