Post #1... Seeing as this is my first i should first say hi. hi. okay, enough with the formalities. My question is regarding encoding, specifically what should I use to encode my cd collection? I just got a moto rokr and I don't have much of a mp3 collection at the moment. I have quite a few cds though, and I was wondering how i should go about encoding them (from what i've read, everyone swears by eac, so i won't bother asking about ripping). The problem is that the phone only has 512mb of memory, and a 100 song cap (if anyone knows how to get around that, let me know). i'd prefer to encode to mp3 for versatility, but i'm considering going aac for the compression. What would sound quality be like at 4mb for a 4min song? i know that i could go with 100 songs @ around 5mb each, but i wouldn't have any memory space for games/pics/videos/apps. at the same time, i don't want to rip my collection twice if i get an mp3 player or iPod in the future. i don't plan on upgrading headphones for the phone, but i would upgrade the headphones were i to buy a player in the future, so quality is still a concern. thanks in advance
I would stick with mp3. you're not going to get that much smaller filesizes with aac, even though the quality vs. compression ratio is a little higher. What is your ultimate goal from ripping your CDs? (and BTW, kudos for doing your research...EAC is hands down the way to go). Do you want to rip all your CDs and store them on your computer, or do you just want to rip a few songs here and there, just to store on your phone? If you want to store all your albums on your hard drive, then its not worth ripping at a low bitrate. I'd recommend ripping your CDs with the standard recommended bitrate (which includes using VBR (variable bitrate method at 192 or 256 kpbs) so you have your albums on your computer at good quality, then re-rip just the few songs here and there that you want to put on your phone at a lower quality, say 128 or 96 (still use VBR though...it is much much better than the standard CBR [constant bitrate]). But keep in mind that you can only hold 100 songs reguardless of filesize, so you don't want to rip them with too low of a bitrate and have extra storage left over. So for your phone I'd say don't go lower than 128. It will probably take a few rips to figure out the ideal encoding for your phone to find the right bitrate/filesize ratio, but once you do it should be pretty easy. We have a guide here that shows how to setup and use EAC and LAME. (EAC utilizes the external LAME mp3 encoder, so you can do everything in one step with EAC). Check it out here: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/mydeneaclame.cfm edit 4 typo
thanks for the quick reply, i've been skimming through the forum and you're all over the place. I've already taken a look at the guide you mentioned, and I'm still unsure about settings. I tried loading the configuration file in the guide, but when i checked the compression settings in eac, 128kbs is selected, and the highest vbr in the dropdown menu is 192. ...my bad, i had selected the recommended hydrogen audio settings instead of standard lame. still, the highest vbr is 192, and it's set by default to 160
