All,
I guess I started/continued an interesting discussion topic here (do we want to move it to a separate string??) – I just don’t have the capability to directly connect my PC to my Stereo/HT system (they are in different rooms) So my experience of the quality of sound produced by the different encoders/decoders is limited to my SB card and my Yamaha PC speakers (they are pretty decent – but they are NOT anything like good stereo [Axiom] speakers).
Personally (at least on my system at the moment) I found that 160k provided a real good compromise between sound quality and disc space usage. (128k was really hit or miss) Perhaps I need to be a bit more critical and give 192k another audition…..
But to touch on an even different topic, here is a link to and article in
PCWorld magazine last year that compared different encoding formats (mp3, wma, aac, real) to see how a panel compared their “accuracy” to the CD. It’s interesting – but still doesn’t take into account the different decoding engines available (Lame. Fraunhofer, etc.) So I still am at a loss to find the “best sounding” one until I can get connection of PC to Stereo. Many of you are fortunate in that you can do just that. With the huge collection of mp3 files I have, I hope to be able to do that one of these days – but since the quality of the encoding varies, they may not sound much better than listening to FM radio over the Stereo.
jkohn – thanks for all those links. I will check them out!
Randyman
