Opinions: Is it worth re-encoding?

I think its fine what you have now. Especially if you decide to get another play in the future that doesn't read AAC files.

I'd suggest getting an album and ripping it first into your current bit rate and then into another such as 128kbps AAC (or even mp3) and compare the two.

Personally, I don't use anything less than --alt-preset standard (EAC ripper + LAME encoder) as I love the quality-to-size ratio it gives me. I've stayed away from AAC as it never offered much compatibility with anything other than the iPod and iTunes, while mp3 is universal by today's standards..

And if you do "re-encode" remember to actually rip the album again, not just converting the 192kbps file into 128kbps as that will result in transcoding (http://forums.ipodlounge.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=77728).

-Dan

Originally posted by Hrothgar
Thanks to everyone for their input. I guess I'll stick with everything as-is right now. If I get to a point where space becomes a problem, I'll rip everything again using LAME.

Doug, what bitrate are you using for your MP3s?

I'm using one of the (old) LAME encoder's command lines which is called --alt-preset standard [which also comes in (from least to highest quality) medium, extreme, and insane presets] and essentially ranges from about 180-230kbps.

-Dan

Originally posted by Hrothgar
That sounds labor intensive.

Its not very labor intensice at all. The only thing is that EAC CD ripping and Lame encoding takes about 1.5 times as long as ripping a CD through iTunes. The new Lame 3.97b1 encoder is recomended over the previous version of 3.90.3. I highly recomend using Lame 3.97b1 at the following commands:
-V 4 --vbr-new (~160kbps VBR, ~175kbps VBR for rock/metal)
-V 2 --vbr-new (~190kbps VBR, ~224kbps VBR for rock/metal)

Anything above -V 2 (such as -V 1 and -V 0) are overkill unless you can actually hear a difference. Some people say they can head a difference but they don't do true blind ABX testing. I recomend sticking with what you have if you are happy. If you expect that you will run out of space then I recomend re-ripping now as that will save you a lot of time. Just to give you a size persective, I have 3890 songs at the -V 2 --vbr-new setting and they take up 22GB. I have recently re-ripped my CD collection to the -V 4 --vbr-new setting (I actually re-ripped my CD collection to the Apple lossless format then just encoded those to mp3's) in order to have effective mp3's for my notebook. 3890 songs at the -V 4 --vbr-new setting take up 17GB.

The Lame 3.97b1 encoder is a lot more efficient than the iTunes mp3 encoder. I did some blind ABX testing. I was able to show that a 160kbps mp3 encoded with Lame 3.97b1 had the same quality as a 192kbps mp3 encoded with iTunes. This means that Lame 3.97b1 has the same efficiency as the iTunes/QuickTime mpeg-4 AAC encoder. So a lower bitrate Lame mp3 will have the same sound as a higher bitrate mp3 encoded with iTunes.

There really isn't a way to transfer ID tags from one mp3 file to another. You can download programs that will look up the album art for you though.

Well, the Lame 3.97b1 encoder has the same quality as the iTunes/QuickTime mpeg-4 AAC encoder, I wouldn't say that one is better than the other. Additionally, some people like the artifacts produced by the mpeg-4 AAC encoder over the artifacts produced by the Lame mp3 encoder. I remember there was a guy on hydrogen audio saying that 320kbps mp3 with Lame 3.97b1 even had a "harsh" sound to it. He said he was able to ABX between the source and the mp3. He later posted that 128kbps mpeg-4 AAC with Nero was CD quality to him. His ears prefered the artifacts fo the mpeg-4 AAC encoder over the mp3 encoder. Many people have stated that Lame mp3 often produces harsher artifacts when compared to mpeg-4 AAC.

Me, I can't hear a darned difference between Lame 3.97b1 and mpeg-4 AAC.

Good luck with all this. I agree that iTunes make the job a bit easier.

Originally posted by punk_r0x
That's ridiculous, if he can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3 and CD, there is no way he CAN'T hear the diff. between 128 AAC and mp3. 128kbps AAC is not very good (I admit I have never used Nero, but is it that different from the encoder built into iTunes?)

Have you done blind ABX tests with Foobar2000 or other ABXing tools? If not then you are suffering from the placebo affect and should really do some blind ABX tests. Any claims not backed up by some ABX testing are just that, claims, and they don't have any merit. If you have done some blind ABX tests then good for you. Not many people can hear a difference between a 320kbps mp3/mpeg-4 AAC file and the original source. That is why I trust the good people at Hydrogen Audio who came up with the Lame mp3 encoder and the -V switches while providing which -V switches will provide transparency. It takes many years of training but people can hear differences between a 320kbps song and the CD.

I think that guy was full of it. He tried to come on the threads and say that Lame 3.90.3 at the abr 224kbps setting had a better quality than Lame 3.97b1 at the 320kbps bitrate for his sample. This is total BS. Some of the devs said that even at 320kbps with Lame 3.97b1, there were still artifacts but not as many artifacts as with Lame 3.90.3. He continued to post his ABX "results" saying he could easily distinguish between the source and two mp3 files. Then he comes on the board and says that 128kbps mpeg-4 AAC with Nero sounds even better. His sample was for classical music and the Nero mpeg-4 AAC encoder is the worst for classical music.

Well, that was my rant about that post. I know it is not civil to talk about someone elses claims but I think he was full of it.

Edit: The iTunes/QuickTime mpeg-4 AAC encoder has been judged to be of higher quality than the Nero mpeg-4 AAC encoder on pretty much all samples that HA has tested. There will always be those 2-3 samples (out of 25) in which Nero does better but iTunes does a better job with over 95% of the songs being tested.

Originally posted by Teqnilogik
I used to be in a similar boat as you. I decided a while ago to switch to AAC for use on my iPod. I thought the quality at 128 kbps was really enjoyable so I switched to it. Then I got it in my head that I wanted higher compatibility so I decided to rerip to LAME MP3. About a a couple hundred CDs into the ripping process I discovered I really didn't need the compatibilty that MP3 offers. The only device I play my music on is my iPod and PC. I have several different media player options for AAC playback on my computer and I will not be switching to another portable audio player either. The iPod has offered such a good experience for me that I will be buying another one if I must sometime in the future. So I decided just to keep my AAC library and rip all future CD I purchase to AAC. Also I did an experiment with converting my AACs to MP3s for a portable CD MP3 player. The quality was better than I thought it'd be for transcoding. The MP3s weren't CD quality but they were listenable. Remember that you will always lose quality when converting/transcoding between lossy audio formats but what matters is if the quality loss is perceivable to you. Well, that's my 2 cents :)

At this point I'm going with a mix of LAME MP3 for music and some other things and AAC for audiobooks because I like the features it enables (and I can keep all of them under the Audio book heading on the iPod).

Originally posted by awheewall
Is it possible to make iTunes encode using the LAME encoder?

I remember when iTunes was on about version 4 or something and MP3 wasn't one of the offered formats. But after a bit of researching and getting hold of a dodgy copy of and MP3 codec I was able to add this to the options of encoding that iTunes offered. Since iTunes incorporated the ability to do MP3 anyway I've lost the knowledge of what I did to enable it. So is it possible to intigrate the LAME MP3 encoder to get iTunes to use it as this would be much more convienient that a command line interface. Anyone?

Actually, the ability to import rip CD's to the mp3 format has always been in iTunes. It wasn't until version 4.x that they decided to add mpeg-4 AAC CD ripping features. When iTunes was first released on the Mac OS, they used a Fraunhofer based mp3 encoder.

You can integrate the Lame mp3 encoder into iTunes if you are on the Mac OS. If you are using Windows then you can't. Besides, if you are on Windows you want the reliability of EAC. For the Mac OS, I believe they use the Lame 3.90.3 encoder and development has currently stopped. The latest recomended version of Lame is 3.97b1.