Okay, I would suspect 99% of us here rip our nicely new purchased albums onto our computers, but at what bitrate? I have been scanning the internet and the general consensus is that people prefer 192Kbps as they can apparently tell the difference between 128Kbps and 192 Kbps.
But what about file size, I know hard drives are getting bigger and bigger, but when you are dealing with hundreds or even thousands of albums this makes a huge difference.

I would, I guess, have getting on for one thousand albums on my computer and they are all ripped at 128Kbps and in total they take up getting on for 40GB of my hard drive space and have no problems with their quality at all - although I am not comparing them to the same files ripped at 192Kbps.
Is there anyone else out there that actually rips at 128Kbps or is 128Kbps becoming more of a thing of the past now people have more hard disc space in their computers?

All opinions welcome.

My opinion is that it doesn't matter. My set of speakers are crappy to the core. So the music comes out fucked up anyway. Therefore I don't need to waste so much space on my pc.

For quality music I buy cd's. But that is just me, I have the feeling a lot of people will disagree.

EDIT: I see there are two posts, and three votes. Why would someone care to vote and not explain their opinion?

192+ all the way my man, if you wish to burn it later the quality is very noticable, even on a half decent set of PC speakers

Yeah, I agree, I always rip has high as possible. I have a decent amount of albums also, but a huge hard-drive, so, IMO quality over quantity

You'd all think I'm an idiot for doing this, but I rip at... 64kbps! The only reason for this is that my iPod only holds 6GB and I want the maximum number of songs on there. My hard drive is definitely big enough to take all my music at 192kbps, but it would mean having only a fraction of my music available outside home. As it is, I need to do lots of culling every time I put something new on my iPod, but hopefully I'll be able to upgrade everything when I get myself a fine 80GB Video iPod...

No way! ha ha....

I cant see why anyone would choose quantity over quality... Have a few hundred amazing tracks on there, and surely thats all you need.

I can't really talk though, I own a 20Gb Mp3 player....

I prefer ripping 'em at 192Kbps. Good enough quality-wise for both my speakers & MuVo.

Judas: Kinda funny how you 'only' have 6GB, when I have 512MB, heh. I rarely need music anyway when I'm going out though, nor find it pleasurable to listen with all the other noise around.

Nervel: I don't see any reason why one couldn't participate in a poll without leaving a comment. But that's just me.

@Kaamos:

Well, it seems kind of useless to me. But nevermind.

Well I don't really care and I can't really hear the difference between 128 and 192, so I save the space and rip at 128. I normally listen to my music through headphones and they're not that good anyway so...and my 512MB mp3-player can hold more songs this way

yeh, it would be nice if everyone that votes also gives a comment telling us why they use that bit-rate..

my mp3 player is also a 512MB one - so can hold several albums on at a time..
well I am glad there are some other people that say they cannot tell a difference as well.. haha - I mean it will be to do with speaker quality, etc. but I have two good speakers and a subwoofer - and I still can't tell a difference. haha

@Baz A: yeah I have a couple of desent speakers as well, but still the difference between 128 and 192 is not noticeable even on them...at least not to me

I rip stuff at 320kbps. No real reason, I just have a big hard drive and I figure I may as well rip stuff at the best quality I can.

Written by Hyvaarin on 13.05.2007 at 18:07

I rip stuff at 320kbps. No real reason, I just have a big hard drive and I figure I may as well rip stuff at the best quality I can.

Yeah, I know what you mean... The best quality is the best way to listen to metal...

yeah, I rip my favorite albums at 320kbps, but in general my albums are at 192kbps... As __Az___ said "The best quality is the best way to listen to metal... "

Good poll. I started ripping my albums at 360 kbps but that required huge amount of memory and furthermore I couldn't send them easily with msn.
So now I've been ripping at 192 kbps. I see no difference between 192 and 360, so why waste memory? 192 kbps is a very good quality. My speakers are very good, so I can tell the difference between 128 and 192, so I vote for the second one. The amount of extra memory used, is not that much... so I want Quality!
Even my MuVo with 1GB of memory can hold at least 100 songs at 192. Who needs more???

I used to rip at 128, but I decided to rip at 192 to ensure better quality. I can't really see the difference though, I sometimes download songs from the iTuens store, and they're encoded at 128kbps, but then they're in AAC format, which is supposedly better quality than MP3 at lower bit rate

I also rip at 192kbps, best ratio quality:space imo, and I don't see the difference with ripped music at 256 or 320 kbps. A friend told me he does hear a difference, well, maybe he has better ears than I. For music outside, I have a 1GB key, I can put enough music on it, so it's ok.

Sholdnt this be in General Forum Anyway, 320 and more sound perfectly, but I think that difference between 128 and 192 isnt big at all. 192 is only bit louder when you listen it on headphones...

Instead of ripping at 128, if you're concerned about size rip using ABR (average bitrate) of 132 kbps. The quality is comparable to 192 kbps CBR and the size is not much larger than 128 (we're talking a few dozen kilobytes). 132 ABR is the exact same compression as Sony was using in their Atrac 3 files and so it sounds very tolerable.

192... No particular reason really, I can't tell a huge difference above that... As druid said a couple of posts ago, it just seems a good balance of space conserving and decent quality, I just know the songs sound nice on my mp3 though so I stick with what I know...

Always at 320 (if it's for my needs)... Even when i had 10 gb HDD some years before, i used to rip cds in 320.
Even downloading i choose bigger file size. Why should i listen to crappy quality if i can listen to better?
In internet mp3 stores and similar places 192 is very well-known only because it doeesn't need so much space but it's better than 128. After some years they will offer 224 maybe or higher quality.

Judas, i don't understand why do you rip on 64. The quality sucks really hard and 6 GB space in your player is more than necessary to hold huge amount of music. Don't you really have access to computer some times to add/remove new files in it?

128 just because I want my computer to run as fast as possible, more data on hard drive means slower transfer of data from hard drive. I dont notice a difference anyway, its more upto the speakers you listening to than anything else. I only rip incase something happens to a cd (like stolen or scratched), this way I got em forever. Bit off subject but does it take longer to rip at a higher bit rate than a lower bit rate or the other way round?

i cant really tell the difference between 128 and 192 so i prefer the first one because it saves space and i dont have too much

BF - I would think it would take a little longer, but if you have a fast disc drive then the speed it rips at shouldnt really be an issue

I'm glad there are other people that cant tell the difference!
I can hear a difference between 112Kbps and 128Kbps - but nothing from 128Kbps upwards..

Baz Anderson, the difference depends on music. If you listen raw black metal then maybe you won't feel it. But try to listen something really clear and you will see.
Once i had a test:
i ripped same song in different qualities from 4 to 320. I agree that very low bitrate songs were very crappy but i won't agree that there is no difference between 192 and 320. Try to listen at cymbals.

Ripping in better quality takes a bit more time just because bigger file is created. But as mp3 aren't very big files (usually not more than 15 MB) then it won't affect you very much.

Written by W-Lash on 15.05.2007 at 08:42

Always at 320 (if it's for my needs)... Even when i had 10 gb HDD some years before, i used to rip cds in 320.
Even downloading i choose bigger file size. Why should i listen to crappy quality if i can listen to better?
In internet mp3 stores and similar places 192 is very well-known only because it doeesn't need so much space but it's better than 128. After some years they will offer 224 maybe or higher quality.

Judas, i don't understand why do you rip on 64. The quality sucks really hard and 6 GB space in your player is more than necessary to hold huge amount of music. Don't you really have access to computer some times to add/remove new files in it?

I'm really lazy, and got into poor musical habits early on. I always used to rip at 192kbps, and when I first got my iPod I was fine with that. Then, as my collection rapidly expanded, I found myself unwilling to delete music off the iPod, so I changed everything to 64kbps quality. Also, my HDD was only 9GB at that time, so it couldn't hold much at all at higher bitrates. Then, when I got a new computer, I just transferred all the files straight across, being the fat mole that I am, so they all remained poor quality. I also couldn't be bothered changing my iPod selection each time I plugged it into the computer.

Does anyone know if it is possible to convert files from 64kbps to 192kbps without them remaining shitty quality? Does it actually improve, or just create a bigger file for the same sound? If it does improve, then I'm going to do that ASAP, because I can't fit all my music on the iPod anymore, so I might as well do some serious culling!

Written by Judas on 15.05.2007 at 14:00

Also, my HDD was only 9GB at that time

lol

Oh, and I'd guess that "upgrading" the bitrate wouldn't do anything - the quality's already been lost. Probably, that's just a guess.

I'd agree with Hyvaarin here. The quality is lost 'forever'. Better rip/download again.

It's 100% true that you won't make better files from bad source. Files will have bigger size but not better quality.


If disk space is the only reason of ripping files with low bitrate then buy a dvd writing device (it's quite cheap) and some dvd discs. You can write about 4,5 GB in one disc and they are really cheap.

I may come back to this thread later, but I wanted to tell that to have a better quality and a smaller file for the same bitrate, encode your files in OGG instead of MP3. The MP3 format is getting old and while it was the best at a given time, it's no longer true. I know, MP3s are more convenient to use because it's something more commonly used... But this has to change! The OGG Vorbis format is open-source by the way.