[PLUG] Computer audio out to stereo <Sort of Solved>

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:32:49 -0800
"M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb at cesmail.net> dijo:

> John Jason Jordan wrote:
> 
> > Using MP3 format I have several hundred CDs that take only ~60 GB, and
> > I can't tell the difference in the sound. I rip my CDs to WAV with
> > cdparanoia, then use lame with variable bit rate (VBR) to encode to MP3. A
> > typical symphony boils down to about 40-50 MB that way. The VBR option
> > leaves me with an averate bit rate of about 160.

> I have to admit I've never actually listened to "high-quality" classical
> MP3s, and I suppose I should. But I did once rip a few Mozart and
> Hovhaness CDs in Ogg format, and they sounded fine with headphones.
> Shostakovich symphonies, , on the other hand, have way too much dynamic
> range for that. :)

Try it sometime. I think you might be surprised. The beauty of VBR is
that lame uses a high bit rate when it needs to in order to preserve
the integrity of the sound. Otherwise it falls back to as little as
128K. And the silent moments are encoded at close to zero. Therefore,
you do not lose dynamic range, yet keep the file size more reasonable. 

Here is the command the way I run it:

lame --vbr-new -B 320 /home/jjj/MP3s/cdda.wav /home/jjj/MP3s/VaughWilliamsSymphony#3APastoralSymphony.mp3

The only annoyance is that lame can't grok spaces in a filename. I
can't get it to work even by escaping it. Oh well. I need to use
Easytag to fix the tags anyway, so I just change the filename in
Easytag at the same time.