Audacity Forum

Sup guys.

I know this isn't about Audacity, so forgive me but I was wondering about good quality mp3s. Well I rip my CD's to 320kbps with Windows Media Player and when I look at the file info in Winamp, I notice they are in "Joint-Stereo". Is this bad?


And if it is, how do I change it with media player?

Should I just simply rip cd's with Winamp or something?

By the way, I'm using Windows Media Player 10.

Is there a huge difference between joint and regular stereo?

"joint stereo" assumes that the show is essentially mono, then records the difference between the actual (stereo) and the assumed mono. "True" stereo records 2 indipendent channels - one for left and one for right.
In practice there is little difference, though joint stereo will sometimes give better compression and "true stereo" will sometimes give better stereo positioning. When you play the files in WMP (or any other player) you will probably not notice much difference.

The default presets in LAME are designed to produce optimum results at different compression amounts.

So should I just rip my CD's with Audacity then?

Honestly though, what's the best CD ripper for my case?

I want Stereo, 320 kbps, mp3's... But I don't wanna use Windows Media Player.

What should I use?

airhendrix wrote:Honestly though, what's the best CD ripper for my case?

I want Stereo, 320 kbps, mp3's... But I don't wanna use Windows Media Player.

What should I use?

C-Dex

What about EAC, Exact Audio Copy, is that a even better quality ripper or is CDEX better?


For EAC, it asks for a mp3 codec. What's the best freeware mp3 codec other than LAME?

I just wanna know the best freeware choice lol .

If you want perfect copies, then EAC is the one to go for, but if you want perfect copies you would not be wanting MP3, you would use a lossless format such as WAV or FLAC.

EAC is quite a bit slower than C-Dex and on scratched CD's it can take forever (and still fails to make perfect copies, but it tells you where the errors are).
C-Dex is quicker, and with a good (not scratched) CD the quality is still excellent (but not necessarily bit perfect, though you are unlikely to be able to hear any difference).
C-Dex is more tolerant of scratches and other physical flaws in the CD and will often produce subjectively better copies of poor disks.

If you are wanting to create MP3's, then you immediately dismiss the one big advantage of using EAC (bit perfect copies), and with that out of the equation, C-Dex is the better option (faster, easier to set up, better fault tolerance, easier to configure the output options).

airhendrix wrote:For EAC, it asks for a mp3 codec.

I think C-Dex does also.

airhendrix wrote:What's the best freeware mp3 codec other than LAME?

There isn't one. LAME is the best.
You may get marginally better quality using Ogg rather than MP3 (for the equivalent file size) and Ogg is an open format (no patent restrictions and legal in all countries) but support in media players is much more common for MP3 than it is for Ogg.

Should I use the Helix codec rather than LAME because in tests I've seen on Google, Helix has come out on top in most of them.