Thursday, 02 May 2019
What bitrate for MP3 files will give «CD quality»?
Aw heck… this is another of those questions that people debate *endlessly*. There really is no one answer – it depends on your ears, your equipment, etc. I think it’s probably fair to say that 128 Kbps is a bit on the low side, although it may sound fine from some encoders for some songs under some circumstances, whilst 160 Kbps done by a good encoder should sound pretty good to most people under most circumstances…. *but* I know some people will insist on higher standards. Different encoding software really does make a difference – some encoding software produces results that sound pretty awful to me at 128 Kbps, whereas other software produces ok results… e.g. speaking strictly from my own experience, 128 Kbps files from the older versions of Musicmatch Jukebox which used the Xing encoder or from Audiocatalyst often sound *really* poor, whereas BladeEnc (which is free) produces files at 128 Kbps which are often quite acceptable. The LAME encoder, an open source proje
ct, is another good free alternative, probably slightly superior to BladeEnc. And the free download of Musicmatch Jukebox now lets you encode at all bitrates using a version of the Fraunhofer encoder. I mostly rip to WAV files, and then encode using either the LAME or Fraunhofer encoder at 160 Kbps at the moment. If I’m not happy listening to the results on earphones, then I’ll try 192 Kbps.
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