3rd January, 2012
Q&A: is Windows Media Player bit rate converter good to use when burning cds?
Question by Se7en Sins: is Windows Media Player bit rate converter good to use when burning cds?
I notice when you want to burn a cd, it offers the option to “not convert” which is recomended, or it is says, convert to lower bit rate to add more music to the cd, but 192 kbps says its the best quality.
Does converting it to 192 actually make the music file worse?
Or does it improve quality.
Basically should i leave the audio as they are, or convert them to 192.
Best answer:
Answer by Saul
Don’t use Windows Media Player.
Google “CDex”, it’s a free program that has a better algorithm, and will rip music files that will sound better.
The higher the bitrate, the better the quality of the music file. If you don’t convert, I’m assuming that means it will rip a WAV file (ie completely uncompressed). This will have the best quality, but will be many, many times larger than an mp3 file.
192 kbps is a good place to be, if you use a good ripping algorithm. 320 kbps is the best quality mp3 you can get, but will also produce the largest mp3 file. 128 kbps (the standard, unfortunately) gives a little over 1 meg a minute, while 320 will give just over 3 megs a minute, if that gives you something to go by. I heartily recommend no bitrate smaller than 192 kbps! I would also suggest using CBR instead of VBR if you have a choice, as some CD burners and mp3 players have a harder time reading VBR files correctly.
If you use CDex, you can select the “insane” preset, as that will automatically give you the highest quality possible with the mp3 format (ie 320 kbps CBR ripped with the Lame mp3 codec) – this is the easiest way to go if you get confused by all of the different options.
You can also google MediaCoder Audio Edition for a good, free transcoder. This will let you convert your higher bitrate mp3 files into lower bitrate mp3 files or VBR files -> CBR files…. which is what I use it for, mostly. It sucks that my CD burner sometimes screws up the VBR files, but that’s how it goes.
Transcoding cannot *improve* the quality of an mp3 file… nothing can. Once the information is lost, its gone. So that means that converting a 128 kbps file to 320 kbps will *not* make it sound better… which is why I suggest just ripping at a higher quality to begin with. A lot of mp3 players have gigs of space for music, so why not just use the best?
Good luck!
Saul
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Posted at 5:49 pm | Comments Off