Is there a noticable difference between 128 & 192?

I'm kind of a novice when it comes to bit rates and such, but I currently rip CD's to my MP3 player at 192. 192 sounds fine to me, but my player is almost filled up. Is there much difference in sound if I switched to 128? I only listen to these files through my MP3 player and comp speakers. Would I even notice a change to 128 with what I'm listening with? Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks.

 

Some mp3 encoding software have a setting where you can choose the encoding quality for each bit rate. The options are usually "fast", "medium", "high". If you compress at 128 kbps with the encoding setting set to "high" the difference between 128 and 192 kbps will not be that easy to hear. It all depends on your hearing. I can easily hear the difference. 192 kbps sounds better regardless of the encoding quality.

 

Only you can tell for sure. I know that I can hear the difference between lossless and 320 and 320 and 192. Of course, that is on a high-end headphone setup and a full-size listening room.

My advice is to rip a track that you know really well in both 192 and 128. Then give 'em both a spin on the computer playback system. If you hear a difference, then you have your answer. If you don't, you may have some disc space savings in your future.

David

 

Go to 256 kbps, it is tolerable.

 

If you don't mind my asking here, how do I configure my EAC to rip lower than 320? Once I started getting low on space, I changed what I thought was the bitrate from 320 to 256...but I'm still getting 320 rips. The "External Compression" and "LAME.DLL" tabs are both set to 256...wha...?

 

That sounds like a good idea. I have enough space for about 3700 tunes in 192, and have about 3400 songs on there already. It's amazing how fast it fills up. It's tempting to go to 128 for the space.

 

If I can offer a counterpoint: Disk space is cheap. Your time is not.

I ripped everything using Apple Lossless and I have nearly 400 gig of music. If I need to get some lossy tracks, all I have to do is 'copy' the existing tracks and convert thenm to the lossy format of my choice. But I still have the lossless track. Ripping a cd takes 3-5 minutes. Why not just do it once?

FWIW, an external USB hard drive will serve up music just fine. This seems like a better long-term solution that 'downgrading' to 128. This, of course, pre-supposes that you can hear a quality difference at 128.

David

 

192 is a good compromise for listening at my computer.

I can only tolerate 128 for my Rio while I mow the lawn and weed wack.

 

I can hear a big difference. And, 192 isn't always adequate with some material.

 

The first thing to think about with Mp3 player is memory capacity.
Over on this side of the 'pond' you can get 1Gb for GBP £79 upwards and there are some players that take add-on memory such as mini SD cards.
If you do that then file size is much less of an issue and you can look at better quality sound from your player.
I use LAME at 256 kbps high quality stereo and it sounds more open than 192 and especially 128kbps. You won't get CD quality comparable to the orginal CD replayed on a high quality seperates CD player but it will be more than acceptable listening on holiday or travelling.

Candy

 

As always (it's worth stating because people often miss this), make sure you're using joint-stereo and variable bit-rate, not stereo and constant bit-rate, the difference those options make is massive.

Also better to use quality based VBR rather than bitrate based VBR (technically called ABR). This will use more bits on files that really need it but keep the bit-rate lower on song that don't. Use a flag like -V 5 rather than --abr 128 or -b 128. (Scale goes from 0 to 9 with 0 being highest quality and 9 being the lowest).

 

Big difference.

 

Big difference for sure. In my case even 320 usually sounds lacking.

 

I do everything in 320 and just have fits with the quality on my IPOD when I listen in the car...I can;t go higher because of space.....I haven't tried Flac or Lame ...are they better in 320

 

Lossless all the way for me, though 320 can sound pretty good depending on source material and encoder. For consistent high-quality results, though, lossless for me. When I listen through my Shure E3's I can reliably tell the difference.

 

I saved a bunch of stuff at 128k in the late 90s, and now I can't stomach listening to it.