--]My first question is, what sampling rate do you use? I'm currently using
--]192Kb/s variable bit rate (RealJukebox doesn't offer a higher VBR rate). How
--]does 192Kb/s VBR compare to 320 Kb/s constant bit rate (the highest CBR that
--]RealJukebox offers)? I know, I should just listen for myself, but I don't
--]trust my sound card and I haven't had time to hook up to my stereo with the
--]good speakers.
First off RJplus needs to go. Grab Audiocatalyst or LAME. Far better, less
bloat, and tastes great. For players its mostly all about winamp. They
update and tweek the whole experience with far better results than the
"all in one" bloatware.
As for sampling, I tend to keep the low bar set at 160, 192 for jazz and
classical. For the primo stuffs I sometimes hit in the 25x's. Itend to not
use VBR at all.
Now having said that you realy need to listen to what you are going to
rip. Anything with lots of bright highs needs more , so if your cutting
something like Ronnie James Dio's Holy Diver you can get away with 160
(128 you loose the nice spash of the drum kit and the little scraps ont he
gr). For something like Lenny Bruce at Cranagie Hall you can saftley use
128, 90 something probably but i dont like to dip that far down for
recordings., For something like all the old time radio shows I have 24 or
32 are plenty fine.
After a while you can peg a good sampling rate by litening to the source a
bit.
--]
--]Second question -- advice on sound cards? What are the best, highest
--]fidelity sound cards? I don't care about how many fancy digital features are
--]on the card; I do care about the D/A with high quality on the analog side.
--]This may mean that the best sound card for, say, games may not be the best
--]for a dedicated hifi mp3 player?
--]
Ive been using the SBawe64 for years now and have not had the urge to
upgrade until recetnly. I am listeing to systems using the sb live and am
impressed. The dsp daughter board is a nice touch .
--]cheap these days. You can buy a 17 GB Ultra/ATA 66 drive for $200 (see
--]http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/productdetail.asp?product_id=98185). So
--]my plan is to buy a case and motherboard and processor ($200 to $300), four
--]17 GB drives ($800 total), and a sound card ($100). This gives me a box with
--]67 GB for mp3s (subtracting a GB for the OS & misc). At 100 MB per converted
--]CD, that would be enough space for about 670 CDs, which would fit most of my
--]CD collection (well, at least the stuff I still listen to)... for $1100.
SOunds like a good solid plan. I have buds who insist on scssi all the way
thru, and frankly it hasne impressed me at all for this application/ Some
folks need raid systems in thier house as some sort of penis agumentation
i guese. AS for me I have a collection of 130 something mp3 cds, so my
penis is plenty augmented already.
The OTR (old time radio) collection is hitting 50 disks sometimes this
month, and at an avergae of 50 hours of otr per disk i have enough to keep
the airwaves buzzing should we need to rebuild from the y2k apocylapse
that Jenny Jones predicts.
The only ways scssi makes sense is if speed is a mjor factor and if you
want more than 4 devices. On the first point IDE is plenty fast for mp3
serverng in this case and on the second point there is a valid concern if
your going to want to have terrabytes of mp3 space. But for a pure price
performance stand point your best to stick to ide...where in a year 30 gig
drives will be 200$:)_
--]Last question: what mp3 ripping/jukebox software should I use? Is there
--]something significantly better than RealJukebox Plus? (Free is a plus, but
--]not that important.)
Realjukebox is the pits, as is musicmatch. Bloaty all in one packages that
fail to deliver the goods. RJp only allows 96 kbs or so for the free
ersion. I still hold that Audiocatalyst is a damn good ripper, or even
Lame if you want to keep things oss. PLayers are all about winamp for me,
though on unix and the like there are other great players. For windows
there is also Kjofol and Sonique. Both have thier pluses so take a peek at
them before you settle down with one, if you ever do.
--]
[---===tomwhore@ []wsmf.org []inetarena.com []slack.net===---]
The WSMF Sunday Live Shoutcast-5pm pst http://wsmf.org:8000
WSMF web site ----http://wsmf.org