[Keith Henderson: OFF: Questions for techies]

[Steve]

I used to think that LAME at around 190 VBR using the old "-r3mix" settings was good enough that I couldn't tell the difference... turned out I just hadn't been listening on a good enough system.  I think I'm going to have to re-rip to FLAC (this will be my THIRD time through, dammit).  
:-P

But since Keith explicitly stated that he didn't care, I would recommend going with whatever's most convenient for him.

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Edlund Anderson <cea at CARLAZ.COM>
Date: Wednesday, Oct 28, 2009 2:19 pm
Subject: Re: [Keith Henderson: OFF: Questions for techies]
To: Reply-    BOC/Hawkwind Discussion List <BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET>To: BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET

On 28 Oct 2009, at 17:21, M Holmes wrote:
 [Keith wrote:]
> I am not
> particularly picky about retaining the maximum sound quality of the
> original, so I thought I would just allow iTunes (is there a problem
> with that?) to rip them into the current state-of-the-art for iPods
> and such, which I gather is still MPEG-4 (file suffix .m4a).

> I thought MP3 was sound and MP4 some sort of video?

MPEG-4 is a specification for both audio and video.  The AAC scheme  
is part of both the MPEG-2 (also audio and video) and MPEG-4  
specifications.  Technically, MP3s belong to the MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3  
specification.


> For MP3, I tend to record at 256 or 192 rather than 128 because I do
 find the sound loss at 128 annoying, but everyone has a different
 tradeoff between memory space taken and sound quality.


I tend to make both Apple AAC files (for the iPod) and MP3 files (for  
discs that play in the car stereo) at minimum 192 (typically, I use  
variable bit rate or VBR files).   But the bit rate at which you are  
happy will depend on many things, like your ears, your speakers/ 
headphones, ambient noise, etc.


>> Anyway, my real question is about the storage device I should buy.  I
> am looking at a Seagate FreeAgent PRO desk model with 640 GB  
> capacity,
> as they are on sale for only $70 with free shipping to boot.

> I have a 500Gb Freeagent drive, but I have to say it's been
 temperamental. It's powered from the USB (separate USB power lead if
 needed) and sometimes the laptop won't recognise it. My suspicion is
 that occasionally it's wanting more power than the laptop can supply.
 I'd give some thought as to whether to get a mains-powered unit, but
 again there's portability tradeoffs.

I originally used 500 GB and 750 GB Western Digital drives, but when  
my collection outgrew those I moved it to a LaCie 1TB drive, with  
abother LaCie 1TB drive as backup.  Of course, my iTunes library has  
all my music (or all the music I've so far ripped) saved in Apple  
Lossless format, so my drive-space requirements are quite a bit  
larger than they would be if I were storing only lossy AACs or MP3s.



>> Does it have to be plugged in?

> Nope, but see above.

Indeed, larger drive sizes (not surprisingly) tend to require more  
power -- often more power than can be practically supplied from the  
computer itself via USB, Firewire, etc.  All my external drives of  
500 GB or more h