I am finally take the big digital leap. For the last 5 years or so I have been listening to MP3s, either downloaded or ripped, but I have not fully committed to digital. I still take CDs in the car with me everywhere I go, I also use CDs quite a bit at home as only have a couple handfuls of them ripped to various computers around the house. But lately I have decided that it is time for me to give up the CDs, I will still buy them, but I want to rip them right after I buy them and have them available wherever I go.... so I have to figure out what I need to make all that possible.
1) A server with MP3's on it that I can access from any computer in the house. This is easy, what kind of geek doesn't have a spare server with an 80 GB hard drive lying around?
2) Something to carry around and use in my car, for this I am leaning towards a nice 40GB Ipod... I really have not found anything else that compares in size and usability.
Now it comes down to what format I should use, more specifically what bitrate. I am pretty set on sticking with MP3, I know that I want to stay away from WMA or ACC because I don't want to have to rip 500 CDs more than once. I know that all the devices for the next 5 years or so will support MP3, it is by far the safest of the formats. (Who knows after 5 years) But I have to settle on a suitable bit rate, I want something that will sound nice on a home stereo, but also something that is small enough that I can fit a bunch of stuff on the Ipod. I never thought about it that much before, but I really really don't want to rip these more than once if I can avoid it.
What I have been looking for is a program that will rip songs in two formats at the same time, as I would love to have 160kbps for the Ipod and 256kbps for the home system. I have heard that some tools, like MusicMatch, will convert your songs on the fly when moving them to a mobile device, but I wonder how well that works. If I can't find a tool to do it automatically for me I faced with the task of ripping each of my CDs twice, which I guess would be ok, but because how most tools work it would be a PITA. The other alternative is to rip them all at 192kbps, but then I get screwed on both ends.
Anyone have any experience with applications converting on the fly? What bitrate is enough for you?
I ran across a couple cool sites when looking into this:
And no I am not trying to start the argument over MP3 vs. WMA vs. ACC again, it is not an argument in my mind. One will work on anything I buy, the others will not.
Previous Topic
