Re: [TCLUG:9589] Diamond RIO, MP3 ripper and linux

[Peter Lukas <peter@math.umn.edu>]

Quite right.  Raw ripped source is bit-for-bit duplication of whatever was
on the original cd.  A MP3 encoder takes that information and compresses
it using a number of techniques.  A typical near-CD quality MP3 is encoded
at 44Khz 128-bit stereo.   This is nearly identical to the encoding onto
the original CD itslef.

I use audiocatalyst under windows for my ripping / encoding.  It does a
pretty good job.  The encoder is Xing's and at some point, I'll be
dropping the $20 and adding it to GRIP's primary MP3 encoder under linux.

The sweet spot I've found is to encode at 44Khz (can't really do much
better than the original source anyway) 128-bit joint stereo.  It produces
a near 10-1 ratio in file size, and the joint stereo doesn't produce any
serious audible differences between the original and the encoded version
of the sample.

Joint stereo takes the higher frequencies of the sample from both left &
right channles and merges them onto a single (mono) channel.  Your ears
aren't really sensitive enough to determine the difference.  It also makes
the compressed file a little smaller than if it were encoded in plain
stereo.

With BladeEnc's encoder, 128 bit 44Khz samples didn't sound anywhere 
near as good as the original sample and not close to as good as a sample
encoded with Xing's encoder.

Peter Lukas

On Sun, 31 Oct 1999, Nate Carlson wrote:

> On Sun, 31 Oct 1999, Bob Tanner wrote:
> > I am total mp3 newbie. What is the difference between raw ripped source and
> > the BladeEnc'd source ?
> > 
> > I am using grip, which I uses cdparanoia, which generates .wav (?) files
> > that are passed to BladeEnc for encoding (?) to mp3 is this right? 
> > 
> > Will get a a severe loss in quality?
> 
> You've got all that right.  :)  Raw ripped source == uncompressed wav
> file. BladeEnc'd source == mp3 it outputs, which is a heavily compressed
> version of a wav. I find that with BladeEnc, if you use anything below
> 192kbps for the mp3 output, you lose quality. But, if you go 192 or above,
> it sounds great. I don't know what grip compresses it to by default
> (128kbps is a lot smaller, so most people probably use that, or maybe
> 160).. but on the bladeenc command line, you just specify -192 to compress
> at 192kbps. There is probably a way to set that in the grip configuration
> files.
> 
> ----
> Nate Carlson
> the infinite loop
> natecars@infiniteloop.com
> 
> 
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