Kyle R . Burton on Thu, 14 Dec 2000 23:27:44 -0500


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Re: [PLUG] sound card and mp3 ripping/encoding question


> I'm confused on a finer point of ripping music files and encoding them
> as mp3.
> 
> To wit: what's the effect of my sound card on the end file. (Note that
> I'm *not* asking about the playback.)

None.  The audio is extracted [via a ripper like cdparanoia] from the CD 
directly to a file on your disk, it never crosses the sound card.  The mp3 
encoder (something like blade enc 8hz-mp3, et al) reads that data (usualy
raw wav data) and encodes it (compresses it, loosing some of the quality)
into mp3 format.

> For example, I have (I think) I SoundBlaster AWE64. Does this mean
> that if I rip a file and encode it as mp3 at 128 bits that I'm really
> only getting 64 bits? Or are these totally different measures/numbers?
> 
> In general, I'm not clear on how, when, and why my machine uses the CD
> hardware and sound card to go from CD to mp3, except that the CD drive
> is clearly uesd to pull the wav file.
> 
> 
> The practical application is that I want to rip a bunch of my own CD's
> so that I can carry them with me easier than carrying the CD's
> themselves. Suppose that 128 bit mp3's are good enough quality for my
> ear for pop music. Is it possible that an old sound card will result
> in my having lower quality mp3's, which I then might notice more
> clearly someday when I have a better sound card?

64bit is better quality than my ear can detect.  If I were to listen
to a 5 second clip from a CD, and then hear the same 5 second clip from
an mp3, I could tell the differnce, but while just listening to the mp3,
the quality isn't usualy an issue for most music -- some classical might
show more of the degradation.

> (I know this isn't totally linux related, but I'm using linux to do
> this. And it's quite related to how *linux* deals with the sound
> hardware.)


Actualy I think that this is the same set of issues regardless of the 
operating system you use to either rip the audio data, or compress it
into an mp3.

k

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