Bitrates and "Oldies"
This may be more of a theoretical question than a practical one, but here goes --
Among my collection of jazz music, I have a large group of old-timey singles that were transferred from scratchy old vinyl to CDs. So here's my question:
Are these songs good candidates for lower bitrate compression? Since they're pretty full of scratches and pops as it is, would it be advisable for me to encode them at a low bitrate, thus saving a good amount of HD space? All of the rest of my music was ripped at 192; is it theoretically correct that I wouldn't be able to detect a noticeable difference on these songs if I go lower?
Anyway...would love to hear folks' input. Thanks!
[716 byte] By [
AngerBoy] at [2007-11-10 2:37:09]
# 1 Re: Bitrates and "Oldies"
This is a question I've often wondered about. I don't have anything that was converted from vinyl, but a lot of my classic rock is just older recordings with lower quality.
The best thing to do would be to just encode into a few different bitrates and see if you can hear the difference. My guess is you won't. I get everything at 320 AAC if possible, but it's big-time overkill for a lot of older recordings. I really can't tell the difference between that and a 128 MP3.
# 2 Re: Bitrates and "Oldies"
Yeah, I suspected that might be the best way to go. Maybe I'll try a few as an experiment. If it works, I'll likely free up a bunch of space, and that'll be great.
Thanks for your thoughts!
# 3 Re: Bitrates and "Oldies"
I captured some old songs from LPs and converted them to AAC with Sound Studio. They were old records with scratches and what not, but I encoded them at 192kbps. And, no kidding, some of them sound as good or comparable to the same songs imported from CDs. Now, I'm not making any claims, just sharing my experience, since there is no doubt others will contradict me. I suggest you import them using the same bit rate as you would with CDs.
# 4 Re: Bitrates and "Oldies"
--alt-preset medium should suffice.
it's around ~160Kbs (lame 3.96.1) should be fine as well.
# 5 Re: Bitrates and "Oldies"
Awesome. Thanks for the tips -- I'll continue to encode at my standard CD-level bitrate (192 Kbps).
I appreciate the input...
