Ripping at 320 possible/options?

[Música]

Greetings: After years of happily using Zune to manage my collection, it has finally lost basic tag- and album art-reading capability for ripping CDs. After trying a few options, I'm most impressed and mostly settled on MusicBee, especially because the interface is most comparable to Zune, and the functionality and features are superior to anything else I've used in decades now. YET, one thing I am used to, and need, is being able to rip my CDs at 320 kbps. WMA appears to drop significantly from "max" which is like my "lossless" has been, to "high", which is unacceptably low for me (on my last try, I got 130, 149 kbps --please    ). I've been ripping mostly to max FLAC, but some things just don't merit the space. Is there, are there, 320 kbps ripping options in MB, please?

My initial suggestion/request for developers, is to include a specification of bit rates in the ripping setting menus. Essential info, - and meaningful, unlike the "highs" etc., which are merely relative indicators or ranks.

Thank you.   

[frankz]

You can set any quality levels you want by entering the command line options in Edit->Edit Preferences->File Converters and then select that quality when you rip.

[Música]

Thank you for your prompt response. Very nice functionality, thanks, but I'm still seeing only percentage options, and even 90% WMA, for instance, yields only 190s kbps at best. I was hoping for a "this is how I get/set for 320 kbps" response    -if available/possible in MusicBee, of course. Appreciate the guidance and will keep investing time experimenting and hoping for a consistent-320-yield setting. Thanks again.

[hiccup]

A little bit off-topic but curious:
Why would you want to rip to wma instead of to mp3?

[sveakul]

Thank you for your prompt response. Very nice functionality, thanks, but I'm still seeing only percentage options, and even 90% WMA, for instance, yields only 190s kbps at best. I was hoping for a "this is how I get/set for 320 kbps" response    -if available/possible in MusicBee, of course. Appreciate the guidance and will keep investing time experimenting and hoping for a consistent-320-yield setting. Thanks again.

You can select a constant bitrate type and 320k CBR in the drop-down box here:

[Música]

A little bit off-topic but curious:
Why would you want to rip to wma instead of to mp3?

Fair question, hiccup: I guess I'm still "stuck" on, or comfortable with, my satisfactory Zune WMA history, the long-term WMA groove I've been on building my ~75gb collection -I suppose taken to find that drop-down. BUT, I am opening up and learning MB, and even retroactively, that Zune can't even see my MusicBee-ripped FLAC files. Forward and onward.

[hiccup]

Fair question, hiccup: I guess I'm still "stuck" on, or comfortable with...

Take into account that wma is propriatary and owned by Microsoft.
So support is far more limited compared to mp3, the sound quality @320 will not be better, and you never know what MS decides to do with wma in the future.
Also MS has a reputation to drop/kill their babies at a certain moment in time, and then you will probably be forced to put in some time and effort again anyway.

So my advice would be, keep it simple:

Lossless: use flac
Lossy: use: mp3

Both are on top of their game, both are broadly compatible, as well as in play-back and in handling metadata.
(the latter is very important in regards to MusicBee and a lot of other software and useful tools)

The only reason (a.f.a.i.k.) to use any other codec is that some have been reported to sound better at low bit rates, or if you are still stuck with some Apple stuff.
But then, would you be using software such as MusicBee?

[Música]

Thank you for your prompt response. Very nice functionality, thanks, but I'm still seeing only percentage options, and even 90% WMA, for instance, yields only 190s kbps at best. I was hoping for a "this is how I get/set for 320 kbps" response    -if available/possible in MusicBee, of course. Appreciate the guidance and will keep investing time experimenting and hoping for a consistent-320-yield setting. Thanks again.

You can select a constant bitrate type and 320k CBR in the drop-down box here:

Hmmm.. wow, sveakul: thank you so much. You guys and MB are great! I did find with frankz's lead that MP3 max does have a 320 option and that will do fine. And now you directly illustrate what I hadn't found with WMA because I hadn't yet noted that there are indeed, truly MANY encoding options. Frankly, I hadn't taken the time, I suppose, to note the variable vs. constant setting options. I do believe that this new user, weaning from a >decade-Zune habit, needed this kind of "look" illustration.

[captain_paranoia]

Given that HDDs are a lot cheaper than ten years ago (using Moore's Law, and a period of 18 months, that's 4641588 times bigger for the same price...), I would recommend you do any future rips to FLAC, and use MB to transcode to WMA in a parallel directory for loading to your Zune.

I'm lucky that I didn't start ripping until 2011, by which time, a 1.5TB HDD was a reasonable price, and I chose to rip to lossless FLAC, thus maintaining the full CD quality. A number of my friends are stuck with the 128k MP3 rips they made to save disk space, and can't face re-ripping...

[Música]

Given that HDDs are a lot cheaper than ten years ago (using Moore's Law, and a period of 18 months, that's 4641588 times bigger for the same price...), I would recommend you do any future rips to FLAC, and use MB to transcode to WMA in a parallel directory for loading to your Zune.

I'm lucky that I didn't start ripping until 2011, by which time, a 1.5TB HDD was a reasonable price, and I chose to rip to lossless FLAC, thus maintaining the full CD quality. A number of my friends are stuck with the 128k MP3 rips they made to save disk space, and can't face re-ripping...

Right on storage costs, captain, and mostly on your why-not-FLAC logic. But it's mostly a relative concern for phones because I have 2TB HD and a 256gb SSD on my main-MB NUC desktop. But still 320-quality is as low as I want to have on any platform, and I find that's plenty good for most music, especially because much of my listening in recent years is through Bluetooth. It's only especially-good recordings that merit the lossless ripping for me, and I believe I can only appreciate the differences on selected devices -not in my car's several nice speakers, for instance. I have 128gb cards in phones, and even that's plenty for my current ~75gb of music, but I also have a photo habit and do want to have plenty of headroom for all saving and downloading. But, still on your valid point, while storage is relatively cheap for all-FLAC, and will get cheaper, I still don't like wasting it, and I already have too many 64gb cards in desk-drawer storage. It's like my music players where 8gb, then 32gb, then 64gb became inadequate. Fortunately, we do have expandable phones and other devices today -except for iphone and pixel owners, that is.  Maybe one day

By the way, it's my Zune desktop software that can't read FLAC, and never could; but it does read everything else I've ripped with MB. Still. that only runs on Win 7, and the sun is going down on that as well. But/so I probably will be moving to FLAC, subject to some more testing and learning.

Finally, re-ripping was/is worth it and can be done patiently over time.