So just curious about the general consensus out there. what is everyone using to encode their cds into mp3s?
Right now i'm using iTunes 9, but a part of me worries that LAME might do a better job... but that's just because what the audio sites have always claimed.
A couple of years ago i ran some tests between an itunes extraction and LAME and couldn't tell the difference. Anyone have any experience dealing with the 2 different encoders?
You can customize ripping in iTunes 9. I find that if I rip normal stereo and VBR minimum 256, the iTunes MP3 is every bit as good as the LAME rip and generally easier to do. For whatever it might (not) be worth, I prefer the normal stereo to the joint stereo rips.
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Just to note that you can fully customize a LAME rip as well.
no question that ripping with the itunes encoder is much more convenient than LAME (although there was a way to use the LAME encoder in itunes....not sure if it still works in iTunes 9).
I'm not so much worried with convenience at the moment.... more about the final audio quality. I too couldn't tell a difference from a couple of tests i did a couple of years ago, but for some reason LAME is considered to be the best encoder, and (until recent versions) itunes was considered crap.
Just curious if there's some real proof behind that, or just rampant apple hate.
Certainly using the default MP3 settings in iTunes (I believe it is still 160/Joint Stereo) the results are crap. Customizing the settings in either LAME or iTunes is well worth the effort.
Given my ears and my equipment the results with iTunes are as good as with LAME. Those with better ears or better equipment can and may well disagree, but truth is anyone wishing to extract the highest possible audio quality should use only uncompressed formats.
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I "jumped ship" to AAC a long time ago (better midranges IMHO) but I just checked and you can certainly use LAME within iTunes if you like, via a script.
EDIT: I should add that the last time I tested LAME versus the Frauhofer encoder iTunes uses by default, to my ears LAME sounded a lot better at 256kbps and higher.
I've pretty much been strictly using Apple Lossless for the past while. I've always found that the iTunes encoder was "good enough" before though when using AAC.
From my tests i couldn't tell a difference between MP3s and AACs when the bitrate was above 256 (which is what i encode at) and there wasn't any real advantage in file size either. I think AACs are the clear choice at lower bit rates, but i was using MP3s just because they're a bit more universal and can be played almost everywhere.
Apple Lossless is good for my favorite albums with pristine sound quality, but it's a bit of overkill for a lot of my collection.
I guess i'll just install the itunes LAME script and run some more tests.
Linear Mode
