Hi,

I filed this as a new subject because I didn't want it lost in a reply.

I have no problem making wav files into mp3. I use White Tiger Standard. (free) It takes very little time to convert a wav file. You have three choices of compression: 320, 192 and 96 Kbps. Quite frankly, the 96Kbps sounds better. Why, I don't know. It shouldn't, because it is more compressed than the others.

I think you'll find the 96 merely shifts the frequency balance, maybe pushing the midrange more, giving the impression of more clarity but at the expense of overall finesse. This is what wma tends to do compared to mp3, and some people prefer it. But you tend to lose out in the bass and treble perhaps.

But if you rip high quality CDs the difference between 320 and 96 is pretty obvious. At 320 most people would be hard pressed to tell the difference in a blind test. I gradually replaced all my mp3s lower than 128, and encode at a minimum of 160 nowadays (depending on source) because I found even 96 not quite good enough on good material. The lame encoder is definitely the best for mp3 and easily used with the free converters.

But this is for ripping digital master CDs; for the keyboard, even though the quality is very good, you may not need exactly the same resolution, or even prefer the compression, almost as an extra effect. Quite apart from personal preferences so much depends on what you actually use to listen to the final result too.

The jukebox converter does a good job, and aac is a worthwhile format - just archive your originals so you can check out as many times as you like. For an example of 7k encoding see http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum25/HTML/000911.html

Thanks, Alec for your response. You clearly understand the wav to mp3 procedure better than I do. I was judging by my personal experience. I released a CD and edited sound clips by recording directly from the CD in my PC into Sound Recorder. My CD is extremely clean, to say the least - Plenty of highs, if you will. Using "White Tiger" mp3 recorder, I found that using the 96 compression gave me a very good overall sound. Perhaps it is because of the CD recording. I remember when I had the recording engineer do my master, he commented how "clean" my recordings were. I guess it comes down to that I had enough "highs" to sacrifice, if you will. Anyway, if I am satisfied, I guess that is all that matters. I might add, I am pretty hard to satisfy when it comes to music and sound.

there are acres of chat devoted to what is the best format, what is the best encoder, what is the best compression factor etc etc. Since 90% of the audio data is thrown away by the encoding each format and type of encoder has to decide exactly what to throw away. The whole thing uses the principle of audible masking, so each encoder has rules of which sounds are the most important foreground sounds, and which can be reduced in resolution to save space. Once the format and encoder are common, the audible result will then still be different for 64, 96, 128 kbs etc etc.

You can imagine that if you make two mp3s, one of the adagietto of Mahler's 5th, the other of Led Zeppelin, you might come to diametrically opposite opinions of the best way to go...

Very understandable, Alec. It all comes down to the type of music and the acceptable compression done at the smallest file for the quickest download.