MP3's: One way to get them.

[Aces]

I never played around with MP3's before I got my SSJ33. But once I got my mine & a 128Mb MS, I realized I didn't know how to get the songs.  I'd followed all the Napster stuff back when it was in the news.  But I had assumed that if you have bought your own CD's, almost any audio software would let you "rip" them (make MP3's from a CD).  Well Windows Media Player wouldn't. At least not the free version 8.

So a friend pointed me to MusicMatch Jukebox (at MusicMatch.com).  Their free "basic" player allowed me to rip MP3's just fine.  In the case of the SJ33, A made them at 96kbps, which sound plenty clear to me (128kbps is standard for CD quality).  I found it takes at least 10 minutes to rip a CD with the basic player.  CD quality MP3's takeup about 1Mb/minute of playtime.  Whereas my 96kbps ones only take .751Mb/minute of play time.  I didn't try 64 kbps.

So that's been my experiences with MP3's so far.  Here are a couple of questions. Since you only listen to MP3's through headphones on the SJ33, how low a resolution have others here found to give acceptable quality?  I suspect the type of music plays into this somewhat.  My interests range from Marc Cohn to Bon Jovi (NO hip-hop). The other question is are there other, posibly better, audio software to rip CD's with?  I have been happy with MusicMatch.  But I never really looked around much.

[Mastervtec]

FYI, The Memory Stick will only allow you to put songs on that are 96kbps or higher, any lower than 96kbps and they won't play.

[madmaxmedia]

Musicmatch uses a pretty good encoder. There are others that MP3 enthusiasts will say are better (such as LAME), but they aren't as easy to use and you'll need a program to rip the CD first...

I believe MusicMatch has VBR, you could try fooling around with that. VBR allocates more or less bit rate depending on the complexity during the song. So theoretically it should be better, I think those will play on a CLIE.

I personall record at 160 usually, with a 128 MB stick that's still enough music for my needs.

[Unregistered]

I think VBR-encoded MP3s cause the Audioplayer to crash (have to reset the Palm)[1].

Can anyone reproduce this?

Try the CDGrab MP3 ripper (search for it on Google) as an alternative to Musicmatch.

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[1] I have my MP3s loaded on an MS and as soon as I switch to view the list, the Palm crashes if a VBR encoded is present in the list.

[Spiral]

I listen to music at pretty volume , so 64 kbps sounds pretty good, but I've found that on some songs you can get some very bad audio errors, 96kbps works and sounds good w/ most songs, 80 isn't too bad either.

I use DBPowerAMP (go to download.com) for ripping, has all the options and can encode LAME I need for ripping. Make sure to set samplign rate at 44.1 khz tho.

I have played both VBR and MP3's at 64kbps on NR, i've heard the NX's audioplayer is less liberal and plays a narrow range of files tho.

Windows Media Player 8 rips to .wma (windows media audio) which sounds better than mp3's at low bitrates, but unfortunately are not supported by clie's.

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by Spiral

I use DBPowerAMP (go to download.com) for ripping, has all the options and can encode LAME I need for ripping.


Yeah, that's the one-- DBPowerAMP makes CDGrab (which is what the icon is called).

Originally posted by Spiral
Windows Media Player 8 rips to .wma (windows media audio) which sounds better than mp3's at low bitrates, but unfortunately are not supported by clie's.

Ogg Vorbis (http://www.vorbis.com/) is superior to MP3 (I haven't compared it with WMA) and generates smaller files than MP3 at the same bit-rate.

The Ogg Vorbis codec (http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/) has the added advantage of being opensource and free not requiring any licensing fees.

Both CDGrab and WinAmp support it--I wish the Clie supported it too.