Sorry if these are asked...I'm a newb. When ripping a disc to mp3, what levels can you actually hear poorer quality? Is there much diference between 320, 256 & 128? Also, I heard the standard size if a factory CD is 128kb a song....true? And if that is true, could you actually somehow enhance the quality if you burn it to a larger size? Anyone have a great all you can know about CDs & burning site?
Hi.Yes there is a diference.Higher the bitrate better the sound.And no, the factory standar songs are not 128kb.It is higher.
If you don't care about the size of the file, I would stick with 256kps. You may hear a difference if you go down to 192kbs. When you get down to 128kbs you'll hear a big difference, in my opinion. It really is a matter of taste. Once you rip a song to 128kbs you can never get the quality back. Even if you reencode it to 256kbs. What you heard about factory CD's is completely false. An adequate explanation would be to long & lengthy for these forums & I don't type well enough to try.
128kbps CBR is definately not CD quality. You want at least 192, preferable 256kbps to get good quality. you also want to use VBR (variable bitrate) over CBR (constant bitrate). The best (and free) ripper there is is called EAC (exact audio copy). When used with the LAME mp3 encoder, you will create the best quality mp3s possible. We have a guide on how to use and setup EAC, it is below in my sig.
