How I keep almost all of my music at 320kbs.

Chagen

My PSP is running out of space, and fast.

Damn you, minor audiophile tendencies!

DYRE

Archive your music as FLAC.

Encode it as 192kbps MP3 when you're putting it on something that doesn't have a lot of space.

Chagen

How is FLAC? I've never really gotten into all those alternate music formats.

/failure of an audiophile

DonZabu

You think that's crazy? Try spending weeks downloading a 21-part bootleg series (which is divided into multiple files apiece, BTW, so you have to spend 20 minutes waiting between downloading individual halves of discs on a 4-disc set), and then once that's done, painstakingly renaming them and adding the proper ID3 tags in order to bring the files up respectable aesthetic standards (some files of which there were no ID3 tags or actual filenames, for that matter), for over 1,200 files, some of which I couldn't get the right information for anyway.

glennmagusharvey

FLAC is like 1411 kbps or something.  Or at least, CD-quality WAV is 1411 kbps.  So FLAC is at least that.

Given a choice, I would encode my music at about 160 kbps.

DYRE

@Chagen:  FLAC is lossless.  So it'll always be exactly the same as the source material.  Making it a very popular format for archiving.  Portable media players generally don't do a good job at playing FLAC files, and they take up a lot of space anyway, but you can just encode them as an MP3 or something if you want to put it on something like that (and, of course, keep the original FLAC file somewhere too in case you want to encode it again or you just feel like listening to music at a stupidly high bitrate).

Oh, but obviously, don't convert your MP3s into FLAC.  That will just result in something that sounds the same but has a huge filesize for no reason.  And don't convert your existing 320kbps MP3s to a lower bitrate, because compression artifacts add up, so it'll end up sounding worse than the bitrate should suggest.

inkblot

Don't be a pussy. Go all the way to 8kbps.

FrodoGoofballCoTV

Can you save them to a portable hard drive?

• Looking at my old mp3s it looks like I've saved them to multiple bitrates.  ^^;
• Narnia soundtrack really is better at 320k.

Chagen

My parents bought a 500 GB hardrive back when our commputer fucked out on us....that would be useful, since we don't really use it. The computer isn't low on space, though, it's my PSP. Why the fuck does my Ipod have to be so annoying...I'd just use that instead...

DYRE

Like I said, for all your music that's on a portable device, keep it at 192kbps or 160kbps or something.  Even at lower bitrates, you might not even be able to tell the difference if you're listening on crappy headphones or while there's a lot of noise around you or whatever.  And it's not like you need to store all of your music on your PSP/iPod/whatever anyway.  You can just put whatever music you might actually listen to on it, and keep the rest on your computer/some other hard drive.

Chagen

Like I said, for all your music that's on a portable device, keep it at 192kbps or 160kbps or something.  Even at lower bitrates, you might not even be able to tell the difference if you're listening on crappy headphones or while there's a lot of noise around you or whatever

I listen on Skullcandy in-ears. They block almost almost all extrernal noise and have very good speakers, so I'm gonna notice any imperfections. And I would love to have some Sennheiser HE 90 headphones. Just so you know, only 300 were made and they retail for $14,000.

And I'm a minor audiophile. I can tell the differnce between bitrates very easily.

 

And it's not like you need to store all of your music on your PSP/iPod/whatever anyway.  You can just put whatever music you might actually listen to on it, and keep the rest on your computer/some other hard drive.

I'm not a fan of this. I like having all of my music on tap. In addition, music makes me want to get up and walk around, no matter how slow it is, and I can't do that with a computer.

Central Avenue

Well you can't have it both ways. You can either settle for a lower bitrate and take all your music with you, or keep the high bitrate and carry only a few songs.

Chagen

Clearly I just need a media player with a larger hard drive.

Dammit Apple, where my 10 Terabyte Ipod be!?

glennmagusharvey

Heh.  Well, as I explained to our infamous TV Tropes resident audiophile GuitarBizarre, I can't hear much quality difference from 160 kbps on up, and I actually DON'T like sound-shutting-out earbuds/headphones when I go around because the lack of sensing my surroundings, especially by sound, is somewhat unnerving.

I'll sometimes like sound-shutting-out headphones if I'm in an apartment or something where I can't just fill my room with sound, but I much prefer computer speakers.  Or standard $10~$30 desktop speakers.

Now, for some exceptionally great music I might want to try them out on surround sound.

Chagen

"I actually DON'T like sound-shutting-out earbuds/headphones when I go around because the lack of sensing my surroundings, especially by sound, is somewhat unnerving."

I get this a lot too. I usually resolve it by keeping one out of my ear. I'm actually doing it right now.

inkblot

Get a pair of open-back headphones. They're designed to let in as much air as possible, so they can't isolate at all.

Chagen

Oh hell naw. I hate any headphones that don't isolate.

And they probably don't make those audiophile headphones like that. I'm talking about the $700+ ones.

inkblot

Most audiophile headphones are like that. Apparently many audiophiles think isolating headphones sound too metallic and suffocating, and no sane person is going to bring a $700 headphone out in public.

Chagen

Really? I alway liked how they kept everything in and you can hear everything.

But I see where they're coming from--those more open headphones slightly replicate surround sound systems, which are always the best--nothing sounda better than the surround sound system in my mom's Mercedes. The Black Parade is awesome in it.

Ponicalica

«nothing sounda better than the surround sound system in my mom's Mercedes.»

oh hi standing waves

Chagen

Huh? Time to wikipedia again...

I'm not a very big audiophile...