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MP3s go from "awful" to "good" on a sliding scale.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T e c h n o f i l e
'Ripping' CDs, Part 2: How to get the best possible MP3 audio files


June 26, 2005


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, The Post-Standard

   MP3s are everywhere. If those three words give you geek fright, stick with me while I explain some things about audio.
   As I described last week (see http://technofileonline/texts/tec061905.html), you can turn the music on your CDs into MP3 audio files by "ripping" the CDs. The music is converted so quickly from CD audio to MP3 audio that you can imagine songs being "ripped" from the clutches of your compact disks.
   The secret of ripping CDs is simple. When music on CDs is converted from CD audio to MP3, everything stays digital. This keeps the quality high -- or at least higher than it would be otherwise -- and it makes the whole thing go very quickly. A fast computer with a quick CD drive can rip (convert, in other words) a full CD of songs in five minutes.
   Why rip CDs in the first place? The main reason is that MP3 takes up much less storage space than CD audio.
   Music has to be stored somewhere. Each "oom" and "pah" of your favorite polka has to be saved as a file if it's digital or as a strip of recorded tape if it's old-fashioned analog music. The standard way of storing digital audio is by putting it on a CD.
   CD audio sounds fine, but it's got two problems -- it needs a CD and it's horizontally challenged. I mean it's really chunky. A single song on that new Ringo Starr CD might take up 50 megabytes of space. Not even Sir Paul would want one of Ringo's songs to take up that much space on his iPod, so that's where MP3 comes in.
   (Geek alert: iPods are portable MP3 players. But you knew that already, right?)
   MP3 versions of CD music are minuscule compared to their full-size cousins. And they usually sound almost as good.
   Which brings us to the point. MP3s your computer creates when it rips CDs can sound just like the CD versions. More or less. If you're smart (not geeky -- just smart), your MP3s will be in the "more" category. If you never look at the options menu or preferences of your CD-ripping software, chances are your MP3s will end up relegated to "less" in this matter.
   Here's why, and here's what to do about it:
   WHY: MP3s go from "awful" to "good" on a sliding scale. "Awful" ones take up practically so space at all -- they're really small -- and "good" ones can fill one-third of the space of the same music on a CD. The folks who design CD-ripping software sometimes assume we're all partly tone deaf, and they set up their software to make MP3s just a whiffle this side of "awful."
   WHAT: Fix this insult (and make your MP3s sound a great deal better) by changing the settings. They might be in a menu or in a window; look around for them. The most important thing to change is the so-called "bit rate." Make it 160 or higher. The number is expressed in kilobits per second, or kbps. That's just geek speak. Just make it at least 160.
   You might see other numbers in the settings menu or window, but they'll usually adjust themselves when you bump up the bit rate.
   Tech note: If you're using iTunes and prefer Apple's AAC method instead of MP3, that's OK. But 160 kbps is a good number for that, too. You also have a super-fidelity option called Apple Lossless. Choose that if you want the best possible quality in iTunes.