If you need *best* possible quality with MP3, with reasonable file size (about 1mb per minute), I recommend to use Lame Encoder with the "--r3mix" parameter.

This works with any version of Lame encoder (at least from v3.92), or any recent ripper/encoder that allows use of external encoder. There is only one parameter to add : --r3mix

For example if you use Media Jukebox as a ripper (great piece of software by the way):
- Encoder = external encoder (choose path to lame.exe)
- Parameter = %IN %OUT --r3mix

What's this strange r3mix stuff you may wonder?
Well r3mix used to be a very active web site about mp3 some time ago. The name of the game back there was to achieve best sound compression, with best quality... Reminds you of something? Yes man, it was a bit like KVCD, but for mp3s!
The --r3mix parameters stands for a looong complex parameter line, which really give awesome sound quality. It is the result of hours of test, test, test, with special sound files (eg. castagnette) especially difficult to encode, that most other encoders (blade, or even fraunhofer) fail at encoding properly.

You should see (mmm listen) for yourself! If you are not convinced I offer you money-back garanty

Cheers.

Lame : http://home.pi.be/~mk442837/ or http://mitiok.free.fr/c.htm
R3mix (not so active now, excellent and understandable readings about MP3) : http://www.r3mix.net/
Media Jukebox : http://www.musicex.com/mediajukebox/
All these are freeware.

ACtually --remix is outdated...it is now considered by many users that lame v 3.90.2 with the --alt-presets is the way to achieve optimal quality. This has been confirmed by blind tests.

--alt-preset standard -Z
--alt-preset extreme -Z

Thanx for the tip man!

Anyway, I don't archive much MP3.
Right now, I am in for the best quality/size ratio in order to use my 128Mb portable MP3 player.

So far I use the ABR settings given here : http://www.ff123.net/cbr128.html
a great page about "Recommended MP3 Encoder at 128 kbit/s".
File sounds ok (at least for me) and is not to big.

Cheers.

EDIT : just in case page is unreachable, settings I use are (Lame 3.92) :
--abr 128 -h --nspsytune --athtype 2 --lowpass 16 --ns-bass -8 --scale 0.93
It deals with psychoaccoustic, frequency cut and filtering.

check out

THIS SITE, lot of info on different audio formats, especially mp3.

hi friends

did you try rip cds with sound forge?

I haven't tried it. I use

Exact Audio Copy because of its secure mode ripping, and it is packed with features.

right,really cool prog.

sonic foundry is "perfect" for audio my friend,you have to test it!
sound forge is the best(for me) in the world.
you got thousands plugins.
was used to edit Beatles remasterisations and is used for
Paul McCartney with "logic Audio" for overdub!
and lot more musicians is using sound forge.

thanks for the links

I have to agree Smoochie ,i've been using exact audio copy for a few months now and it works great.

Jorel, what you must understand is that you won't have a perfect encode if you don't have a perfect rip of the cd. I don't know how good is Soundforge's ripper and what codec it uses to encode to mp3 but I do know that EAC set at secure mode is the best at ripping cds. For encoding, LAME is where its at right now.

excuse me:
"why" i must understand?
i have more or less 52.000 mp3!
more than 300 originals cds(was700)
i listen music at 44 years!
i play guitar for more than 44 years too and teach some in the past!
play bass,drums,piano(just a little) but don't like keyboard cos
i'm felling like a "typewriter"...the sound is not mine,i only click,got?
work with eletronics for more than 30 years and
build my own sinthesizer (1981) for guitars...not for "typewriters".
i have one akai aa-a3s,one polyvox ap-800,and a home theater
goldship with 10 speaker in total,all playing together!
i want to put 2 more speakers on the roof but my wife will kill me!
when i did tests for audio with the doctor he tell me(believe):
"this is the first time that i see someone that can listen all
audible frequences equal with the 2 ears"
...and i have big ears too!
i listen my musics everyday,don't work no more(thanks GOD)!
i help my friend in his studio and in his "trio elétrico"!
*"trio elétrico" is like a bus (20 meters) with
tons of amplifiers and speakers in everywhere
with more or less 20000 watts for public performance,
the singer and the band stay in the top of this "bus"...can't explain better!
my first hobby is music, the second kvcd!
kvcd is the second hobby but was needed more than 6 months to do
only one musical cos i was really bored with the quality and to
my eyes and ears the results was not good.

the best(or the worse):
i know eac,cdex,musicmatch,dart,steinberg nuendo....bla,bla...and soundforge!
i use 3 differents versions(more than 250 plugins) and i really know how
it works and the result is cool.....hard to got but cool!

encode use eac or cdex and open the mp3 file in your audio editor
and compare the quality with the source with the mp3 target,
see how the waveforms are differents!
then do the same using sound forge and tell me what you got!
you will be "scared"!...do it!



ps:
sorry my horrible english!


<edit>
i forgot:
do you want "loss less"?
use wavezip!
have the final size as mp3 - 256 bitrate but
recover the wave without "any" loose!

"nobody" can see or listen any difference!

excuse me:
"why" i must understand? I knew I might get a reaction like this from you

i have more or less 52.000 mp3! 52,000! Wow! That's entire music library of the whole world!

more than 300 originals cds(was700) I got you beat, mine is over 400 cds. It never gets over 500 because I keep selling those I got but don't listen to anymore

i listen music at 44 years! You got me beat there, I'm not quite that old yet.

i play guitar for more than 44 years too and teach some in the past!
play bass,drums,piano(just a little) but don't like keyboard cos I played guitar all my life too, never quite learned it though. An untalented guy who studied it for 6 months could beat me at it handily. I tried banging on some pots and pans when I was a kid, does that count as having played drums?

i'm felling like a "typewriter"...the sound is not mine,i only click,got?
work with eletronics for more than 30 years and
build my own sinthesizer (1981) for guitars...not for "typewriters". I don't think I built anything yet. Well, once long ago I built a transistor radio.

i have one akai aa-a3s,one polyvox ap-800,and a home theater
goldship with 10 speaker in total,all playing together!
i want to put 2 more speakers on the roof but my wife will kill me!
when i did tests for audio with the doctor he tell me(believe):
"this is the first time that i see someone that can listen all
audible frequences equal with the 2 ears"
...and i have big ears too!
i listen my musics everyday,don't work no more(thanks GOD)!
i help my friend in his studio and in his "trio elétrico"!
*"trio elétrico" is like a bus (20 meters) with
tons of amplifiers and speakers in everywhere
with more or less 20000 watts for public performance,
the singer and the band stay in the top of this "bus"...can't explain better!
my first hobby is music, the second kvcd!
kvcd is the second hobby but was needed more than 6 months to do
only one musical cos i was really bored with the quality and to
my eyes and ears the results was not good. I was one of the early users of kwags templates when there wasn't even one. I stopped when all those moviestacker, tok, predictor, etc came in, too complicated for my poor brain to follow. I just use thoseearly method where there are few steps to follow.

the best(or the worse):
i know eac,cdex,musicmatch,dart,steinberg nuendo....bla,bla...and soundforge!
i use 3 differents versions(more than 250 plugins) and i really know how
it works and the result is cool.....hard to got but cool!

encode use eac or cdex and open the mp3 file in your audio editor
and compare the quality with the source with the mp3 target,
see how the waveforms are differents!
then do the same using sound forge and tell me what you got!
you will be "scared"!...do it! I told you I don't know about soundforge. I'm guessing that it's primarily used by professionals? Still, I'm still interested to know the method how soundforge rips cds and what codec it uses to encode it to mp3s.

I didn't do any waveform comparison but I did read the articles by those guys at hydrogenaudio who likes to do this shit and they say EAC is the best ripper when it comes to sudio cds. That's my feeling too so before something else comes along to tell me otherwise, I'll take this with a grain of salt.

I'm just having fun with you, there is really no disrespect meant in my original post. You're a good guy.

disrespect?
forget..i'm not too old and this was not your intention, i knew it!
well....maybe i'm too old!


"That's entire music library of the whole world!"
no, my friend (Claudio) have much more than me!


Timberwolf, you're great!
believe,who loves music don't have " poor brain" and isn't a "untalented guy".


eac and cdex are really cool,eac have more fame but believe me,
if you want "loss less" use wavezip.....well,you have to uzip to listen!

we can change more informations,will be cool!

you can read about sound forge(and acid) here:
http://www.sonicfoundry.com
(version 7 is coming)...click on "feature list"!
as you can see,my english is horrible,better is read in homepage!

if you send me your mail by pm,i send one music that
i extract from vinil and using sound forge to "clean" everything!
you will see the "magic" in the result!
mp3...choose the bitrate!


best regards!

To tell you the truth, I'm not really that particular with sound quality. Great if the sound is of high quality but I still can appreciate a sloppily-made 64 kbps bitrate mp3 because I listen to the MUSIC and not at the SOUND.

I've got more than 2000 casstte tapes that I've accumulated before cds came along. I'm not about to buy them again in cds so I just converted them to cds by using GOLDWAVE. The result is not great quality because I just connected the tape player audio OUT to my ordinary computer onboard soundcard. I didn't even do any "cleaning" but the bottom line is I still enjoy listening to them because I enjoy the music.

Okay, I believe you! I believe you that Soundforge is great, it's not free though, right? I'm betting that it's expensive and I can't afford it.

Your english is just fine, no problem here.
[/b]

I personally use musicmatch for ripping all cds. It has it's drawbacks but is very good quality and can also rip in vbr. I would use winamp if i wanted to be any better at all and use ape format. The only drawback I see with musicmatch is that when i have my entire library in the program (over 40,000 songs) it is so slow that it is unbearable for some of the applications. One of them being adding new files to library and another is tagging and naming (actually both are very fast when library is low). It is perfect for burning mp3 discs though and like I said b4 the ripping is absolutely good. I personally do not rip anything at less than 192 bitrate though. I have done with 128 but when i try to trade music people get all pissy about it not being 192 or better. I really cannnot tell the difference between 160 and anything higher and i listen to them in my car with high quality system with 1000 wat kenwood amp and 350 watt fosgate. People say that they can tell cuz they use hi-fi. Please let them show me the difference. But any way I oblige and use 192 to apease the masses.

all i can say is ....welcome in kvcd forum!

second:
open the wave file in sound forge and compare with your result in 160 bitrated mp23 encoded.

listen the differences and see how differents are the the "waves" in the screen.
...volume, trebles, basses, middles....
all change... the "wave forms" are completely differents no matter what bitrate or program to encode as mp3!

like i wrote, the only lossless that i know is wavezip(wave pack is the same) that compress the wave and when you restore the file don't loose any detail...the remaiders are only theory and taste....not the true!

do the same tests in sound forge using wavezip to compress and restore:
no differences with the original!

Well all I can say is those thingees you see on your screeen don't realldo anything for me. It is the sound we are after. Can you tell a difference when you listen with your ears? I personally cannot tell the difference between store bought cd and 160 bitrate mp3. I don't really care what we look for on a screen and have you taken into consiceration that there are some theings our ears cnnot possibly pick up as sound but can make a dog run for dear life. We are human and our ears cannot pick up the sound that is lost in the mp3 encode. Of course you will lose something. There is no way to lose absolutely nothing when you are talking about compression.

sorry to say but i can!

i trust cos if you choose 160 means that you can't feel differences and your amplifiers don't need to go after 15kHz!from 15Khz to 20Khz you can't listen?
160 bitrate loose big details after 15Khz!

exact, then you can listen if you pay atention and like quality!

as i told you my ears can :
http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic....highlight=ears
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...0&pagenumber=1


read the 3 first posts here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...0&pagenumber=2

if you don't trust me maybe you trust in Kpex and in all that did the tests!

whatever man. The person who started this thread just wanted to play music on his 128 mb mp3 player.

I believe he wanted something easy also.

Some time, not too long ago, I was not able to tell the difference when I didn't have the correct reference to switch instantaneously back and forth between two sources.
Do an ABX compare with foobar2000, and I assure you that you will tell the difference between an Audio CD and a 160Kbps MP3
Mind you, you'll only be able to tell tell in some parts of the music, and not in the complete stream.
However, I personally have most of my collection encoded to Vorbis, for my portable player, and I'm a happy camper with Q = 0 and even Q= -1

-kwag